math quotes Quotations about Math, Education, and Life
1. "There is no Royal Road to Geometry." -- Euclid
2. "Mathematics is the Queen of the Sciences, and number theory the queen of mathematics.." -- Carl Friedrich Gauss
3. "We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the internet, we know this is not true." -- Professor Robert Silensky
4. "One machine can do the work of fifty men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."
5. "If I have seen farther than other men, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." -- Isaac Newton
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (1 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes 6. "When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes." -- Erasmus
7. "The length of your education is less important than its breadth, and the length of your life is less important than its depth." -- Marilyn vos Savant
8. "Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it." -- Buddha
9. "A mind is a fire to be kindled, not a vessel to be filled." -- Plutarch
10. "The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances." -- Martha Washington
11. "The world is not given to you by your parents. It is loaned to you by your children." -- Kenyan proverb
12. "If a man hasn't found something he will die for, he isn't fit to live." http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (2 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
13. "In a completely rational society, the best of us would be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have." -- Lee Iacocca
14. "What happens to you in life is not as important as your attitude toward it."
15. "The secret of success is to have more good days than bad days."
16. "The second most important job in the world, second only to being a good parent, is being a good teacher." -- S.G. Ellis
17. "Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned." -- Peter Marshall.
18. "Forget committees. New, noble, world- changing ideas always come from one person working alone." http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (3 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes -- H. Jackson Brown, Life's Little Instruction Book
19. "The most important questions in life are, for the most part, really only problems of probability." -- Pierre Simon de La Place
20. "I do not teach, I relate." -- Montaigne
21. "The more you know, the less sure you are." -- Voltaire
22. "Well done is better than well said." -- Ben Franklin
23. "Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare." -- Descartes
24. "Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency." -- Descartes
25. "Cogito, Ergo Sum. I think, therefore I am." -- Descartes
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26. "The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest people of past centuries." -- Descartes
27. "We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." -- Winston Churchill
28. "Teaching high school, in addition to knowing one's subject matter thoroughly and being able to convey it to others, requires the grit of a long- distance runner, the stamina of a boxer going 15 rounds, the temperament of a juggler and the street smarts of a three-card monte dealer." -- Professor Larry Cuban
29. "St. Augustine had good insight on the division of labor between God and his children when he wrote that we should work as if everything depended on our efforts and pray as if everything depended on the Almighty."
30. "If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 25 people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of whom didn't want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (5 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher's job." -- Colman McCarthy in The Washington Post
31. "Old principals never die, they just lose their faculties."
32. "How you teach is more important than what you teach."
33. "Life is too short for long division."
34. "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." -- Chinese Proverb.
35. "Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer should be replaced by a computer."
36. "Old math teachers never die, they just tend to infinity."
37. "Old teachers never die; they just lose their class."
38. "Natural numbers are better for your health."
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39. "Decimals have a point."
40. "Calculus has its limits."
41. "Geometry is just plane fun."
42. "Polar coordinates aren't just arctic fashions."
43. "The only time a question should be asked is when all other possibilities of finding the answer for yourself have been eliminated." -- Ben Franklin
44. "A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature." -- John H. Newman
45. "Old math teachers never die; they just pass into another sphere."
46. "Knowledge exists to be imparted." -- Emerson
47. "An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living and doesn't teach them how to live." -- Charles Snitow.
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48. "Life is a ladder: Every step we take is either up or down." -- Brewster
49. "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
50. "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you will realize why some people think golf is exciting."
51. "Small minds discuss persons. Average minds discuss events. Great minds discuss ideas. Really great minds discuss mathematics."
52. "There is no branch of mathematics, however abstract, which may not someday be applied to the phenomena of the real world." -- Nicolai Lobachevsky
53. "Logic is the anatomy of thought." -- John Locke
54. "I tell them if they will occupy themselves with the study of mathematics, they will find in it the best remedy against the lusts of the flesh."
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (8 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes -- Thomas Mann
55. "The mathematical rules of the universe are visible to men in the form of beauty." -- John Michel
56. "It is easier to square a circle than to get round a mathematician." -- de Morgan
57. "The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal." -- William James
58. "We have to reinvent the wheel every once in a while, not because we need a lot of wheels; but because we need a lot of inventors." -- Bruce Joyce
59. "It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul." -- Sophia Kovalevskaya
60. "All the effects of nature are only mathematical results of a small number of immutable laws." -- Pierre Simon de La Place http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (9 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes
61. "Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting." -- Leibniz
62. "The essence of mathematics is not to make simple things complicated, but to make complicated things simple." -- S. Gudder
63. "I recoil with dismay and horror at this lamentable plague of functions which do not have derivatives." -- Charles Hermite
64. "The value of a problem is not so much coming up with the answer as in the ideas and attempted ideas it forces on the would be solver." -- I.N. Herstein
65. "The infinite! No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man." -- David Hilbert
66. "The object of mathematics is the honor of the human spirit. -- C. Jacobi http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (10 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes
67. "One person's constant is another person's variable." -- Susan Gerhart
68. "People who don't count won't count." -- Anatole France
69. "An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding ages." -- de Fontenelle
70. "Do not worry too much about your difficulties in mathematics, I can assure you that mine are still greater." -- Albert Einstein
71. "Mathematics is the gate and key to the sciences." -- Roger Bacon
72. "Logic is invincible, because in order to combat logic it is necessary to use logic." -- Pierre Boatroux
73. "Algebra is generous; she often gives more than is asked of her." -- D'Alembert
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74. "A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there." -- Charles Darwin (quoted by Jaime Escalante in the film, STAND and DELIVER)
75. "Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas." -- Albert Einstein
76. "Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein
77. "The advancement and perfection of mathematics are intimately connected with the prosperity of the state." -- Napoleon
78. "The calculus is the greatest aid we have to the application of physical truth in the broadest sense of the word." -- W. F. Osgood
79. "The notion of infinity is our greatest friend; it is also the greatest enemy of our peace of mind." -- James Pierpont http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (12 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes
80. "Numbers are the highest degree of knowledge. It is knowledge itself." -- Plato
81. "Geometry existed before creation." -- Plato
82. "God ever geometrizes." -- Plato
83. "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here." -- inscription above Plato's Academy
84. "Circles to square and cubes to double would give a man excessive trouble." -- Matthew Prior
85. "Wherever there is number, there is beauty." -- Proclus
86. "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." -- Marcel Proust
87. "There is geometry in the humming of the string." -- Pythagoras
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88. "What would life be without arithmetic but a scene of horrors?" -- Sydney Smith
89. "A mathematician who is not also something of a poet will never be a complete mathematician." -- Karl Weierstrass.
