Quotes About Equations

Nothing's impossible. Our mind's limitations just tell us that certain things are beyond our understanding. Often, we have to solve a whole bunch of equations before we can accept new ideas. It's a question of time and of the limits of our brain.

Sometimes trying to balance two equations at a time can only lead us to give a right answer to a wrong question, there comes a time when we have to abandon our mind and follow our hearts.

Mathematicians practice absolute freedom.

A bottle of perfume brought in more foreign revenue than a barrel of petroleum. A Paris frock was worth more than ten tons of coal. These very equations were evidence, in the eyes of some people, of the indefensible extravagance of haute couture.

It is a fortunate and astonishing fact that the fundamental laws of our fantastic fidgety universe are based on relatively simple equations. If it were otherwise, we surely would know less than we know now about how our universe behaves, and Newton and Leibniz would probably never have invented (or discovered?) calculus.

If God has made the world a perfect mechanism, He has at least conceded so much to our imperfect intellect that in order to predict little parts of it, we need not solve innumerable differential equations, but can use dice with fair success.

Man is said to be a reasoning animal. I do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. Perhaps that which differentiates him from other animals is feeling rather than reason. More often I have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. Perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly — but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the second degree.

Negative numbers, equations involving unknowns, formulas, derivatives, integrals, and other concepts we shall encounter are abstractions built upon abstractions.

The second basic function of algebra is to convert expressions into more useful ones. Gauss's

A robber who justified his theft by saying that he really helped his victims, by his spending giving a boost to retail trade, would find few converts; but when this theory is clothed in Keynesian equations and impressive references to the "multiplier effect," it unfortunately carries more conviction.

Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.

The most important use to which he had put his memory was that he had stuffed an unprecedented number of mathematical constants and equations into it. Most of us have very few mathematical constants in our mind, perhaps only the up-to-twelve-times multiplication table. Johnny had put in his mind layers and layers of algebraic verities. These were the explanation of his extraordinary powers of mental calculation.

It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress.

Can you imagine my joy at the feasibility of the general covariance with the result that the equations of the perihelion movement of Mercury prove correct? I was speechless for several days with excitement. (Einstein to Ehrenfest)

Hence, Einstein's equations beautifully connect the stuff of the universe with the shape of the universe.

Two of the most important relationships in modern physics are Schrodinger's wave equation and Einstein's equation of general relativity. Strikingly, their domains are very different. While Schrodinger's equation describes the distribution and behavior of matter and energy throughout space and time, Einstein's equation shows how the fabric of space and time is itself molded by the distribution of matter and energy.

The relationships (Maxwell's equations) are the epitome of mathematical consieness, compact enough to fit on a T-shirt yet powerful enough to describe all manner of electromagnetism.

Mathematician need only peace of mind and occasionally, paper and pencil.

for the irreducible case with all three roots real, there is just one positive root; that is, the root given by the Cardan formula

The breakthrough for came not from quadratic equations, but rather from cubics which clearly had real solutions but for which the Cardan formula produced formal answers with imaginary components.

the product of two sums of two squares of integers is always expressible, in two different ways, as the sum of two squares of integers.