Whenever I meet in Laplace with the words ‘Thus it plainly appears’, I am sure that hours and perhaps days, of hard study will alone enable me to discover how it plainly appears.

In life two negatives don’t make a positive. Double negatives turn positive only in math and formal logic. In life things just get worse and worse and worse.

For scholars and laymen alike it is not philosophy but active experience in mathematics itself that can alone answer the question: What is mathematics?

If in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics…

Some mathematics problems look simple, and you try them for a year or so, and then you try them for a hundred years, and it turns out that they’re extremely hard to solve. There’s no...

The manner of Demoivre’s death has a certain interest for psychologists. Shortly before it, he declared that it was necessary for him to sleep some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour longer each...

But in the present century, thanks in good part to the influence of Hilbert, we have come to see that the unproved postulates with which we start are purely arbitrary. They must be consistent, they...

Réduites à des théories générales, les mathématiques seraient une belle forme sans contenu.Reduced to general theories, mathematics would be a beautiful form without content.

Believe me, if Archimedes ever had the grand entrance of a girl as pretty as Gloria to look forward to, he would never have spent so much time calculating the value of Pi. He would...

What a shame,” signed the Dodecahedron. “They’re so very useful. Why, did you know that if a beaver two feet long with a tail a foot and a half long can build a dam twelve...

5.4 The question of accumulation. If life is a wager, what form does it take? At the racetrack, an accumulator is a bet which rolls on profits from the success of one of the horse...

Logic, it is often said, is the study of valid arguments. It is a systematic attempt to distinguish valid arguments from invalid arguments.

I’ve got a few ideas,” (Amy) admitted. “But I don’t know where we’re going in the long term. I mean – have you ever thought about what this ultimate treasure could be?””Something cool.” (Dan)”Oh, that’s...

Looking at numbers as groups of rocks may seem unusual, but actually it’s as old as math itself. The word “calculate” reflects that legacy — it comes from the Latin word calculus, meaning a pebble...

There have been only three epoch-making mathematicians, Archimedes, Newton, and Eisenstein.

Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes — I mean the universe — but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp...

I’m sorry to hear you’re jobless.” I need to network with people who encounter letters on a daily basis in math equations, not romantic poetry.

the golden eternity is { }

With math, I remember all of the words—and none of the numbers. I’m also like that with love.

I confess that Fermat’s Theorem as an isolated proposition has very little interest for me, for a multitude of such theorems can easily be set up, which one could neither prove nor disprove. But I...

He walked straight out of college into the waiting arms of the Navy. They gave him an intelligence test. The first question on the math part had to do with boats on a river: Port...

Poincaré was a vigorous opponent of the theory that all mathematics can be rewritten in terms of the most elementary notions of classical logic; something more than logic, he believed, makes mathematics what it is.

So how does one go about proving something like this? It’s not like being a lawyer, where the goal is to persuade other people; nor is it like a scientist testing a theory. This is...

When a student comes and asks, “Should I become a mathematician?” the answer should be no. If you have to ask, you shouldn’t even ask.

Further, the same Arguments which explode the Notion of Luck, may, on the other side, be useful in some Cases to establish a due comparison between Chance and Design: We may imagine Chance and Design...

Music is a mixed mathematical science that concerns the origens, attributes, and distinctions of sound, out of which a cultivated and lovely melody and harmony are made, so that God is honored and praised but...

There was yet another disadvantage attaching to the whole of Newton’s physical inquiries, … the want of an appropriate notation for expressing the conditions of a dynamical problem, and the general principles by which its...

I don’t understand people who eat Chinese food with chopsticks when the restaurant also offers silverware. As a tool, chopsticks are inferior to western utensils like the spoon and fork. So why use them? That’s...

This queer crotchet [of Hamilton’s] that algebra is the science of pure time has attracted many philosophers, and quite recently it has been exhumed and solemnly dissected by owlish metaphysicians seeking the philosopher’s stone in...

It is to geometry that we owe in some sort the source of this discovery [of beryllium]; it is that [science] that furnished the first idea of it, and we may say that without it...

Math is the dirty part of physics.

The probability of an event is the reason we have to believe that it has taken place, or that it will take place.The measure of the probability of an event is the ratio of the...

It seems to me that the poet has only to perceive that which others do not perceive, to look deeper than others look. And the mathematician must do the same thing.

You can fuck your math teacher but you can’t fuck math.

I carried this problem around in my head basically the whole time. I would wake up with it first thing in the morning, I would be thinking about it all day, and I would be...

It’ll turn out you mean love,’ Sholto said. ‘At the moment math is the only thing that excites you so you’re nosing around numbers as if numbers are life. But in two years you’ll be...

Excel suffers from an image problem. Most people assume that spreadsheet programs such as Excel are intended for accountants, analysts, financiers, scientists, mathematicians, and other geeky types. Creating a spreadsheet, sorting data, using functions, and...

As is well known the principle of virtual velocities transforms all statics into a mathematical assignment, and by D’Alembert’s principle for dynamics, the latter is again reduced to statics. Although it is is very much...

Immortality” may be a silly word, but probably a mathematician has the best chance of whatever it may mean.

Yes, but you need to learn your maths.””I don’t need to, really. I already know how to count to a hundred. And I’m sure I’ll never need ore than a hundred of anything.

In math, the backwards E, ∃, means there exists. ∈ means part of a set. A line through that ∉ means excluded from. Everyone ∃, but not everyone ∈. We all feel that, unless we...

V geometrickém světě, jehož objev byl umožněn onou pozoruhodnou schopností proniknout skrze čtverec nakreslený v písku ke čtverci geometrickému, nalezla řecká antika místo, v němž se nachází pravda v ničím nezastřené podobě.

Math test tomorrow.Check.Complete lack of preparation for test.Check.

Math is my Passion. Engineering is my Profession.

All the truths of mathematics are linked to each other, and all means of discovering them are equally admissible.

So what were your favorite subjects in school?””School?” He leaned back in his chair as though he needed the extra space to think about it. “Probably math. It always made sense. Unlike English, economics, and...

I have been able to solve a few problems of mathematical physics on which the greatest mathematicians since Euler have struggled in vain … But the pride I might have held in my conclusions was...

Thor again tutored me in the seventh grade, when I was learning Algebra. Algebra was quite an experience for me. Thor spent countless hours with me, because it was very hard for me to grasp...

The profit was five, split evenly between the two of us, which meant that my fair share was three. (2.5 rounded off is 3.)

Logic issues in tautologies, mathematics in identities, philosophy in definitions; all trivial, but all part of the vital work of clarifying and organising our thought.