90. "Mathematics is the science of definiteness, the necessary vocabulary of those who know." -- W. J. White
91. "The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit." -- Alfred North Whitehead
92. "Algebra is the intellectual instrument which has been created for rendering clear the quantitative aspects of the world." -- Alfred North Whitehead
93. "The science of Pure Mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit." -- Alfred North Whitehead
94. "Black holes are where God divided by zero."
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (14 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes -- Steven Wright
95. "The best teacher is not the one who knows most, but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful ..." -- H.L. Mencken
96. "Math class is tough." -- Barbie Doll (1992]
97. "After years of finding mathematics easy, I finally reached integral calculus and came up against a barrier. I realized that this was as far as I could go, and to this day I have never successfully gone beyond it in any but the most superficial way." -- Isaac Asimov
98. "It is clear that the chief end of mathematical study must be to make the students think." -- John Wesley Young
99. "Only professional mathematicians learn anything from proofs. Other people learn from explanations." -- Ralph Boas
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (15 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes 100. "I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy." -- John Adams
101. "Mathematics is not a spectator sport!" -- Karl J. Smith
102. "He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god." -- Plato
103. "The Good Lord made all the integers; the rest is man's doing." -- Leopold Kronecker
104. "Medicine makes people ill, mathematics makes them sad, and theology makes them sinful." -- Martin Luther
105. "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." -- Raoul Bott
106. "Mathematics is the life of the gods." -- Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg) http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (16 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes
107. "He is unworthy of the name of man who is ignorant of the fact that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side." -- Plato
108. "Mathematics consists in proving the most obvious thing in the least obvious way." -- George Polya
109. "Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
110. "How happy the lot of the mathematician. He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve." -- W.H. Auden
111. "Obvious is the most dangerous word in mathematics." -- E.T. Bell
112. "Mathematics is written for mathematicians." -- Copernicus http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (17 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes
113. "I was x years old in the year x2" -- Augustus De Morgan (when asked about his age)
114. "Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems." -- Rene Descartes
115. "It is not enough to have a good mind. The main thing is to use it well." -- Descartes
116. "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." -- Benjamin Disraeli
117. "Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom." -- Albert Einstein
118. "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind." -- Albert Einstein
119. "The mathematician has reached the highest rung on the ladder of human thought."
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (18 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes -- Havelock Ellis
120. "Whenever you can, count." -- Sir Francis Galton
121. "Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper." -- David Hilbert
122. "I'm very good at integral and differential calculus, I know the scientific names of beings animalculous; in short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of the modern Major General." -- W.S. Gilbert in the Pirates of Penzance
123. "Mathematics is the science of what is clear by itself." -- Carl Jacobi
124. "Perhaps the greatest paradox of all is that there are paradoxes in mathematics." -- Kasner and Newman
125. "No human investigation can be called real science if it cannot be demonstrated mathematically." http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (19 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes -- Leonardo da Vinci
126. "Who has not been amazed to learn that the function y = ex, like a phoenix rising from its own ashes, is its own derivative?" -- Francois le Lionnais
127. "All great therorems were discovered after midnight." -- Adrian Mathesis
128. "In mathematics, you don't understand things. You just get used to them." -- Johann von Neumann
129. "Life is good for only two things: discovering mathematics and teaching mathematics." -- Simeon Poisson
130. "A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction." -- Tolstoy
131. "I'm sorry to say that the subject I most disliked was mathematics. I have thought about it. I think the reason was that mathematics leaves no http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (20 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes room for argument. If you made a mistake, that was all there was to it." -- Malcolm X
132. "Mathematics is no more computation than typing is literature." -- John Allen Paulos
133. "There are no solved problems; there are only problems that are more or less solved." -- Henri Poincare
134. "The mathematician does not study pure mathematics because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it and he delights in it because it is beautiful." -- Henri Poincare
135. "Beauty in mathematics is seeing the truth without effort." -- George Polya
136. "Teaching is the royal road to learning." -- Jassamyn West
137. "We only think when confronted with a problem." -- John Dewey http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (21 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes
138. "The life of a mathematician is dominated by an insatiable curiosity, a desire bordering on passion to solve the problems he is studying." -- Jean Dieudonne
139. "One's work may be finished some day, but one's education never." -- Alexandre Dumas
140. "Geometry is the foundation of all painting." -- Albrecht Durer
141. "The arithmetic of life does not always have a logical answer." -- Inshirah Abdur-Rauf
142. "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops." -- Henry Brooks Adams
143. "I am not a teacher, I am an awakener." -- Robert Frost
144. "It is the duty of all teachers, and of teachers of mathematics in particular, to expose their students to problems much more than to facts." -- Paul Halmos
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145. "Mathematics should be fun." -- Peter J. Hilton
146. "I write rhymes with addition and algebra, mental geometry." -- Ice-T
147. "There is a famous formula, perhaps the most compact and famous of all formulas -- developed by Euler from a discovery of de Moivre: e(i * pi) + 1 = 0... It appeals equally to the mystic, the scientist, the philosopher, the mathematician." -- Edward Kasner and James Newman
148. "God exists since mathematics is consistent and the devil exists since we cannot prove the consistency." -- Morris Kline
149. "Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do." -- Donald Knuth
150. "Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity." -- Horace Mann http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (23 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes
151. "Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I may not remember. Involve me, and I'll understand." -- Native American saying
152. "Statistics are human beings with the tears wiped away." -- Paul Brodeur
153. "Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten." -- B. F. Skinner
154. "Calculus is the most powerful weapon of thought yet devised by the wit of man." -- W. B. Smith
155. "Nature's great book is written in mathematics." -- Galileo
156. "Numbers constitute the only universal language." -- Nathanael West
157. "To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer."
