Skip to content

All mathematics is divided into three parts: cryptography (paid for by CIA, KGB and the like), hydrodynamics (supported by manufacturers of atomic submarines) and celestial mechanics (financed by military and by other institutions dealing with missiles, such as NASA.).

— Vladimir Arnold

Another quote →

More quotes by Vladimir Arnold

In the middle of the twentieth century it was attempted to divide physics and mathematics. The consequences turned out to be catastrophic.

Such axioms, together with other unmotivated definitions, serve mathematicians mainly by making it difficult for the uninitiated to master their subject, thereby elevating its authority.

Mathematics is the part of physics where experiments are cheap.

They first began teaching their ugly scholastic pseudo-mathematics to their students, then to schoolchildren (forgetting Hardy's warning that ugly mathematics has no permanent place under the Sun).

"In almost all textbooks, even the best, this principle is presented so that it is impossible to understand." (K. Jacobi, Lectures on Dynamics, 1842-1843). I have not chosen to break with tradition.

All Vladimir Arnold quotes →

Attribution

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