Quotes About Mathematics

I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.

Mathematics has a threefold purpose. It must provide an instrument for the study of nature. But this is not all: it has a philosophical purpose, and, I daresay, an aesthetic purpose.

Mathematics is as little a science as grammar is a language.

Nature's great book is written in mathematics.

Mathematics is not a deductive science - that's a cliché... What you do is trial and error, experimentation, guesswork.

Therefore, O students, study mathematics and do not build without foundations.

Children display a universal love of mathematics, which is par excellence the science of precision, order, and intelligence.

Every kind of science, if it has only reached a certain degree of maturity, automatically becomes a part of mathematics.

[Gauss calculated the elements of the planet Ceres] and his analysis proved him to be the first of theoretical astronomers no less than the greatest of 'arithmeticians.'

Modern mathematics, that most astounding of intellectual creations, has projected the mind's eye through infinite time and the mind's hand into boundless space.

One of the chief duties of the mathematician in acting as an advisor ... is to discourage ... from expecting too much from mathematics.

There is no branch of mathematics, however abstract, which may not some day be applied to phenomena of the real world.

Geometry is the most complete science.

Further, the dignity of the science itself seems to require that every possible means be explored for the solution of a problem so elegant and so celebrated.

All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.

Mathematics is the science of patterns, and nature exploits just about every pattern that there is.

All science requires mathematics.

Only dead mathematics can be taught where the attitude of competition prevails: living mathematics must always be a communal possession.

What good your beautiful proof on the transcendence of Pi: Why investigate such problems, given that irrational numbers do not even exist?

Music is a science which should have definite rules; these rules should be drawn from an evident principle; and this principle cannot really be known to us without the aid of mathematics.

What is algebra exactly; is it those three-cornered things?

Computer science is to biology what calculus is to physics. It's the natural mathematical technique that best maps the character of the subject.

Someone has remarked that 'An ideal math talk should have one proof and one joke and they should not be the same'.

Mathematics-a wonderful science, but it hasn't yet come up with a way to divide one tricycle between three small boys.