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (24 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes 158. "The essence of mathematics is in its freedom." -- Georg Cantor
159. "Mathematics, in one view, is the science of infinity." -- P. Davis and R. Hersh
160. "From the very beginning of his education, the child should experience the joy of discovery." -- Alfred North Whitehead
161. "Mathematics -- this may surprise or shock some -- is never deductive in creation." -- Paul Halmos
162. "Mathematicians create by acts of insights and intuition. Logic then sanctions the conquests of intuition." -- Morris Kline
163. "I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which however the margin is not large enough to contain." -- Pierre de Fermat, refering to the result known as Fermat's Last Theorem
164. "How can it be that mathematics, a product of http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (25 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes human thought independent of experience, is so admirably adapted to the objects of reality?" -- Albert Einstein
165. "Our greatest natural resource is the minds of our children." -- Walt Disney
166. "The moving power of mathematical invention is not reasoning but imagination." -- Augustus de Morgan
167. "Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself any more." -- Albert Einstein
168. "Every human activity, good or bad, except mathematics, must come to an end." -- Paul Erdos
169. "We are all concerned about the future of American education. But as I tell my students, you do not enter the future -- you create the future. The future is created through hard work." -- Jaime Escalante
170. "I never got a pass mark in math ... Just http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (26 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes imagine -- mathematicians now use my prints to illustrate their books." -- M.C. Escher
171. "Mighty is geometry; joined with art, resistless." -- Euripides
172. "Getting the degree meant more to me than an NCAA title, being named All-American or winning an Olympic gold medal." -- Patrick Ewing
173. "The calculus is one of the greatest edifices constructed by mankind." -- Cambridge Conference on School Mathematics
174. "Statistics are no substitute for judgment." -- Henry Clay
175. "Alcohol and Calculus Don't Mix; Never Drink and Derive."
176. "You don't have to teach people to be human. You need to teach them how to stop being inhuman." -- Eldridge Cleaver http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (27 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes
177. "By the end of the first month of the 1995 session, each senator will have made more money than any person who works 40 hours a week at minimum wage for the entire year." -- Bill Clinton
178. "The title which I most covet is that of teacher. The writing of a research paper and the teaching of freshman calculus, and everything in between, falls under this rubric. Happy is the person who comes to understand something and then gets to explain it." -- Marshall Cohen
179. "All mathematicians share ... a sense of amazement over the infinite depth and the mysterious beauty and usefulness of mathematics." -- Martin Gardner
180. "Mathematical knowledge adds vigour to the mind, frees it from prejudice, credulity, and superstition." -- John Arbuthnot
181. "The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order, symmetry, and limitations; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful." http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (28 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes -- Aristotle
182. "My philosophy of learning, like my blood type, is "be positive." Keeping student attitudes positive is vital to their success in learning." -- David Pleacher
183. "Besides language and music, mathematics is one of the primary manifestations of the free creative power of the human mind." -- Hermann Weyl
184. "A diagram is worth a thousand proofs." -- Dr. Carl E. Linderholm
185. "Where the pessimist sees a half-closed interval, the optimist sees a half-open interval."
186. "Discovery lessons, students writing to learn mathematics, the teaching of so-called general problem solving concepts, field trips, math lab lessons, alternate assessments, collaborative partner tests, student presentations, and open- ended problems should all be used sparingly. I use some of them, but they have limited value. Pencil- and-paper analytic solutions are the heart of mathematics education." --Michael Stueben in Twenty Years Before the http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (29 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes Blackboard
187. "There are 10 types of people in the world -- Those who understand binary, and those who don't."
188. "Character is what you are when no one is watching."
189. "Morality, like art, consists in drawing a line somewhere."
190. "The heart of education is education of the heart."
191. "Education is worth little if it teaches only how to make a living rather than how to make a life." -- Mary Hatwood Futrell
192. "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." -- Mark Twain
193. "Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we respond to it." -- Charles Swindoll
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (30 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes 194. "If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere." -- Frank A. Clark
195. "Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes." -- Mickey Mouse
196. "Although I am absolutely without training or knowledge in the exact sciences, I often seem to have more in common with mathematicians than with my fellow artists." -- M.C. Escher
197. "The only angle from which to approach a problem is the TRY-Angle."
198. "Education is what you get from reading the small print. Experience is what you get from not reading it!"
199. "Newton's First Law: Somedays it's better to stay in bed."
200. "Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one." -- Malcolm S. Forbes
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (31 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes 201. "The shortest distance between two points is under construction." -- Bill Sanderson
202. "He who laughs, lasts." -- Mary Pettibone Poole
203. "Positive attitudes bring positive results. Negative attitudes bring negative results."
