Topic: Math Quotes
If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is. ~John Louis von Neumann
Mathematics are well and good but nature keeps dragging us around by the nose. ~Albert Einstein
Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head. ~Carl Sandburg, "Arithmetic"
So if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again. ~Francis Bacon, "Of Studies"
The essence of mathematics is not to make simple things complicated, but to make complicated things simple. ~S. Gudder
Halmos, Paul R.
Mathematics is not a deductive science -- that's a cliche. When you try to prove a theorem, you don't just list the hypotheses, and then start to reason. What you do is trial and error, experimentation, guesswork.I Want to be a Mathematician, Washington: MAA Spectrum, 1985.
Don't just read it; fight it! Ask your own questions, look for your own examples, discover your own proofs. Is the hypothesis necessary? Is the converse true? What happens in the classical special case? What about the degenerate cases? Where does the proof use the hypothesis?
I Want to be a Mathematician, Washington: MAA Spectrum, 1985.
Hardy, Godfrey H. (1877 - 1947)
[On Ramanujan]
I remember once going to see him when he was lying ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."
Ramanujan, London: Cambridge Univesity Press, 1940.
Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician's finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess play: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game.
A Mathematician's Apology, London, Cambridge University Press, 1941.
I am interested in mathematics only as a creative art.
A Mathematician's Apology, London, Cambridge University Press, 1941.
Niels Bohr 
Profession: physicist. Born 1885, Copenhagen, Denmark. Died 1962, Copenhagen, Denmark.
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes, which can be made, in a very narrow field.
Prediction is difficult, especially of the future.
Updated: Thursday, 5 November 2009 10:24 PM PST
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