Quotes About Mathematics

Words and numbers are of equal value, for, in the cloak of knowledge, one is warp and the other woof.

You'd have to say Robert plus John equals four, and if the four's name were Albert, things would be hopeless.

According to the strange mathematics of the god of mutual affinity, the shadows that clouded their pasts when united became only half as dense instead of darker. - The World And The Door

Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep; morals grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.

This is all so silly,' said Diko. 'Who cares about what's real and what isn't real? [...] And as for our own history, the parts that will be lost, who cares if a mathematician calls us dirty names like unreal? They say such slanders about the square root of minus two as well.

Oh," said Wheaton. "Oh, I see. Yes, that does bring mathematics into it.

considered amicable because the proper divisors of 220 are 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 20, 22, 44, 55 and 110 which, when added together, reach 284. And the proper divisors of 284 are 1, 2, 4, 71 and 142, of which the sum is 220. They are the only amicable numbers under 1,000.

that all good math had come from the Arabs, everyone knew that.

If you have a patient with a condition that's not understood why not ascribe it to a disorder that is also not understood? Autism occurs in males more than it does in females. So does higher order mathematical intuition. We think: What is this about? Dont know. What is at the heart of it? Dont know. All I can tell you is that I like numbers. I like their shapes and their colors and their smells and the way they taste. And I dont like to take people's word for things.

The world you live in is shored up by a collective of agreements. Is that something you think about? The hope is that the truth of the world somehow lies in the common experience of it. Of course the history of science and mathematics and even philosophy is a good bit at odds with this notion. Innovation and discovery by definition war against the common understanding. One should be wary.

If mathematical objects exist independently of human thought what else are they independent of? The universe, I suppose. When you solve a problem there is always the compelling sense that the solution was there and that you have discovered it.

After the 1931 papers it was clear to him that we are capable of mathematical insights that a Universal Truth Machine is not.

My disappointment with mathematics] was led by a group of evil and aberrant and wholly malicious partial differential equations who had conspired to usurp their own reality from the questionable circuitry of its creator's brain not unlike the rebellion which Milton describes and to fly their colors as an independent nation unaccountable to God or man alike.

The laws of mathematics supposedly derive from the rules of logic. But there is no argument for the rules of logic that does not presuppose them.

Mathematics is not physics. The physical sciences can be weighed against each other. And against what we suppose to be the world. Mathematics cant be weighed against anything.

You said that mathematics was mostly about hard work. But I'm still not sure how you go about it. Yes. The first thing you do it take off your shoes and socks. To have parallel access to base ten.

if mathematics is performed mostly in the unconscious we still have no notion as to how it goes about it. ... And why is it so often right? Who does it check its work with? I've had solutions simply handed to me. Out of the blue. The locus ceruleus perhaps. And it has to remember everything. No notes. It's hard to escape the unsettling conclusion that it is not using numbers.

What seems inconsequential to us by reason of usage is in fact the founding notion of civilization. Language, art, mathematics, everything. Ultimately the world itself and all in it.

My railings against the platonists are a thing of the past. Assuming at last that one could, what would be the advantage of ignoring the transcendent nature of mathematical truths. There is nothing else that all men are compelled to agree upon, and when the last light in the last eye fades to black and takes all speculation with it forever I think it could even be that these truths will glow for just a moment in the final light. Before the dark and the cold claim everything.

A number is random if the simplest way to express it is by writing it down.

If Pierre buys a horse for two hundred francs and Jacques buys a mule for a hundred and forty, and the two enter into a partnership and decide to trade their creatures for a piece of land that costs four hundred and eighty francs, then how long will it take a lame Frenchman to borrow a silk umbrella?

Since the mathematicians have grabbed hold of the theory of relativity, I myself no longer understand it.

Von Neumann, by contrast, wore a three-piece suit at almost all times, including on a donkey ride down the Grand Canyon; even as a student he was so well dressed that, upon first meeting him, the mathematician David Hilbert reportedly had but one question: Who is his tailor?45

Ada's ability to appreciate the beauty of mathematics is a gift that eludes many people, including some who think of themselves as intellectual. She realized that math was a lovely language, one that describes the harmonies of the universe and can be poetic at times.