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The Postulates of Mathematics Were Not on the Stone Tablets that Moses Brought Down from Mt. Sinai.

— Richard Hamming The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics (1980)

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Mathematics

More quotes by Richard Hamming

The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.

Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers (1962)

The idea that theorems follow from the postulates does not correspond to simple observation.

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics (1980)

Typing is no substitute for thinking.

Are you sure you are not merely "programmed" in life by what by chance events happens to you?

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

There is simply too much known to continue the older approach of giving detailed results.

Methods of Mathematics Applied to Calculus, Probability, and Statistics (1985)

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Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Kenneth Boulding to Kenneth Boulding in: United States. Congress. House (1973)

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite.

William Blake The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790)

Pure mathematics consists entirely of assertions to the effect that, if such and such a proposition is true of anything, then such and such another proposition is true of that thing.

Bertrand Russell

The land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts.

Núria Añó

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Richard Hamming (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.