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Mathematics Quotes

The top contributors are mostly people who wrote about mathematics: Jane Frances McDonnell, G. F. J. Temple, Stanislaw Ulam, Bertrand Russell and Morris Kline. The best-sourced lines, though, are by William Blake, filed here for the word infinity. They include “To see a World in a Grain of Sand” from Auguries of Innocence (1803) and the cleansing of the doors of perception in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790).

Three entries are flagged. “Mathematics is the key and door to the sciences” is credited to Galileo and marked misattributed. A line saying the highest form of pure thought is in mathematics is credited to Plato and disputed. So is the claim that the ultimate goal of mathematics is to eliminate any need for intelligent thought, credited to Alfred North Whitehead.

Random quote on Mathematics

Most quoted on mathematics:

I was inspired to become an astronaut after watching the Apollo 11 moon landing as an eight-year-old kid. We need to get kids interested in space and in science and math in general.

Leroy Chiao Leroy Chiao (2021)

Why is America such a powerful nation? Because you could reliably sail your ships to Europe and sell all your stuff, and that reliability came from navigation, and that navigation relied on math.

Christopher Budd Math Encounters (2017)

I am going to show that mathematics... is precisely "that which is easy."

Eugenia Cheng How to Bake Pi (2015)

I would not dare to say that there is a direct relation between mathematics and madness, but there is no doubt that great mathematicians suffer from maniacal characteristics, delirium and symptoms of schizophrenia.

John Forbes Nash Jr.

Mathematics, like music and poetry, is a creation of the mind; … the primary task of the mathematician, like that of any other artist, is to extend man's mental horizon by representation and interpretation.

Graham Sutton Mathematics in Action (1954)

We should all have access to the mathematical knowledge and tools needed to protect us from arbitrary decisions made by the powerful few in an increasingly math-driven world. Where there is no mathematics, there is no freedom.

Edward Frenkel

Although there are at present many occupations that require a good deal of skill and training in advanced mathematics, mathematics itself is still often regarded as a curious profession demanding singular talents and a singular personality.

Robert Langlands

One form of math denial is the belief in the ability to make computers that prevent copyright infringement. Computers only ever work by making copies: restricting copying on the internet is like restricting wetness in water.

Cory Doctorow

There is no problem in all mathematics that cannot be solved by direct counting. But with the present implements of mathematics many operations can be performed in a few minutes which without mathematical methods would take a lifetime.

Ernst Mach Popular Scientific Lectures [McCormack (1898)

As a side note, I'd like to propose that aim is more mathematical than we tend to acknowledge. For me, it's: smallish dick ÷ long torso = distance to bowl.

Brad Garrett When the Balls Drop (2015)

In adolescence, Chesney had drifted away from old-time religion. He found too many contradictions and absurdities in scripture. Besides, he had found a more reliable truth in the elegant architectures of mathematics.

Matthew Hughes Devil or Angel & Other Stories (2015)

Persons, who have a decided mathematical talent, constitute, as it were, a favored class. They bear the same relation to the rest of mankind that those who are academically trained bear to those who are not.

Paul Julius Möbius

Once, they would have meant something to Svetlana, but now all she felt was a faint prickly of recollection. Fluency with mathematics—in the context of any kind of engineering discipline or physical science—was a use-it-or-lose-it skill.

Alastair Reynolds Pushing Ice (2005)

The reason we can say today that we know all this stuff, that we think our theoretical models represent reality, is not because we have pretty mathematics but because we have done experiments.

Suzie Sheehy The Matter of Everything (2023)

I wrote this book because I love maths, and I love food... [S]adly most people love food more than they love maths...

Eugenia Cheng Keynote: How to bake "How to Bake Pi (2016)

I was at first almost frightened when I saw such mathematical force made to bear upon the subject, and then wondered to see that the subject stood it so well.

Michael Faraday

Imagination is a very important part of mathematics. I hope you all possess... imagination.

Michael Atiyah The Role of Beauty in Mathematics (2015)

most top science and math students don't participate in such national contests.

Norman Matloff

The doctrine that there is as much science in a subject as... mathematics in it, or as much... measurement or 'precision' in it, rests upon... misunderstanding.

Karl Popper Realism and the Aim of Science (1983)

Mere observations... are not knowledge. ...[T]o understand the universe, we need ...theories. Earlier traditions usually formulated... theories... [as] stories. Modern science uses mathematics.

Yuval Noah Harari Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011)

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