Primary causes are unknown to us; but are subject to simple and constant laws, which may be discovered by observation, the study of them being the object of natural philosophy.Heat, like gravity, penetrates every substance...

Another mistaken notion connected with the law of large numbers is the idea that an event is more or less likely to occur because it has or has not happened recently. The idea that the...

But in my opinion, all things in nature occur mathematically.

The thing I want you especially to understand is this feeling of divine revelation. I feel that this structure was “out there” all along I just couldn’t see it. And now I can! This is...

Some people believe in imaginary friends. I believe in imaginary numbers.

If a mathematician wishes to disparage the work of one of his colleagues, say, A, the most effective method he finds for doing this is to ask where the results can be applied. The hard...

How did Biot arrive at the partial differential equation? [the heat conduction equation] . . . Perhaps Laplace gave Biot the equation and left him to sink or swim for a few years in trying...

Science attempts to find logic and simplicity in nature. Mathematics attempts to establish order and simplicity in human thought.

I’m 30% in love, and if I ever rise to 70%, then I’ll be 100% in love. But I’ll still be mathematically challenged.

Please give it up. Fear it no less than the sensual passion, because it, too, may take up all your time and deprive you of your health, peace of mind and happiness in life.[Having himself...

I can see patterns in events, and behaviors; in mathematics, I follow slower

Numbers still gave Astrid pleasure. That was the great thing about numbers: it required no faith to believe that two plus two equaled four. And math never, ever condemned you for your thoughts and desires.

Does anyone believe that the difference between the Lebesgue and Riemann integrals can have physical significance, and that whether say, an airplane would or would not fly could depend on this difference? If such were...

. . . we come astonishingly close to the mystical beliefs of Pythagoras and his followers who attempted to submit all of life to the sovereignty of numbers. Many of our psychologists, sociologists, economists and...

The sciences are not sectarian. People do not persecute each other on account of disagreements in mathematics. Families are not divided about botany, and astronomy does not even tend to make a man hate his...

Human beings are more or less formulas. Pun intended. We are not any one thing that is mathematically provable. We are more or less than we are anything. We are more or less kind, or...

Where there is no mathematics, there is no freedom.

The apex of mathematical achievement occurs when two or more fields which were thought to be entirely unrelated turn out to be closely intertwined. Mathematicians have never decided whether they should feel excited or upset...

I wrote half this book (the left half) while I was asleep, and I wrote the other half (the top half) while daydreaming. So here we have a case where two halves equal one quarter,...

Most people have some appreciation of mathematics, just as most people can enjoy a pleasant tune; and there are probably more people really interested in mathematics than in music. Appearances suggest the contrary, but there...

Mathematics began to seem too much like puzzle solving. Physics is puzzle solving, too, but of puzzles created by nature, not by the mind of man.

Music was not so very different from mathematics. It was all just patterns and sequences. The only difference was that they hung in the air instead of on a piece of paper. Dancing was a...

In the beginning of the year 1665 I found the Method of approximating series & the Rule for reducing any dignity of any Binomial into such a series. The same year in May I found...

…now Eli was my new neighbor. Which was fine with me because I sucked at Math. Math and I were not on speaking terms.

He doesn’t seem to mind at all that he’s stupid about math.

Abel has left mathematicians enough to keep them busy for five hundred years.

For every 10 students who start high school in Ohio, only seven will earn a diploma, only five will enroll is post-secondary institution and of those, fewer that three out of 10 will complete a...

I then began to study arithmetical questions without any great apparent result, and without suspecting that they could have the least connexion with my previous researches. Disgusted at my want of success, I went away...

A mathematician may say anything he pleases, but a physicist must be at least partially sane.

Mathematics is the cheapest science. Unlike physics or chemistry, it does not require any expensive equipment. All one needs for mathematics is a pencil and paper.

The integrals which we have obtained are not only general expressions which satisfy the differential equation, they represent in the most distinct manner the natural effect which is the object of the phenomenon… when this...

Velmi brzy začal projevovat zájem o matematiku – dokonce tak silný, že mu otec, který nechtěl zanedbat jeho filozofické, jazykové a humanitní vzdělání, zakázal v jedenácti letech číst matematické knihy, dokud nedosáhne věku patnácti let....

With me, everything turns into mathematics.

Doing mathematics should always mean finding patterns and crafting beautiful and meaningful explanations.

I don’t know my limits.

[In high school] my interests outside my academic work were debating, tennis, and to a lesser extent, acting. I became intensely interested in astronomy and devoured the popular works of astronomers such as Sir Arthur...

Monty Jones: Dad, is there a word to describe answers that are completely correct but entirely useless under the circumstances?Professor Jones: Yes, yes there is.

Derrière la série de Fourier, d’autres séries analogues sont entrées dans la domaine de l’analyse; elles y sont entrees par la même porte; elles ont été imaginées en vue des applications.After the Fourier series, other...

dialect” are themselves fuzzy.

Do not try the parallels in that way: I know that way all along. I have measured that bottomless night, and all the light and all the joy of my life went out there.[Having himself...

Lagrange, in one of the later years of his life, imagined that he had overcome the difficulty (of the parallel axiom). He went so far as to write a paper, which he took with him...

The language of physics is not math, but physics.

[All phenomena] are equally susceptible of being calculated, and all that is necessary, to reduce the whole of nature to laws similar to those which Newton discovered with the aid of the calculus, is to...

Geometry has two great treasures; one is the Theorem of Pythagoras; the other, the division of a line into extreme and mean ratio. The first we may compare to a measure of gold; the second...

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker...

Mathematics is the science which draws necessary conclusions.

One might suppose that reality must be held to at all costs. However, though that may be the moral thing to do, it is not necessarily the most useful thing to do. The Greeks themselves...

Je me rends parfaitement compte du desagreable effet que produit sur la majorite de l’humanité, tout ce qui se rapporte, même au plus faible dègré, á des calculs ou raisonnements mathematiques.I am well aware of...

Somehow life had become a story problem, and William was horrible at math.

Women, if I understood them half as well as I understand fractions, I’d have said a third. But I don’t have time for a third, or even my other half, because I spend all my...