#mathematics
90 quotes
“It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul.”
“The mathematician has to be a poet in soul.”
“Knowledge is the only power that grows when shared.”
“The soul is the only thing that makes the body alive.”
“It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet.”
“The mathematician has to be a poet.”
“Many who have not studied mathematics confuse it with arithmetic.”
“Say what you know, do what you must, come what may.”
“Mathematics is the science of the infinite.”
“As quoted in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers , "Pythagoras", Sect. 23”
“ἐν ὀργῇ μήτε τι λέγειν μήτε πράσσειν In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.”
“As quoted in Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers , "Pythagoras", Sect. 23, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 320”
“ἀλλήλοις θ᾽ ὁμιλεῖν, ὡς τοὺς μὲν φίλους ἐχθροὺς μὴ ποιῆσαι, τοὺς δ᾽ ἐχθροὺς φίλους ἐργάσασθαι. ἴδιόν τε μηδὲν ἡγεῖσθαι. We ought so to behave to one another as to avoid making enemies of our friends, and at the same time to make friends of our enemies.”
“As reported by Alexander Polyhistor , and Diogenes Laërtius in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers , "Pythagoras", Sect. 30, in the translation of C. D. Yonge”
“Τὴν δ' ἀνθρώπου ψυχὴν διῃρῆσθαι τριχῆ, εἴς τε νοῦν καὶ φρένας καὶ θυμόν. νοῦν μὲν οὖν καὶ θυμὸν εἶναι καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἄλλοις ζῴοις, φρένας δὲ μόνον ἐν ἀνθρώπῳ. The soul of man is divided into three parts, intelligence , reason , and passion . Intelligence and passion are possessed by other animals, but reason by man alone.”
“Dear youths, I warn you cherish peace divine , And in your hearts lay deep these words of mine. As reported by Heraclides, son of Sarapion, and Diogenes Laërtius, in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers , "Pythagoras", Sect. 7, in the translation of C. D. Yonge”
“By the air which I breathe, and by the water which I drink, I will not endure to be blamed on account of this discourse. As reported by Heraclides Ponticus ( c . 360 BC), and Diogenes Laërtius, in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers , "Pythagoras", Sect. 6, in the translation of C. D. Yonge”
“I was at Euphorbus at the siege of Troy.”
“I was Euphorbus at the siege of Troy. As reported by Heraclides Ponticus ( c . 360 BC), and Diogenes Laërtius ( Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers , "Pythagoras", Sect. 4), and quoted in Cosmic Optimism: A Study of the Interpretation of Evolution (1949) by Frederick William Conner”
“I'm afraid I don't understand the method of characteristics,”
“You should call it entropy , for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name , so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, no one really knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage. Suggesting to Claude Shannon a name for his new uncertainty function, as quoted in Scientific American Vol. 225 No. 3, (1971), p. 180.”
“John von Neumann (1903”
“When we talk mathematics, we may be discussing a secondary language built on the primary language of the nervous system. As quoted in John von Neumann, 1903”
“It is exceptional that one should be able to acquire the understanding of a process without having previously acquired a deep familiarity with running it, with using it, before one has assimilated it in an instinctive and empirical way… Thus any discussion of the nature of intellectual effort in any field is difficult, unless it presupposes an easy, routine familiarity with that field. In mathematics this limitation becomes very severe. As quoted in "The Mathematician" in The World of Mathematics (1956), by James Roy Newman”
“Method in the Physical Sciences”
“The Role of Mathematics in the Sciences and in Society”
“Unsolved Problems in Mathematics”
“Can we survive Technology?”
“inbreeding, a mathematical subject is in danger of degeneration. At the inception the style is usually classical; when it shows signs of becoming baroque, then the danger signal is up. It would be easy to give examples, to trace specific evolutions into the baroque and the very high baroque... Whenever this stage is reached the only remedy seems to me to be the rejuvenating return to the source: the reinjection of more or less directly empirical ideas.”
“On Action at a Distance”
“We may find illustrations of the highest doctrines of science in games and gymnastics, in travelling by land and by water, in storms of the air and of the sea, and wherever there is matter in motion. Introductory Lecture on Experimental Physics held at Cambridge in October 1871, re”
“in a few years, all the great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and … the only occupation which will then be left to the men of science will be to carry these measurement to another place of decimals.”
