As the world continually multiplies, are we in a generation where people are divided, or people are equal?

The algebraic sum of all the transformations occurring in a cyclical process can only be positive, or, as an extreme case, equal to nothing.[Statement of the second law of thermodynamics, 1862]

There was, I think, a feeling that the best science was that done in the simplest way. In experimental work, as in mathematics, there was ‘style’ and a result obtained with simple equipment was more...

The point about zero is that we do not need to use it in the operation of daily life. No one goes out to buy zero fish.

The good Christian should beware of mathematicians. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell.

In the judgment of the most competent living mathematicians, Fraulein Noether was the most significant mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began.

In this moment I’m reminded of Thor tutoring me math in the second grade. Thor was a math major in college, and in fact, Thor has an Erdős number of three. This means that Thor...

She has a body for years, and I have an astronaut tan. When we make love it will be like (x + 2)(2x -1) = 0, solve for x.

The first successes were such that one might suppose all the difficulties of science overcome in advance, and believe that the mathematician, without being longer occupied in the elaboration of pure mathematics, could turn his...

God made the integers; all the rest is the work of Man.

Le Verrier—without leaving his study, without even looking at the sky—had found the unknown planet [Neptune] solely by mathematical calculation, and, as it were, touched it with the tip of his pen!

I had a feeling once about Mathematics – that I saw it all. Depth beyond depth was revealed to me – the Byss and Abyss. I saw – as one might see the transit of...

I don’t see how it’s doing society any good to have it’s members walking around with vague memories of algebraic formulas and geometric diagrams, and clear memories of hating them.

No one shall expel us from the paradise which Cantor has created for us.{Expressing the importance of Georg Cantor’s set theory in the development of mathematics.}

When things get too complicated, it sometimes makes sense to stop and wonder: Have I asked the right question?

Making mathematics accessible to the educated layman, while keeping high scientific standards, has always been considered a treacherous navigation between the Scylla of professional contempt and the Charybdis of public misunderstanding.

It appears that the solution of the problem of time and space is reserved to philosophers who, like Leibniz, are mathematicians, or to mathematicians who, like Einstein, are philosophers.

[I was advised] to read Jordan’s ‘Cours d’analyse’; and I shall never forget the astonishment with which I read that remarkable work, the first inspiration for so many mathematicians of my generation, and learnt for...

It may be appropriate to quote a statement of Poincare, who said (partly in jest no doubt) that there must be something mysterious about the normal law since mathematicians think it is a law of...

If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.

‎”There are two ways to do great mathematics. The first is to be smarter than everybody else. The second way is to be stupider than everybody else — but persistent.

It has become almost a cliché to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind;...

My job is to draw little points on little graphs and to derive little information.

These estimates may well be enhanced by one from F. Klein (1849-1925), the leading German mathematician of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. ‘Mathematics in general is fundamentally the science of self-evident things.’ …...

the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter.” Thanks, Wikipedia!

One of the first and foremost duties of the teacher is not to give his students the impression that mathematical problems have little connection with each other, and no connection at all with anything else....

The deep study of nature is the most fruitful source of mathematical discoveries. By offering to research a definite end, this study has the advantage of excluding vague questions and useless calculations; besides it is...

Infinite is a meaningless word: except – it states / The mind is capable of performing / an endless process of addition.

I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed...

[Math] curriculum is obsessed with jargon and nomenclature seemingly for no other purpose than to provide teachers with something to test the students on.

Before an experiment can be performed, it must be planned—the question to nature must be formulated before being posed. Before the result of a measurement can be used, it must be interpreted—nature’s answer must be...

Pray tell us, what’s your favorite number?”…”Shiva jumped up to the board, uninvited, and wrote 10,213,223″…”And pray, why would this number interest us?””It is the only number that describes itself when you read it, ‘One...

Einstein, twenty-six years old, only three years away from crude privation, still a patent examiner, published in the Annalen der Physik in 1905 five papers on entirely different subjects. Three of them were among the...

You get to use your head. People think it’s just whatever cards you get, but there’s a lot of thought involved. There’s math involved, trying to figure out what your chances are compared to others.

We made love like the three minutes between 3:32 and 3:34. My endurance is even worse than my math.

divinity of arithmetic,” through showing that even the methods, which we now take most for granted, were not given to us from on high, but were actually the result of centuries of scientific efforts on...

There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There’s .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or...

I am no friend of probability theory, I have hated it from the first moment when our dear friend Max Born gave it birth. For it could be seen how easy and simple it made...

I’ve always been good at math. It’s straightforward, black-and-white, right and wrong. Equations. Da thought of people as books to be read, but I’ve always thought of them more as formulas—full of variables, but always...

I entered Princeton University as a graduate student in 1959, when the Department of Mathematics was housed in the old Fine Hall. This legendary facility was marvellous in stimulating interaction among the graduate students and...

I was always the kid in school that teachers were getting after to be quiet. My report card had math, A, reading, A, spelling, A, science, A, conduct, F. I was always talking to somebody....

Do you mean ter tell me,” he growled at the Dursleys, “that this boy—this boy!—knows nothin’ abou’—about ANYTHING?”Harry thought this was going a bit far. He had been to school, after all, and his marks...

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

Language as putative science. – The significance of language for the evolution of culture lies in this, that mankind set up in language a separate world beside the other world, a place it took to...

Mathematics expresses values that reflect the cosmos, including orderliness, balance, harmony, logic, and abstract beauty.

What the mortgage bubble was all about was big banks like Goldman Sachs taking big bundles of subprime mortgages that were lent out largely to low-income, highly risky borrowers, and applying this kind of magic-pixie-dust...

Whereas Nature does not admit of more than three dimensions … it may justly seem very improper to talk of a solid … drawn into a fourth, fifth, sixth, or further dimension.

Elodin proved a difficult man to find. He had an office in Hollows, but never seemed to use it. When I visited Ledgers and Lists, I discovered he only taught one class: Unlikely Maths. However,...

Do the math,