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Math Quotes Quotations About Math, Education, and Life 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 http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (4 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes 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." http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (6 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes 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. http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (7 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM math quotes 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.
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