Mathematics Quotes

"Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself anymore."

"Mathematics is the only science where one never knows what one is talking about nor whether what is said is true"

"The mere formulation of a problem is far more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skills. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science."

"The more I study physics, the more I am drawn to metaphysics."

"I don't believe in mathematics."

"Mathematics are well and good but nature keeps dragging us around by the nose."

"We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made."

"By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true. It is evident that any restriction."

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."

"But there is another reason for the high repute of mathematics: it is mathematics that offers the exact natural sciences a certain measure of security which, without mathematics, they could not attain."

"Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true"

"To the extent math refers to reality, we are not certain; to the extent we are certain, math does not refer to reality."

"The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal"

"Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform."

"I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return."

"I would advise you Sir, to study algebra, if you are not already an adept in it: your head would be less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbors about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow."

"Mathematics, rightly viewed, posses not only truth, but supreme beauty a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture."

"In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds."

"Yet what are all such gaieties to me whose thoughts are full of indices and surds?"

"The highest form of pure thought is in mathematics"