Math Quotes

992 quotes by 700 authors

Mathematics is not the rigid and rigidity-producing schema that the layman thinks it is; rather, in it we find ourselves at that meeting point of… — Hermann Weyl
The product of mathematics is clarity and understanding. Not theorems, by themselves. ... In short, mathematics only exists in a living community of mathematicians that… — William Thurston
Everything useful in mathematics has been devised for a purpose. Even if you don't know it, the guy who did it first, he knew what… — Michael Atiyah
The world of ideas is not revealed to us in one stroke; we must both permanently and unceasingly recreate it in our consciousness. — Rene Thom
... if one were to refuse to have direct, geometric, intuitive insights, if one were reduced to pure logic, which does not permit a choice… — Henri Lebesgue
If one must choose between rigour and meaning, I shall unhesitatingly choose the latter. — Rene Thom
Mathematicians can and do fill in gaps, correct errors, and supply more detail and more careful scholarship when they are called on or motivated to… — William Thurston
What you have been obliged to discover by yourself leaves a path in your mind which you can use again when the need arises. — Georg C. Lichtenberg
Mathematics is about problems, and problems must be made the focus of a student's mathematical life. Painful and creatively frustrating as it may be, students… — Paul Lockhart
The years of searching in the dark for a truth that one feels but cannot express, the intense desire and the alternations of confidence and… — Albert Einstein
An individual understands a concept, skill, theory, or domain of knowledge to the extent that he or she can apply it appropriately in a new… — Howard Gardner
... it can often be profitable to try a technique on a problem even if you know in advance that it cannot possibly solve the… — Terence Tao
The arithmetical symbols are written diagrams and the geometrical figures are graphic formulas. — David Hilbert
... commutative algebra is a lot like topology, only backwards. — John C. Baez
It's better to work with a nice category containing some nasty objects, than a nasty category containing only nice objects. — John C. Baez
Geometry is the art of correct reasoning from incorrectly drawn figures. — Henri Poincare
The full beauty of the subject of generating functions emerges only from tuning in on both channels: the discrete and the continuous. — Herbert Wilf
Mathematical objects are determined by - and understood by - the network of relationships they enjoy with all the other objects of their species. — Barry Mazur
All analysts spend half their time hunting through the literature for inequalities which they want to use and cannot prove. — G. H. Hardy
The real irony is that the view of infinity as some forbidden zone or road to insanity - which view was very old and powerful… — David Foster Wallace

Who Wrote These Math Quotes

700 authors contributed a total of 992 Math Quotes, led by these top contributors: