Mathematical Quotes

I have no faith in political arithmetic.

— Adam Smith

Know what you are talking about.

— Pope John Paul II

Mathematics is an escape from reality.

— Stanislaw Ulam

Mathematical reasoning may be regarded...

— Alan Turing

Every dimension is special.

— Jeffrey Lagarias

I cannot do it without comp[u]ters.

— William Shakespeare

We never know what we are talking about.

— Karl Popper

Man follows only phantoms.

— Pierre-Simon Laplace

Logic is the hygiene the mathematician practices to keep his ideas healthy and strong.

— Hermann Weyl

It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason.

— Blaise Pascal

I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam,

— Charles Babbage

Pure mathematics, may it never be of any use to anyone.

— Henry John Stephen Smith

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

— Gregory Bateson

The only reason that we like complex numbers is that we don't like real numbers.

— Bernd Sturmfels

Mathematical discoveries, small or great are never born of spontaneous generation.

— Henri Poincare

The grand thing is to be able to reason backwards.

— Arthur Conan Doyle

[Lord Brougham's writings on the bee's cell contain] as striking examples of bad reasoning as are often to be met with in…

— James Whitbread Lee Glaisher

One of the pleasures of looking at the world through mathematical eyes is that you can see certain patterns that would otherwise…

— Steven Strogatz

The universe can best be pictured as consisting of pure thought, the thought of what for want of a better word we…

— James Jeans

Numbers instill a feeling for the lie of the land, and furnish grist for the mathematical mill that is the physicist's principal…

— Hans Christian von Baeyer

Under the federal reserve act, panics are scientifically created. The present panic is the first scientifically created one, worked out as we…

— Charles Lindbergh

Recreational number theory [...] is that part of number theory that is too difficult to study.

— Hendrik Lenstra

Practical application is found by not looking for it, and one can say that the whole progress of civilization rests on that…

— Jacques Hadamard

Number, place, and combination . . . the three intersecting but distinct spheres of thought to which all mathematical ideas admit of being referred.

— James Joseph Sylvester

The purely formal language of geometry describes adequately the reality of space. We might say, in this sense, that geometry is successful…

— Rene Thom

Teaching high school, in addition to knowing one's subject matter thoroughly and being able to convey it to others, requires the grit…

— Larry Cuban

Now I feel as if I should succeed in doing something in mathematics, although I cannot see why it is so very…

— Helen Keller

The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for…

— Stephen Hawking

Mathematics was born and nurtured in a cultural environment. Without the perspective which the cultural background affords, a proper appreciation of the…

— Raymond Louis Wilder

All mathematical laws which we find in Nature are always suspect to me, in spite of their beauty. They give me no…

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

We [he and Halmos] share a philosophy about linear algebra: we think basis-free, we write basis-free , but when the chips are…

— Irving Kaplansky

As a man may be born with a mathematical faculty, and by training that faculty year after year may immensely increase his…

— Annie Besant

I have concluded that most PhD economists under appraise the power of the common-stock-based "wealth effect," under current extreme conditions... "Wealth effects"…

— Charlie Munger

The Reader may here observe the Force of Numbers, which can be successfully applied, even to those things, which one would imagine…

— John Arbuthnot

One of the central developments of 19th century mathematics involved a dramatic increase in the standards of mathematical rigor. This was for…

— Richard F. Heck

“The oldest problem in economic education is how to exclude the incompetent. A certain glib mastery of verbiage-the ability to speak portentously…

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Mathematical thinking is not the same as doing mathematics - at least not as mathematics is typically presented in our school system.…

— Keith Devlin

I do not define time, space, place, and motion, as being well known to all. Only I must observe, that the common…

— Isaac Newton

Most people have some appreciation of mathematics, just as most people can enjoy a pleasant tune; and there are probably more people…

— Anonymous

The material which a scientist actually has at his disposal, his laws, his experimental results, his mathematical techniques, his epistemological prejudices, his…

— Paul Feyerabend