Mathematics

Quotes & Thinkers in Mathematics

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"When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself."

463 quotes

🇬🇧Alfred North Whitehead

Philosophy

1861–1947

"Men can be provincial in time, as well as in place."

"Je n'ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n'ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte."

"Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, since things come first and names afterwards."

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."

"Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism, The Catholic Encyclopedia"

93 quotes

🇺🇸Charles Sanders Peirce

Mathematics

pragmatism

1839–1914

"Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts."

"The interpretation of quantum mechanics has been dealt with by many authors, and I do not want to discuss it here. I want to deal with more fundamental things."

"... bloße Erfahrung ist keine Wissenschaft."

"What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their experiments lead."

"We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done."

"With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk."

"The false interpreters of nature declare that quicksilver is the common seed of every metal, not remembering that nature varies the seed according to the variety of the things she desires to produce in the world."

"For the present the Grammar may yet be of service. After an eight years' life and... 4000 copies, it reappears in a revised and enlarged form."

"Only the surface of reason is rational. I don't mean that understanding emotion is easy, only that understanding reason is probably harder."

"III. Thesis. A God working in Time. . Antithesis. A timeless, personal, omniscient, al-mighty, all-benevolent God ."

"From the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of the Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician."

"Sharing the food is to me more important than arguing about beliefs. Jesus, according to the gospels, thought so too."

80 quotes

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Mathematics

b. 1960

"It is painful to think about ruthlessness as an engine of improvement."

"How many theorems in geometry which have seemed at first impracticable are in time successfully worked out!"

"National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir"

"I think that people here expect miracles. American management thinks that they can just copy from Japan—but they don't know what to copy!"

"Should the computer program the kid or should the kid program the computer?"

"No, but I would to save two brothers or eight cousins."

"Topology and number theory are my faves."

"Polish translations of letters written by Copernicus in Latin or German"

"In general, scientific progress calls for no more than the absorption and elaboration of new ideas — and this is a call most scientists are happy to heed."

"Jakob Bernoulli, John Wallis, The Doctrine of Permutations and Combinations"

28 quotes

🇬🇧Ivor Grattan-Guinness

Mathematics

1941–2014

"From the 3rd century onwards, orthodox Christianity, based on a Hebrew story and worshipping the Jew Jesus, also led many campaigns of anti-Semitism."

9 quotes

🇬🇧John Edensor Littlewood

Mathematics

1885–1977

"It was Mr. Littlewood who remarked that "every positive integer was one of his personal friends."

"Form is a theatrical event of a certain length, and the length itself may be unpredictable."

"Number theory swarms with bugs, waiting to bite the tempted flower-lovers who, once bitten, are inspired to excesses of effort!"

"I have had considerable experience in dealing with minds of low logical power, and have found that studies may be made so easy and mechanical as to render thought almost superfluous."

"A technical argument by a trusted author, which is hard to check and looks similar to arguments known to be correct, is hardly ever checked in detail"

4 quotes

Al-Tabari

Mathematics

"I have fabricated things against God and have imputed to Him words which He has not spoken."

"On balance, the cartesian metaphor of organism as machine has proved to be a good idea. Ideas do not have to be correct in order to be good; its only necessary that, if they do fail, they do so in an interesting way."

"I am not here concerned with intent, but with scientific standards, especially the ability to tell the difference between a fact, an opinion, a hypothesis, and a hole in the ground."

"Photo, Audio and Video with Yuri Gagarin , online version of CD created to his 70th anniv. on the homepage of Russian state archive for scientific-technical documentation ."

11 quotes