204. "Geometry is the science of correct reasoning on incorrect figures." -- George Polya
205. "If there is a problem you can't solve, then there is an easier problem you can't solve: find it." -- George Polya
206. "A GREAT discovery solves a great problem but there is a grain of discovery in any problem." -- George Polya
207. "The first rule of discovery is to have brains and good luck. The second rule of discovery is to sit tight and wait till you get a bright idea." -- George Polya
208. "There are many questions which fools can
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (32 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes ask that wise men cannot answer." -- George Polya
209. "I am too good for philosophy and not good enough for physics. Mathematics is in between." -- George Polya
210. "God wrote the universe in the language of mathematics." -- Galileo
211. "If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is."
212. "Inspiration is the impact of a fact on a well- prepared mind." -- Louis Pasteur
213. "New facts often trigger new ideas." -- Osborn
214. "What is now proved was once only imagined." -- Proverb.
215. "Men who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it."
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216. "If you go fishing you may not catch any fish. If you don’t go fishing, you’ll never catch any fish." -- Alex F. Osborn
217. "Some people study all their life, and at their death have learned everything but to think." -- Demergue
218. "The past must be a springboard, not a sofa." -- Harold MacMillan
219. "A problem well stated is half-solved." -- John Dewey
220. "The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas." -- Linus Pauling
221. "Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten but they may start a winning game." -- Goethe
222. "Questions are creative acts of intelligence." -- Frank Kingdon
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (34 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes 223. "A learned man is an idler who kills time by study." -- George Bernard Shaw
224. "Nothing was ever achieved without enthusiasm." -- Emerson
225. "Our minds are finite, and even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite; and the purpose of human life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude." -- Alfred North Whitehead
226. "From the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of the Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician." -- James Hopwood Jeans
227. "It is truth very certain that, when it is not in one's power to determine what is true, we ought to follow what is more probable." -- Rene Descartes
228. "Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (35 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes true." -- Bertrand Russell
229. "But in the new (math) approach, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer." -- Tom Lehrer
230. "But don't panic. Base 8 is just like Base 10 really. If you're missing two fingers." -- Tom Lehrer
231. "Sufficient unto the day is the rigor thereof." -- Eliakim H. Moore
232. "Mathematics is a body of knowledge, but it contains no truths." - - Morris Kline
233. "Mathematics is on the artistic side a creation of new rhythms, orders, designs, harmonies, and on the knowledge side, is a systematic study of various rhythms, orders, designs, and harmonies." -- William L. Schaaf
234. "Mathematics -- the subtle fine art." -- Jamie Byrnie Shaw
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (36 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes 235. "The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or poet's, must be beautiful. The ideas, like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: There is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics." -- G. H. Hardy
236. "Mathematics is the science which uses easy words for hard ideas." -- Edward Kasner and James R. Newman
237. "Mathematics, even in its present and most abstract state, is not detached from life. It is just the ideal handling of the problems of life." -- Cassius Jackson Keyser
238. "The merit of painting lies in the exactness of reproduction. Painting is a science and all sciences are based on mathematics. No human inquiry can be a science unless it pursues its path through mathematical exposition and demonstration." -- Leonardo Da Vinci
239. "Experience is the hardest kind of teacher. It gives you the test first, and the lesson afterward."
240. "Not everything that counts can be counted. http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (37 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes Not everything that can be counted counts." -- Albert Einstein
241. "I had been to school ... and could say the multiplication table up to 6 x 7 = 35, and I don't reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don't take no stock in mathematics anyway." -- Huckleberry Finn (by Mark Twain)
242. "The creator of the universe works in mysterious ways. But he uses a base ten counting system and likes round numbers." -- Scott Adams
243. "42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot." -- Steven Wright
244. "Five out of four people have trouble with fractions." -- Steven Wright
245. "Two and two the mathematician continues to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five." -- James McNeill Whistler
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (38 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes 246. "Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learnt." -- Izaak Walton
247. "Mathematics is the science which draws necessary conclusions." -- Benjamin Pierce
248. "Mechanics is the paradise of the mathematical sciences because by means of it one comes to the fruits of mathematics." -- Leonardo da Vinci
249. "Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty." -- Bertrand Russell
250. "Mathematics takes us still further from what is human, into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual world, but every possible world, must conform." -- Bertrand Russell
251. "The harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty." -- Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (39 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes
252. "Numerical precision is the very soul of science." -- Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
253. "All the mathematical sciences are founded on the relations between physical laws and laws of numbers." -- James Clerk Maxwell
254. "I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning." -- Plato
255. "Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend." -- Francis Bacon
256. "A few honest men are better than numbers." -- Oliver Cromwell
257. "Q.E.D. (Quod Erat Demonstrandum: Which was to be proven.)" -- Euclid
258. "Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (40 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes arithmetical ratio." -- Thomas Robert Malthus
259. "The theory of probabilities is at bottom nothing but common sense reduced to calculus." -- Pierre de La Place
260. "Now don't be sad, 'cause two out of three ain't bad." -- Meatloaf
261. "Statistics means never having to say you're certain."
262. "Without geometry life is pointless."
263. "The work of a teacher -- exhausting, complex, idiosyncratic, never twice the same -- is at its heart, an intellectual and ethical enterprise. Teaching is the vocation of vocations..." -- William Ayres
264. "Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics." -- Godfrey Harold Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology (1940)
265. "We think it's about little techniques and
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (41 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes tricks, but techniques only take you so far. We need teachers who care about kids, who care about what they teach, and who can communicate with kids." -- Parker I. Palmer, The Courage to Teach
266. "Physicists defer only to mathematicians, and mathematicians defer only to God."
