Math Quotes

Mathematics seems to endow one with something like a new sense.

Learning through the arts reinforces critical academic skills in reading, language arts and math, and provides students with the skills to creatively solve problems.

Nothing is more important than to see the sources of invention which are, in my opinion more interesting than the inventions themselves.

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

I didn't do the engineering, and I didn't do the math, because I thought I understood what was going on and I thought I made a good rig. But I was wrong. I should have done it.

In American math classes, we teach a lot of concepts poorly over many years. In the Asian systems they teach you very few concepts very well over a few years.

Most people who open restaurants will fail, because they lack the fundamental understanding of restaurant math. Either they think they're superstar cooks or they think they're superstar hosts.

One began to hear it said that World War I was the chemists' war, World War II was the physicists' war, World War III (may it never come) will be the mathematicians' war.

Dear Math, please grow up and solve your own problems. I'm tired of solving them for you. Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.

In my experience most mathematicians are intellectually lazy.

Projective geometry is all geometry.

Math is my favorite subject. It's the universal language. I like the fact that wherever you go in the whole world, two plus two will still be four.

Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.

Logic is invincible, because in order to combat logic it is necessary to use logic.

Let's face it; by and large math is not easy, but that's what makes it so rewarding when you conquer a problem, and reach new heights of understanding.

If you cannot - in the long run - tell everyone what you have been doing, your doing has been worthless.

[A mathematician is a] scientist who can figure out anything except such simple things as squaring the circle and trisecting an angle.

Mathematics is the only good metaphysics.

A linguist would be shocked to learn that if a set is not closed this does not mean that it is open, or again that "E is dense in E" does not mean the same thing as "E is dense in itself".

There's no reason to stereotype yourself. Doing math is like going to the gym - it's a workout for your brain and it makes you smarter.

When I was a child, the Earth was said to be two billion years old. Now scientists say it's four and a half billion. So that makes me two and a half billion.

In some ways, I never outgrew my adolescence. I wake up in the morning and think, 'Oh my God, I'm late for a math test!' But then I say, 'Wait a minute. I'm 40.

You have to run as fast as you can just to stay where you are. If you want to get anywhere, you'll have to run much faster.

He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god.

There still remain three studies suitable for free man. Arithmetic is one of them.

Indeed, nowadays no electrical engineer could get along without complex numbers, and neither could anyone working in aerodynamics or fluid dynamics.

Every culture has contributed to maths just as it has contributed to literature. It's a universal language; numbers belong to everyone.

I know too well that these arguments from probabilities are imposters, and unless great caution is observed in the use of them, they are apt to be deceptive.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about mathematics is that it is so surprising.

The sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.

You may end up with a different math, but you're entitled to your math. I'm entitled to the math.

Doing mathematics should always mean finding patterns and crafting beautiful and meaningful explanations.

Prayers for the condemned man will be offered on an adding machine. Numbers constitute the only universal language.

We often hear that mathematics consists mainly of "proving theorems." Is a writer's job mainly that of "writing sentences?"

The principle is so perfectly general that no particular application of it is possible.

Before beginning [to try to prove Fermat's Last Theorem] I should have to put in three years of intensive study, and I haven't that much time to squander on a probable failure.

The fact that logic cannot satisfy us awakens an almost insatiable hunger for the irrational.

The best defense against logic is ignorance.

A GREAT discovery solves a great problem but there is a grain of discovery in any problem.

The mathematical life of a mathematician is short. Work rarely improves after the age of twenty-five or thirty. If little has been accomplished by then, little will ever be accomplished.

Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.

We can't just throw something out there and assume it works just because it has math in it.

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

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

If I am given a formula, and I am ignorant of its meaning, it cannot teach me anything, but if I already know it what does the formula teach me?

The value of a problem is not so much coming up with the answer as in the ideas and attempted ideas it forces on the would be solver.

No employment can be managed without arithmetic, no mechanical invention without geometry.

Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language.

Mathematics is a language

Still more astonishing is that world of rigorous fantasy which we call mathematics.