“I have also a paper afloat, with an electromagnetic theory of light, which, till I am convinced to the contrary, I hold to be great guns. Letter to C. H. Cay, (Jan 5,1865) as quoted in American Journal of Physics , 44(8), page 470, 1976”
“I have also cleared the electromagnetic theory of light from all unwarrantable assumption, so that we may safely determine the velocity of light by measuring the attraction between bodies kept at a given difference of potential, the value of which is known in electromagnetic measure. Letter to C. Hockin, Esq. (Sept 7, 1864) as quoted by Lewis Campbell, William Garnett, The Life of James Clerk Maxwell: With Selections from His Correspondence and Occasional Writings”
“The general equations are next applied to the case of a magnetic disturbance propagated through a non”
“The Man Who Paved the Way for Wireless,”
“The mathematical difficulties of the theory of rotation arise chiefly from the want of geometrical illustrations and sensible images, by which we might fix the results of analysis in our minds. On a Dynamical Top, for exhibiting the phenomena of the motion of a system of invariable form about a fixed point, with some suggestions as to the Earth’s motion , read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh (20 April 1857); published in Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh , Vol. XXI, Part IV (1857).”
“And last of all we have the secondary forms of crystals bursting in upon us, and sparkling in the rigidity of mathematical necessity and telling us, neither of harmony of design, usefulness or moral significance,”
“He that would enjoy life and act with freedom must have the work of the day continually before his eyes. Not yesterday's work, lest he fall into despair; nor to”
“I have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when I no longer had an email address. I'd used email since about 1975, and it seems to me that 15 years of email is plenty for one lifetime. Email (let's drop the hyphen) Donald Knuth's Stanford University web page”
“All Questions Answered”
“I define UNIX as 30 definitions of regular expressions living under one roof . Digital Typography , ch. 33, p. 649”
“A mathematical formula should never be "owned" by anybody! Mathematics belong to God . Digital Typography , ch. 1, p. 8”
“Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do. Foreword to the book A=B”
“The whole thing that makes a mathematician’s life worthwhile is that he gets the grudging admiration of three or four colleagues. Jack Woehr. An interview with Donald Knuth . Dr. Dobb's Journal , pages 16”
“The important thing, once you have enough to eat and a nice house, is what you can do for others, what you can contribute to the enterprise as a whole. Jack Woehr. An interview with Donald Knuth . Dr. Dobb's Journal , pages 16”
“The psychological profiling [of a programmer] is mostly the ability to shift levels of abstraction, from low level to high level. To see something in the small and to see something in the large. Jack Woehr. An interview with Donald Knuth . Dr. Dobb's Journal , pages 16”
“I can’t be as confident about computer science as I can about biology. Biology easily has 500 years of exciting problems to work on. It’s at that level. Computer Literacy Bookshops Interview Computer Literacy Bookshops Interview (1993) On why bioinformatics is very exciting”
“Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. Donald Knuth's webpage states the line was used to end a memo entitled Notes on the van Emde Boas construction of priority deques: An instructive use of recursion”
“In order to enter into a real knowledge of your condition, consider it in this image: A man was cast by a tempest upon an unknown island, the inhabitants of which were in trouble to find their king, who was lost; and having a strong resemblance both in form and face to this king, he was taken for him, and acknowledged in this capacity by all the people.”
“The Misery of Man Without God”
“Note on a parchment stitched to the lining of Pascal's coat, found by a servant shortly after his death, as quoted in Burkitt Speculum religionis (1929), p. 150”
“FEU. Dieu d'Abraham, Dieu d'Isaac, Dieu de Jacob, non des philosophes et savants. Certitude. Certitude. Sentiment. Joie. Paix. FIRE. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. Certainty. Certainty. Feeling. Joy. Peace.”
“Mahomet established a religion by putting his enemies to death; Jesus Christ, by commanding his followers to lay down their own lives. Thoughts on Religion and Philosophy (W. Collins, 1838), Ch. XVI, p. 202”
“On the Art of Persuasion”
“Such statements have also been attributed to Mark Twain , T.S. Eliot , Cicero , and others besides , but this article at Quote Investigator concludes that Pascal's statement is likely the original source of the phrase.”
“Literally: I made this one [letter] longer only because I have not had the leisure to make it shorter.”