267. "Biologists think they are biochemists, Biochemists think they are Physical Chemists, Physical Chemists think they are Physicists, Physicists think they are Gods, And God thinks he is a Mathematician."
268. "Old math teachers never die -- they just lose their functions."
269. "Ganas is all you need." [Ganas is Spanish for passion, guts, determination, desire] -- Jaime Escalante
270. "I do not believe in the gifted. If [the students] have ganas [Spanish for desire], I can make them do it." -- Jaime Escalante
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (42 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes 271. "Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety- nine per cent perspiration." -- Thomas Alva Edison
272. "To teach is to learn."
273. "To learn, you must want to be taught." -- Proverbs 12:1
274. "Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently." -- Henry Ford
275. "To infinity and beyond." -- Buzz Lightyear
276. "I think, therefore I laugh." -- John Allen Poulos
277. "I do not think -- therefore I am not."
278. "Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules. Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives."
279. "The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (43 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell." -- St. Augustine
280. "The lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math."
281. "With an absurd oversimplification, the 'invention' of the calculus is sometimes ascribed to two men, Newton and Leibniz. In reality, the calculus is the product of a long evolution that was neither initiated nor terminated by Newton and Leibniz, but in which both played a decisive part." -- Richard Courant and Herbert Robbins
282. "The whole apparatus of the calculus takes on an entirely different form when developed for the complex numbers." -- Keith Devlin
283. "It is clear that Economics, if it is to be a science at all, must be a mathematical science ... simply because it deals with quantities... As the complete theory of almost every other science involves the use of calculus, so we cannot have a true theory of Economics without its aid."
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (44 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes -- W. S. Jevons
284. "The Mean Value Theorem is the midwife of calculus - not very important or glamorous by itself, but often helping to deliver other theorems that are of major significance." -- E. Purcell and D. Varberg
285. "But just as much as it is easy to find the differential [derivative] of a given quantity, so it is difficult to find the integral of a given differential. Moreover, sometimes we cannot say with certainty whether the integral of a given quantity can be found or not." -- Johann Bernoulli
286. "You live your life between your ears." -- Bebe Moore Campbell
287. "'What's one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?' 'I don't know,' said Alice. 'I lost count.' 'She can't do addition,' said the Red Queen." -- Lewis Carroll
288. "Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom." -- George Washington Carver http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (45 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes
289. "Infinity converts the possible into the inevitable." -- Norman Cousins
290. "Education is learning more than it is being taught. It's the chemistry of curiosity exposed to information. In that sense all of life is potentially school. And even I can pass that." -- Bob Guiccione, Jr.
291. "The mathematician's best work is art, a high perfect art, as daring as the most secret dreams of imagination, clear and limpid. Mathematical genius and artistic genius touch one another." -- Gosta Mittag-Leffler
292. "How many pizzas are consumed each year in the United States? How many words have you spoken in your life? How many different peoples names appear in the New York Times each year? How many watermelons would fit inside the U.S. Capitol building? What is the volume of all the human blood in the world?" -- John A. Paulos
293. "[Paradoxes of the infinite arise] only when we attempt, with our finite minds, to discuss the http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (46 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes infinite, assigning to it those properties which we give to the finite and limited;" -- Galileo Galilei
294. "We must say that there are as many squares as there are numbers." -- Galileo Galilei
295. "The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment." -- Alfred North Whitehead
296. "Bees ... by virtue of a certain geometrical forethought ... know that the hexagon is greater than the square and the triangle, and will hold more honey for the same expenditure of material." -- Pappas
297. "The Universe is a grand book which cannot be read until one first learns which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics..." -- Galilei Galileo
298. "I am persuaded that this method [for calculating the volume of a sphere] will be of no little service to mathematics. For I foresee that once it is understood and established, it will be used to discover other theorems which have not http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (47 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes yet occurred to me, by other mathematicians, now living or yet unborn." -- Archimedes
299. "Education is indoctrination if you're white; subjugation if you're black." -- James Baldwin
300. "The purpose of education...is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions." -- James Baldwin
301. "No set of principles can guarantee a recipe for good practice (in teaching)." -- D. Ball and T. Schroeder
302. "All of us are slaves to the prejudices of our own dimension." -- Thomas Banchoff (in introduction to Flatland)
303. "The calculus is the story this [the Western] world first told itself as it became the modern world." -- David Berlinski
304. "The definition of a limit is essentially his http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (48 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes [Cauchy's] creation and is as much of a miracle as those fantastic Swiss clocks of the period in which hundreds of gleaming cogs are made to celebrate not only the time and date but the phases of the moon." -- David Berlinski
305. "Everything tries to be round." -- Black Elk
306. "Somebody came up to me after a talk I had given, and say, 'You make mathematics seem like fun.' I was inspired to reply, 'If it isn't fun, why do it?'" -- Ralph P. Boas
307. "Major paradoxes provide food for logical thought for decades and sometimes centuries." -- Nicholas Bourbaki
308. "Mathematics is the handwriting on the human consciousness of the very Spirit of Life itself." -- Claude Bragdon
309. "The schools are a great theater in which we play out the conflicts in the culture." -- David Cohen and Barbara Neufeld http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (49 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes
310. "Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous." -- Confucius
311. "Starting in the seventeenth century, the general theory of extreme values -- maxima and minima -- has become one of the systematic integrating principles of science." -- Richard Courant and Herbert Robbins
312. "Every new body of discovery is mathematical in form, because there is no other guidance we can have." -- Charles Darwin
313. "One of the endlessly alluring aspects of mathematics is that its thorniest paradoxes have a way of blooming into beautiful theories." -- P.J. Davis
314. "Common integration is only the memory of differentiation..." -- A. De Morgan
315. "I see it, but I don't believe it." [On Cantor's proof that the points in the unit interval were in one-to-one correspondence with points in the unit http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (50 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes square.] -- Richard Dedekind
316. "Numbers are the free creation of the human mind." -- Richard Dedekind
317. "The linear-programming was -- and is -- perhaps the single most important real-life problem." -- Keith Devlin
318. "There can be very little of present-day science and technology that is not dependent on complex numbers in one way or another." -- Keith Devlin
