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Where there is life there is a pattern, and where there is a pattern there is mathematics. Once that germ of rationality and order exists to turn a chaos into a cosmos, then so does mathematics. There could not be a non-mathematical Universe containing living observers.

— John D. Barrow The Artful Universe (1995)

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Mathematics

More quotes by John D. Barrow

We are products of a past world where sensitivities to certain things were a matter of life or death.

The Artful Universe (1995)

There is a good deal more to Pythagorean musical theory than celestial harmony.

The Artful Universe (1995)

The abstractions of Einstein's curved space and time gave rise to analogies and pictures that played a new explanatory role.

Cosmic Imagery: Key Images in the History of Science (2008)

This may be the low-impact evolutionary path you need to follow in order to survive into the far, far future.

The Book of Universes: Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos (2011)

Just focusing on what exists now seems a bit exclusive.

The Book of Universes: Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos (2011)

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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: John D. Barrow (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.