“Je n'ai fait celle”
“For as old age is that period of life most remote from infancy, who does not see that old age in this universal man ought not to be sought in the times nearest his birth, but in those most remote from it? Preface to the Treatise on Vacuum”
“Cuando le dices a alguien que la felicidad es algo muy simple, siempre te guardan resentimiento”
“Aun cuando todos los expertos coincidan, pueden muy bien estar equivocados”
“Reportedly his last words, said to a Roman soldier who, despite being given orders not to, killed Archimedes during the conquest of Syracuse; as quoted in World Literature: An Anthology of Human Experience (1947) by Arthur Christy, p. 655.”
“noli … istum disturbare”
“Noli turbare circulos meos . or Noli tangere circulos meos. Do not disturb my circles !”
“Give me a firm spot on which to stand, and I shall move the earth.”
“Give me a fulcrum, and I shall move the world.”
“Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the earth.”
“Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world. This variant derives from an earlier source than Pappus: The Library of History of Diodorus Siculus , Fragments of Book XXVI , as translated by F. R. Walton, in Loeb Classical Library (1957) Vol. XI. In Doric Greek this may have originally been Πᾷ βῶ, καὶ χαριστίωνι τὰν γᾶν κινήσω πᾶσαν [ Pā bō, kai kharistiōni tan gān kinēsō [variant kinasō ] pāsan ].”
“Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the world”
“What he exclaimed as he ran naked from his bath, realizing that by measuring the displacement of water an object produced, compared to its weight, he could measure its density (and thus determine the proportion of gold that was used in making a king's crown); as quoted by Vitruvius Pollio in De Architectura , ix.215;”
“Intelligent Machinery, A Heretical Theory”
“The Exclusion Principle is laid down purely for the benefit of the electrons themselves, who might be corrupted (and become dragons or demons) if allowed to associate too freely. Epigram to Robin Gandy (1954).”
“Science is a differential equation . Religion is a boundary condition . Epigram to Robin Gandy (1954); reprinted in Andrew Hodges, Alan Turing: the Enigma (Vintage edition 1992), p. 513.”
“The sentence in bold appears on the latest British £50 bank note featuring Alan Turing which was released on 23 June 2021 on what would have been his 109th birthday.”
“This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be. We have to have some experience with the machine before we really know its capabilities. It may take years before we settle down to the new possibilities, but I do not see why it should not enter any one of the fields normally covered by the human intellect, and eventually compete on equal terms. 'The Mechanical Brain. Answer Found to 300 Year Old Problem' The Times newspaper, 11 June 1949 page 4 column 5.”
“Intelligent Machinery.”
“Intelligent Machinery: A Report by A. M. Turing,”
“Proposed Electronic Calculator”
“We are leaving out of account that most important faculty which distinguishes topics of interest from others; in fact, we are regarding the function of the mathematician as simply to determine the truth or falsity of propositions.”
“Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals,”
“The Analytical Engine has no pretensions to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform”
“A large, coarse”
“Difference and Analytical Engines”
“[...] engine is the material expression of any indefinite function of any degree of generality and complexity. As quoted by Rosen, Kenneth H. (2013). Discrete Mathematics and Its Applications , McGraw”
“I may remark that the curious transformations many formulae can undergo, the unsuspected and to a beginner apparently impossible identity of forms exceedingly dissimilar at first sight, is I think one of the chief difficulties in the early part of mathematical studies. I am often reminded of certain sprites and fairies one reads of, who are at one's elbows in one shape now, and the next minute in a form most dissimilar. As quoted in Toole, Betty Alexandra (1998), Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: Prophet of the Computer Age, Strawberry Press, ISBN 0912647183 . p. 99”
“In a letter to Andrew Crosse , as quoted in Eugen Kölbing 's Englische Studien, Volume 19 (1894), Leipzig; O.R. Reisland,”
“When I behold the scientific and so”
“Perhaps you have felt already, from the tone of my letter, that I am more than ever now the bride of science. Religion to me is science , and science is religion. In that deeply”
“Our family are an alternate stratification of poetry and mathematics . In a letter to Andrew Crosse , as quoted in Eugen Kölbing 's Englische Studien, Volume 19 (1894), Leipzig; O.R. Reisland, "Byron's Daughter", p. 156.”
“We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard”