Math quotations

Page 3

◆ But Piglet is so small that he slips into a pocket, where it is very comfortable to feel him when you are not quite sure whether twice seven is twelve or twenty-two.

- A.A. Milne99

◆ Why don't we want our children to learn to do mathematics? Is it that we don't trust them, that we think it's too hard? We seem to feel that they are capable of making arguments and coming to their own conclusions about Napoleon. Why not about triangles?

- Paul Lockhart98

◆ the golden eternity is { }

- Jack Kerouac98

◆ Music is a mixed mathematical science that concerns the origens, attributes, and distinctions of sound, out of which a cultivated and lovely melody and harmony are made, so that God is honored and praised but mankind is moved to devotion, virtue, joy, and sorrow.

- Christoph Wolff98

◆ If in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics...

- Roger Bacon98

◆ I am smart, you are not.

- Holden98

◆ One might suppose that reality must be held to at all costs. However, though that may be the moral thing to do, it is not necessarily the most useful thing to do. The Greeks themselves chose the ideal over the real in their geometry and demonstrated very well that far more could be achieved by consideration of abstract line and form than by a study of the real lines and forms of the world; the greater understanding achieved through abstraction could be applied most usefully to the very reality that was ignored in the process of gaining knowledge.

- Isaac Asimov98

◆ Mathematics is the cheapest science. Unlike physics or chemistry, it does not require any expensive equipment. All one needs for mathematics is a pencil and paper.

- George Pólya98

◆ There is a largeness about mathematics that transcends race and time; mathematics may humbly help in the market-place, but it also reaches to the stars.

- Robert Turnbull98

◆ I started studying law, but this I could stand just for one semester. I couldn't stand more. Then I studied languages and literature for two years. After two years I passed an examination with the result I have a teaching certificate for Latin and Hungarian for the lower classes of the gymnasium, for kids from 10 to 14. I never made use of this teaching certificate. And then I came to philosophy, physics, and mathematics. In fact, I came to mathematics indirectly. I was really more interested in physics and philosophy and thought about those. It is a little shortened but not quite wrong to say: I thought I am not good enough for physics and I am too good for philosophy. Mathematics is in between.

- George Pólya98

◆ Plenty of mathematicians, Hardy knew, could follow a step-by-step discursus unflaggingly—yet counted for nothing beside Ramanujan. Years later, he would contrive an informal scale of natural mathematical ability on which he assigned himself a 25 and Littlewood a 30. To David Hilbert, the most eminent mathematician of the day, he assigned an 80. To Ramanujan he gave 100.

- Robert Kanigel98

◆ Velmi brzy za?al projevovat zájem o matematiku - dokonce tak silny, ?e mu otec, ktery nechtěl zanedbat jeho filozofické, jazykové a humanitní vzdělání, zakázal v jedenácti letech ?íst matematické knihy, dokud nedosáhne věku patnácti let. Zákaz odvolal, kdy? syna p?istihl, jak kusem uhlí pí?e na ze? v jakési zapadlé chodbě jejich domu sv?j vlastní d?kaz, ?e sou?tem úhl? v trojuhelníku je v?dy p?ímy úhel. Bylo to asi jediné inteligentní graffiti v dějinách.

- Milan Mare?98

◆ I had a feeling once about Mathematics - that I saw it all. Depth beyond depth was revealed to me - the Byss and Abyss. I saw - as one might see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor's Show - a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly why it happened and why the tergiversation was inevitable but it was after dinner and I let it go.

- Winston Churchill98

◆ [Math] curriculum is obsessed with jargon and nomenclature seemingly for no other purpose than to provide teachers with something to test the students on.

- Paul Lockhart98

◆ Math is my Passion. Engineering is my Profession.

- Wilfred James Dolor98