319. "Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes." -- John Dewey
320. "Education is not a preparation for life, education is life itself." -- John Dewey
321. "One of the most important concepts in all of mathematics is that of function." http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (51 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes -- T.P. Dick and C.M. Patton
322. "The life of a mathematician is dominated by an insatiable curiosity, a desire bordering on passion to solve the problems he is studying." -- Jean Dieudonne
323. "When I was four years old they tried to test my IQ. They showed me a picture of three oranges and a pear. They asked me, 'which one is different and does not belong?' They taught me different was wrong." -- Ani DiFranco
324. "you got to look outside-- your eyes-- you got to think outside-- your brain-- you got to walk outside-- your life-- to where the neighborhoods change." -- Ani DiFranco
325. "A book on the new physics, if not purely descriptive of experimental work, must essentially be mathematical." -- P.A.M. Dirac
326. "Success isn't permanent, and failure isn't fatal." -- Mike Ditka http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (52 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes
327. "If there's no struggle, there's no progress." -- Frederick Douglass
328. "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
329. "Education must not simply teach work - it must teach life." -- W.E.B. DuBois
330. "How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it." -- Alexandre Dumas
331. "One factor that has remained constant through all the twists and turns of the history of physical science is the decisive importance of the mathematical imagination." -- Freeman Dyson
332. "Proof is an idol before which the mathematician tortures himself." -- Sir Arthur Eddington
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (53 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes 333. "There ain't no rules around here! We're trying to accomplish something!" -- Thomas Edison
334. "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." -- Albert Einstein
335. "It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge." -- Albert Einstein
336. "The series of integers is obviously an invention of the human mind, a self-created tool which simplifies the ordering of certain sensory experiences." -- Albert Einstein
337. "I have no particular talent. I am only inquisitive." -- Albert Einstein
338. "In the beginning (if there was such a thing), God created Newton’s laws of motion together with the necessary masses and forces. This is all; everything beyond this follows from the development of appropriate mathematics methods http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (54 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes by means of deduction." -- Albert Einstein
339. "The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms." -- Albert Einstein
340. "The value of an education ... is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks." -- Albert Einstein
341. "Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
342. "It will be another million years, at least, before we understand the primes." -- Paul Erdos
343. "Science and art sometimes can touch one another, like two pieces of the jigsaw puzzle which is our human life, and that contact may be made across the boderline between the two respective http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (55 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes domains." -- M.C. Escher
344. "Father [M.C. Escher] had difficulty comprehending that the working of his mind was akin to that of a mathematician. He greatly enjoyed the interest in his work by mathematicians and scientists, ..." -- George Escher
345. "For since the fabric of the universe is most perfect and the work of a most wise Creator, nothing at all takes place in the universe in which some rule of maximum or minimum does not appear." -- Leonhard Euler
346. "After exponential quantities the circular functions, sine and cosine, should be considered because they arise when imaginary quantities are involved in the exponential." -- Leonhard Euler
347. "Mathematics serves as a handmaiden for the explanation of the quantitative situations in other subjects, such as economics, physics, navigation, finance, biology and even the arts."
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (56 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes -- H. F. Fehr
348. "On the other hand, it is impossible for a cube to be written as a sum of two cubes or a fourth power to be written as a sum of two fourth powers or, in general for any number which is a power greater than the second to be written as a sum of two like powers. For this I have discovered a truly wonderful proof, but the margin is too small to contain it." -- P. Fermat
349. "The journey for an education starts with a childhood question." -- David L. Finn
350. "Mathematics compares the most diverse phenomena and discovers the secret analogies that unite them." -- Joseph Fourier
351. "The deep study of nature is the most fruitful source of mathematical discoveries." -- Jean-Baptist-Joseph Fourier
352. "What science can there be more noble, more excellent, more useful for men, more admirably high and demonstrative, than this of mathematics?" http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (57 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes -- Benjamin Franklin
353. "A surprising proportion of mathematicians are accomplished musicians. Is it because music and mathematics share patterns that are beautiful?" -- Martin Gardner
354. "One would be hard put to find a set of whole numbers with a more fascinating history and more elegant properties surrounded by greater depths of mystery--and more totally useless--than the perfect numbers." -- Martin Gardner
355. "The most important outcome of education is to help students to become independent of formal education." -- Paul E. Gray
356. "The only way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics. That tenet is the foundation of the do- it-yourself, Socratic, or Texas method, ..." -- Paul Halmos
357. "A good stack of examples, as large as possible, is indispensable for a thorough understanding of any concept, and when I want to learn something new, I make it my first job to http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (58 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes build one." -- Paul Halmos
358. "The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers!" -- R. W. Hamming
359. "A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas." -- G. H. Hardy
360. "In most sciences one generation tears down what another has built and what one has established another undoes. In mathematics alone each generation adds a new story to the old structure." -- Herman Henkel
361. "The struggle to become a better teacher begins all over again with the advent of each new class." -- Martin Henley
362. "Before beginning [to try to prove Fermat's Last Theorem] I should have to put in three years of intensive study, and I haven't that much time to http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (59 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes squander on a probable failure." -- David Hilbert
363. "The discoveries of Newton have done more for England and for the race, than has been done by whole dynasties of British monarchs." -- Thomas Hill
364. "The infinite in mathematics is alway unruly unless it is properly treated." -- Edward Kasner and James Newman
365. "Where there is matter, there is geometry." -- Johannes Kepler
366. "The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds." -- John F. Kennedy
367. "...it is the greatest achievement of a teacher to enable his students to surpass him." -- John Kemeny
368. "The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education." -- Martin Luther King, jr. http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (60 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes
369. "Among all of the mathematical disciplines the theory of differential equations is the most important... It furnishes the explanation of all those elementary manifestations of nature which involve time." -- Sophus Lie
