Math Quotes

Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

If you stop at general math, you're only going to make general math money.

A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.

The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God.

If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.

And who can doubt that it will lead to the worst disorders when minds created free by God are compelled to submit slavishly to an outside will? When we are told to deny our senses and subject them to the whim of others? When people devoid of whatsoever competence are made judges over experts and are granted authority to treat them as they please? These are the novelties which are apt to bring about the ruin of commonwealths and the subversion of the state.

Geometry enlightens the intellect and sets one's mind right. All of its proofs are very clear and orderly. It is hardly possible for errors to enter into geometrical reasoning, because it is well arranged and orderly. Thus, the mind that constantly applies itself to geometry is not likely to fall into error. In this convenient way, the person who knows geometry acquires intelligence.

I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.

"Ganas is all you need."

Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.

Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.

Physics is to mathematics what sex is to masturbation.

Geometry enlightlens the intellect and sets one's mind right

Mathematicians have tried in vain to this day to discover some order in the sequence of prime numbers, and we have reason to believe that it is a mystery into which the human mind will never penetrate.

Where there is matter, there is geometry.

The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics.

There are things which seem incredible to most men who have not studied Mathematics.

The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown.

Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency.

The introduction of the cipher 0 or the group concept was general nonsense too, and mathematics was more or less stagnating for thousands of years because nobody was around to take such childish steps.

One cannot escape the feeling that these mathematical formulas have an independent existence and an intelligence of their own, that they are wiser than we are, wiser even than their discoverers.

The question you raise, 'How can such a formulation lead to computations?' doesn't bother me in the least! Throughout my whole life as a mathematician, the possibility of making explicit, elegant computations has always come out by itself, as a byproduct of a thorough conceptual understanding of what was going on. Thus I never bothered about whether what would come out would be suitable for this or that, but just tried to understand - and it always turned out that understanding was all that mattered.

The only way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics.

Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.

I am not really doing research, just trying to cultivate myself.

All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians.

In school, my favorite subject was math. That's where I learned to count money.

God created everything by number, weight and measure.

The calculus was the first achievement of modern mathematics and it is difficult to overestimate its importance. I think it defines more unequivocally than anything else the inception of modern mathematics; and the system of mathematical analysis, which is its logical development, still constitutes the greatest technical advance in exact thinking.

Mathematics knows no races or geographic boundaries; for mathematics, the cultural world is one country.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

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.

In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.

He who cannot describe the problem will never find the solution to that problem.

But how is one to make a scientist understand that there is something unalterably deranged about differential calculus, quantum theory, or the obscene and so inanely liturgical ordeals of the precession of the equinoxes.

Without mathematics, there’s nothing you can do. Everything around you is mathematics. Everything around you is numbers.

The kind of knowledge which is supported only by observations and is not yet proved must be carefully distinguished from the truth; it is gained by induction, as we usually say. Yet we have seen cases in which mere induction led to error. Therefore, we should take great care not to accept as true such properties of the numbers which we have discovered by observation and which are supported by induction alone. Indeed, we should use such a discovery as an opportunity to investigate more exactly the properties discovered and to prove or disprove them; in both cases we may learn something useful.

Why are numbers beautiful? It’s like asking why is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony beautiful. If you don’t see why, someone can’t tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren’t beautiful, nothing is.

Music is not math. It's science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

There are two versions of math in the lives of many Americans: the strange and boring subject that they encountered in classrooms and an interesting set of ideas that is the math of the world, and is curiously different and surprisingly engaging. Our task is to introduce this second version to today's students, get them excited about math, and prepare them for the future.

All models are wrong, but some are useful.

To divide a cube into two other cubes, a fourth power, or in general any power whatever into two powers of the same denomination above the second is impossible, and I have assuredly found an admirable proof of this, but the margin is too narrow to contain it.

I never got a pass mark in math ... Just imagine - mathematicians now use my prints to illustrate their books.

My freshman year of high school I joined the chess and math clubs.

I do not believe in the gifted. If [the students] have ganas, I can make them do it.

It will be another million years, at least, before we understand the primes.

In order to solve this differential equation you look at it until a solution occurs to you.

It is better to solve one problem five different ways, than to solve five problems one way.

As long as algebra is taught in school, there will be prayer in school.

Symmetry, as wide or as narrow as you may define its meaning, is one idea by which man through the ages has tried to comprehend and create order, beauty and perfection.