Quotes About Mathematics

I was so obsessed by this problem that I was thinking about it all the time - when I woke up in the morning, when I went to sleep at night - and that went on for eight years.

Mathematicians use intuition, conjecture and guesswork all the time except when they are in the classroom.

A line is not made up of points. ... In the same way, time is not made up parts considered as indivisible 'nows.' Part of Aristotle's reply to Zeno's paradox concerning continuity.

In brief, the whole world is the totality of mathematically expressible motions of objects in space and time, and the entire universe is a great, harmonious, and mathematically designed machine.

As time goes on, it becomes increasingly evident that the rules which the mathematician finds interesting are the same as those which Nature has chosen.

Mathematics is one of the deepest and most powerful expressions of pure human reason, and, at the same time, the most fundamental resource for description and analysis of the experiential world.

When people ask me what's my field? I say, on one hand, a fractalist. Perhaps the only one, the only full-time one.

Cardinal arithmetic will be quite important for us, so we spend some time on it. Since, however, it tends to be trivial, we shall not need to spend much of this time on proofs.

From the time I was 7, when I purchased my first calculator, I was fascinated by the idea of a machine that could compute things.

There is no answer to the Pythagorean theorem. Well, there is an answer, but by the time you figure it out, I got 40 points, 10 rebounds and then we're planning for the parade.

One hundred and eighty, divided by three, is one dart at a time

The abstract analysis of the world by mathematics and physics rests on the concepts of space and time.

Counting pairs is the oldest trick in combinatorics... Every time we count pairs, we learn something from it.

He who understands Archimedes and Apollonius will admire less the achievements of the foremost men of later times.

Even in five years time, he will still be four years younger than Damon Hill.

I joke around all the time, 'I'm Asian; I'm really good at math.'

Mind-boggling, isn't it? Centuries before the question of why mathematics was so effective in explaining nature was even asked, Galileo thought he already knew the answer! To him, mathematics was simply the language of the universe. To understand the universe, he argued, one must speak this language. God is indeed a mathematician.

You may begin to realize that groups will pop up wherever symmetries exist. In fact, the collection of all the symmetry transformations of any system always from a group.

As we shall see throughout this book, the unifying powers of group theory are so colossal that historian of mathematics Eric Temple Bell (1883-1960) once commented, When ever groups disclosed themselves, or could be introduced, simplicity crystallized out of comparative chaos.

In mathematics, if you are of quick mind, you can get to the frontline of cutting-edge research very quickly. In some other domains you may have to read entire thick volumes first. Moreover, if you have been for too long in a certain domain, you get conditioned to think like everybody else. When you are new, you are not compelled to the ideas of the people around you. The younger you are, the more likely you are to be truly original.

Even though it is almost impossible to attribute with certainty any specific mathematical achievements either to Pythagoras himself or to his followers, there is no question that they have been responsible for a mingling of mathematics, philosophy of life, and religion unparalleled in history. In this respect it is perhaps interesting to note the historical coincidence that Pythagoras was a contemporary of Buddha and Confucius.

Leonardo had considerable interest in geometry, especially for its practical applications in mathematics. In his words: Mechanics is the paradise of the mathematical sciences, because by means of it one comes to the fruits of mathematics.

Lagrange was born in Turin (now Italy), but his family was partly French ancestry on his father's side, who was originally wealthy, managed to squander all the family's fortune in speculations, leaving his son with no inheritance. Later in life, Lagrange described this economic catastrophe as the best thing that had ever happened to him: Had I inherited a fortune I would probably not have cast my lot with mathematics.

The Pythagoreans were probably the first to recognize the concept that the basic forces in the universe may be expressed through the language of mathematics.