370. "The Mandelbrot set is the most complex mathematical object known to mankind." -- Benoit Mandelbrot
371. "The teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil to learn is hammering on cold iron." -- Horace Mann
372. "God created infinity, and man, unable to understand infinity, had to invent finite sets." -- Gian Carlo Rota
373. "We cannot hope that many children will learn mathematics unless we find a way to share our enjoyment and show them its beauty as well as its utility." -- Mary Beth Ruskai
374. "Three passions ... have governed my life: the http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (61 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes longing for love, the search for knowledge, and the unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind." -- Bertrand Russell
375. "Zeno was concerned with three problems... These are the problem of the infinitesimal, the infinite, and continuity." -- Bertrand Russell
376. "You get what you settle for." -- Louise Sawyer, from the movie Thelma and Louise
377. "Think! Think and wonder. Wonder and think. How much water can 55 elephants drink?" -- Dr. Seuss
378. "If you hold yourself up to your children, hold yourself up as an object lesson and not as an example." -- George Bernard Shaw
379. "One can invent mathematics without knowing much of its history. One can use mathematics without knowing much, if any, of its history. But one cannot have a mature appreciation of mathematics without a substantial knowledge of its history." http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (62 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes -- Abe Shenitzer
380. "Mathematics, in the common lay view, is a static discipline based on formulas...But outside the public view, mathematics continues to grow at a rapid rate...the guide to this growth is not calculation and formulas, but an open ended search for pattern." -- Lynn A. Steen
381. "What humans do with the language of mathematics is to describe patterns..." -- Lynn A. Steen
382. "There is a difference between not knowing and not knowing yet." -- Shelia Tobias
383. "Some mathematician, I believe, has said that true pleasure lies not in the discovery of truth, but in the search for it." -- Tolstoy
384. "Out of the public schools comes the greatness of the nation." -- Mark Twain
385. "Calculators can only calculate - they cannot http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (63 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes do mathematics." -- John A. Van de Walle
386. "There is an astonishing imagination even in the science of mathematics... We repeat, there is far more imagination in the head of Archimedes than in that of Homer." -- Francios Voltaire
387. "Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations." -- John von Neumann
388. "Symmetry, as wide or as narrow as you define its meaning, is one idea by which man through the ages has tried to comprehend and create order, beauty and perfection." -- Hermann Weyl
389. "I don't know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting." -- Edith Wharton
390. "If I feel unhappy, I do mathematics to become happy. If I am happy, I do mathematics to keep happy." -- Alfréd Rényi http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (64 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes
391. "A mathematician's reputation rests on the number of bad proofs he has given." -- A. S. Besicovitch
392. "Statistics: the mathematical theory of ignorance." -- Morris Kline
393. "Poetry is as exact a science as geometry." -- Gustave Flaubert
394. "God is a child; and when he began to play, he cultivated mathematics. It is the most godly of man's games." -- V. Erath
395. "There still remain three studies suitable for free man. Arithmetic is one of them." -- Plato
396. "Mathematics is like checkers in being suitable for the young, not too difficult, amusing, and without peril to the state." -- Plato
397. "In the fall of 1972 President Nixon announced that the rate of increase of inflation was
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (65 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes decreasing. This was the first time a sitting president used the third derivative to advance his case for reelection." -- Hugo Rossi
398. "Inspiration is needed in geometry, just as much as in poetry." -- Aleksandr Pushkin
399. "With me everything turns into mathematics." -- Descartes
400. "The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers." -- Sydney J. Harris
401. "God not only plays dice. He also sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen." -- Stephen Hawking
402. "One should always generalize." -- Carl Jacobi
403. "The greatest unsolved theorem in mathematics is why some people are better at it than others." -- Adrian Mathesis http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (66 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes
404. "Logic doesn't apply to the real world." -- Marvin Lee Minsky
405. "You know we all became mathematicians for the same reason: we were lazy." -- Max Rosenlicht
406. "Calculus required continuity, and continuity was supposed to require the infinitely little; but nobody could discover what the infinitely little might be." -- Bertrand Russell
407. "If you would make a man happy, do not add to his possessions but subtract from the sum of his desires." -- Seneca
408. "We think in generalities, but we live in details." -- Alfred North Whitehead
409. "Learning to solve problems is the principal reason for studying mathematics." -- National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
410. "High achievement always takes place in the
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (67 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes framework of high expectation." -- Jack Kinder
411. "To state a theorem and then to show examples of it is literally to teach backwards." -- E. Kim Nebeuts
412. "Man can not discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore." -- Andre Gide
413. "Mathematics is not a deductive science – that's a cliché. When you try to prove a theorem, you don't just list the hypotheses, and then start to reason. What you do is trial and error, experimentation, guesswork." -- Paul Halmos
414. "It's not the situation ... it's your reaction to the situation." -- Robert Conklin
415. "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." -- Reinhold Niebuhr
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (68 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes 416. "Success does not consist in never making mistakes, but in never making the same one a second time." -- George Bernard Shaw
417. "Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton asked why." -- Bernard Baruch
418. "In the book of life, the answers aren't in the back." -- Charlie Brown (Charles Schulz)
419. "The symbolism of algebra is its glory. But it also is its curse." -- William Betz
420. "I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true ... I no longer know how to use my telephone." -- Bjarne Stroustrup
421. "If we couldn't laugh, we just would go insane. If we weren't all crazy, we would go insane." -- Jimmy Buffett
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (69 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes 422. "We use only 10% of our brains… Imagine how smart we would be if we used the other 60%!" -- Ellen DeGeneres
423. "The most powerful single idea in mathematics is the notion of a variable." -– K. Dewdney
424. "Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog." -- Doug Larson
425. "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." –- Albert Einstein
426. "You can not feed the hungry on statistics." -- Heinrich Heine
427. "A word to the wise ain't necessary -- it's the stupid ones that need our advice." -- Bill Cosby
428. "When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (70 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity." -- Albert Einstein
429. "Start every day off with a smile and get it over with." -- W.C. Fields
430. "I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member." -- Groucho Marx
431. "Hardware -- the parts of a computer that can be kicked." -- Jeff Pesis
432. "He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever." -- Confucius
433. "Do the math: Count your blessings."
