Quotes About Mathematics

My work is always very geometric.

I wasn't actually very naturally good at economics. My brain doesn't work very well, in terms of mathematics.

My brain doesn't work very well, in terms of mathematics. I'm not one of those people who can just spout off numbers for things, if numbers are thrown at me.

Even the greatest mathematicians, the ones that we would put into our mythology of great mathematicians, had to do a great deal of leg work in order to get to the solution in the end.

I can multiply. Long divisions start to be a stretch.

Topologists are not concerned with angles and lengths, which are clearly altered by stretching the rubber sheet, but they do care about more fundamental properties.

The beauty of string theory is that it is all about mathematics. For that, you don't need resources or labs. Just sit in your room and do the maths.

Among the thousand-and-one faces whereby form chooses to reveal itself to us, the one that fascinates me more than any other, and continues to fascinate me, is the structure hidden in mathematical things.

Logic and mathematics are nothing but specialised linguistic structures.

Most problems I work on are related to geometric structures on surfaces and their deformations.

One of the problems maths struggles with is that it's invisible. We haven't got explosions on our side.

Opinions of language are as interesting as opinions of arithmetic.

I would play with numbers in a way that other kids would play with their friends.

I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky. In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics: Plagiarize! Plagiarize! Let no one else's work evade your eyes! Remember why the good Lord made your eyes! So don't shade your eyes, But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize - Only be sure always to call it please 'research'." [ Lobachevsky ]

The sky is where mathematics and magic become one.

The incompleteness theorem is a mathematical theorem precisely because the relevant notions of truth and provability are mathematically definable. Nonmathematical "Gödel sentences" and Liar sentences give rise to prolonged (or endless) discussions of just what is meant by a proof, by a true statement, by sound reasoning, by showing something to be true, by convincing oneself of something, by believing something, by a meaningful statement, and so on.

A consistent theory T cannot postulate its own consistency, although the consistency of T can be postulated in another consistent theory. (An exercise for the reader: Is it possible to have a pair of consistent theories S and T such that each postulates the consistency of the other? It follows from what has been said above that the answer is no.)

My modesty compels me to admit that there are three fields where my genius appears to feel somewhat cramped, namely, engineering, mathematics, and cookery. (Moominpappa)

Did your mathematical studies ever reach to the quadratic equation, Stephen?' 'They did not reach to the far end of the multiplication table.

the education of the young gentlemen aboard is almost all a matter of trigonometry: even of algebra, Heaven preserve us.

GOOD DESIGN IS SIMPLE. You hear this from math to painting. In math it means that a shorter proof tends to be a better one. Where axioms are concerned, especially, less is more. It means much the same thing in programming. For architects and designers, it means that beauty should depend on a few carefully chosen structural elements rather than a profusion of superficial ornament.

Everyone in the sciences secretly believes that mathematicians are smarter than they are. I think mathematicians also believe this. At

In other words, general set theory is pretty trivial stuff really, but, if you want to be a mathematician, you need some and here it is; read it, absorb it, and forget it.

Mathematics] is security. Certainty. Truth. Beauty. Insight. Structure. Architecture. I see mathematics, the part of human knowledge that I call mathematics, as one thing—one great, glorious thing. Whether it is differential topology, or functional analysis, or homological algebra, it is all one thing. ... They are intimately interconnected, they are all facets of the same thing. That interconnection, that architecture, is secure truth and is beauty. That's what mathematics is to me.