Quotes About Mathematics

All things began in order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again; according to the ordainer of order and mystical mathematics of the city of heaven.

I want my girls to love math. I want them to think that being a scientist is the coolest possible job on the planet. I want them to not be afraid to lean toward their femininity.

If anything runs deeper than a mathematician's love of variables, it's a scientist's love of constants.

But Oxford never pretended to be strong in mathematics.

His treatise on the Higher Theory of Short Division by Decimals had already won for him a European reputation.

We learned the times tables without understanding their grand principle, simply because we had the capacity and no alternative.

And I think What does it matter that it is not a linear equation if any variable is raised to a power? We're all just going to die anyway.

Absolute value: the distance that a given number is from zero on a number line . . . always a positive

Qué utilidad tiene la fórmula cuadrática en la vida cotidiana? ¿Podemos utilizarla acaso para desvelar los secretos ocultos en los corazones de la personas que queremos?

Thrust into this dingy classroom we die like lampless moths locked into the desolation of fluorescent lights and metal desks. Ten minutes until the bell rings. What use is the quadratic formula in our daily lives? Can we use it to unlock the secrets in the hearts of those we love? Five minutes until the bell rings. Cruel Algebra teacher, won't you let us go?

Math-a-chu-setts.

It is the mark of an educated mind to expect that amount of exactness which the nature of the particular subject admits. It is equally unreasonable to accept merely probable conclusions from a mathematician and to demand strict demonstration from an orator.

The work of a financial analyst falls somewhere in the middle between that of a mathematician and of an orator.

Let us wonder at how X was just a rare letter until algebra came along and made it something special that can be unravelled to reveal inner value.

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty—a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.

Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.

The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.

In adolescence, I hated life and was continually on the verge of suicide, from which, however, I was restrained by the desire to know more mathematics.

Nature and books and (later) mathematics saved me from complete despondency.

When I was young, most teachers of philosophy in British and American universities were Hegelians, so that, until I read Hegel, I supposed there must be some truth to his system; I was cured, however, by discovering that everything he said on the philosophy of mathematics was plain nonsense.

At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as my tutor. ... I had not imagined that there was anything so delicious in the world. After I had learned the fifth proposition, my brother told me that it was generally considered difficult, but I had found no difficulty whatsoever. This was the first time it had dawned on me that I might have some intelligence.

From Pythagoras (whether by way of Socrates or not) Plato derived the Orphic elements in his philosophy: the religious trend, the belief in immortality, the other-worldliness, the priestly tone, and all that is involved in the simile of the cave; also his respect for mathematics, and his intimate intermingling of intellect and mysticism.

In various ways, methods of approaching the mathematician's ideal were sought, and the resulting suggestions were the source of much that was mistaken in metaphysics and theory of knowledge.

One man likes oysters, and another likes pineapples; this distinguishes between them. But when they think about the multiplication table, provided they think correctly, there is no difference between them. The irrational separates us, the rational unites us.