434. "Students learn more when they complete homework that is graded, commented upon, and discussed by their teachers. The teacher's feedback -- reinforcing what has been done correctly and re- teaching what has not -- is key." http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (71 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes -- Nancy Protheroe
435. "If one puts an infinite number of monkeys in front of typewriters, and lets them clap away, there is a certainty that one of them will come out with an exact version of the 'Iliad.'" -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
436. "A math student's best friend is BOB (the Back Of the Book), but remember that BOB doesn't come to school on test days." -- Josh Folb
437. "The surest sign of wisdom is constant cheerfulness." -- Montaigne
438. "Do math and you can do anything." -- N.C.T.M. slogan
439. "A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems." -- Paul Erdos
440. "The pursuit of learning is not a piece of content that can be taught. It is a value that teachers model. Only teachers who are avid, internally motivated learners can truly teach their http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (72 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes students the joy of learning." -- Martin Haberman
441. "It isn't enough just to learn -- one must learn how to learn, how to learn without classrooms, without teachers, without textbooks. Learn, in short, how to think and analyze and decide and discover and create." -- Michael Bassis
442. "It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem." -- G. K. Chesterton
443. "Mathematics is an independent world created out of pure intelligence." -- William Wordsworth
444. "Read Euler: he is our master in everything." -- Pierre-Simon de Laplace
445. "I advise my students to listen carefully the moment they decide to take no more mathematics courses. They might be able to hear the sound of closing doors." -- James Caballero
446. "Charlie Chaplin once allegedly said to http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (73 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes Albert Einstein: "The people applaud me because everyone understands me, and they applaud you because no one understands you."
447. "Share knowledge, not answers."
448. "Any fool can know. The point is to understand." -- Albert Einstein
449. "It has been said that Newton was born in the same year that Galileo died because God wanted someone of that caliber on Earth at all times."
450. "Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak."
451. "Happiness is a state of the heart. It is not a function of circumstances."
452. "Baseball is 90% mental. The other half is physical." -- Yogi Berra
453. "Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things." -- J. H. Poincare
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454. "Mathematics is like checkers in being suitable for the young, not too difficult, amusing, and without peril to the state." -- Plato
455. "The difference between an introvert mathematician and an extrovert mathematicians is: An introvert mathematician looks at his shoes while talking to you. An extrovert mathematician looks at your shoes."
456. "Golden rule of deriving: never trust any result that was proved after 11 PM."
457. "If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders." -- Hal Abelson
458. "The reason that every major university maintains a department of mathematics is that it is cheaper to do this than to institutionalize all those people."
459. "Analytic Geometry immortalized the name of Descartes, and constitutes the greatest single step ever made in the progress of the exact sciences." http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (75 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes -- John Stuart Mill
460. "Old Saying: If you really want to learn something, teach it to someone. New Saying: If you really want to learn something, teach it to a computer."
461. "The shortest distance between two pixels on a computer screen is not necessarily a straight line"
462. "Progress has little to do with speed, but much to do with direction."
463. "The sacred writings excepted, no Greek has been so much read and so variously translated as Euclid." -- Augustus De Morgan
464. "Euler -- The unsurpassed master of analytic invention." -- Richard Courant
465. "Number rules the universe." -- Pythagoras
466. "Nature and nature's laws lay hid in the night; God said, 'Let Newton be' and all was light." -- Alexander Pope
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467. "Do not then train boys to learning by force and hardness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds." -- Plato
468. "The great thing in this world is not so much where we are, but in what direction we are moving." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
469. "Without the assistance of the Divine Being... I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail." -- Abraham Lincoln
470. "I can teach you anything, once I have your undivided attention."
471. "You can and will learn if you come to my class."
472. "Optimism is the one quality more associated with success and happiness than any other." -- Brian Tracy
473. "Laughter is a shock absorber that eases the blows of life."
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474. "A goal without a plan is just a wish." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
475. "Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'." -- Billy Preston
476. "Perhaps the greatest shortcoming as a society is in the low expectations we set for both ourselves and our children." -- Jim Rubillo
477. "Students don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." -- Mrs. Theiler
478. "Too many students give up upon encountering difficulties in math, when just trying a few strategies could mean the difference between succeeding and failing." -- Arthur E. Schwartz
Handley Math Page
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