Even Mathimoto Loves Quotes

Now man can subsist on Math alone, after all is not math the word of God?



(More or less)



But it does not harm things to check out the literate world, especially when it deals with Math. Now while I may have recommended you, my dear readers, to this site before, I'd like to make a second strong recommendation for the site, the site with the might of what's right:



Professor Matthias Beck's Mathematical Quotes Page!!!



And let me share with you a couple of the highlights:



"It is my experience that proofs involving matrices can be shortened by 50% if one throws the matrices out."

E. Artin (Geometric Algebra, p. 14)



"If things are nice there is probably a good reason why they are nice: and if you do not know at least one reason for this good fortune, then you still have work to do."

Richard Askey (Ramanujan and Important Formulas, p. 32, in Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920), a Tribute, K.R. Nagarajan and T. Soundarajan, eds., Madurai Kamaraj University, 1987)



"Quapropter bono christiano, sive mathematici, sive quilibet impie divinantium, maxime dicentes vera, cavendi sunt, ne consortio daemoniorum animam deceptam, pacto quodam societatis irretiant."

("Thus the good christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make false prophecies, however much they may in fact speak the truth; lest, being in league with the devil, they may deceive errant souls into making common cause.")

Augustinus (De genesis ad literam, Liber 2, Caput XVII, Nr. 37)



"If a 'religion' is defined to be a system of ideas that contains unprovable statements, then Gödel taught us that mathematics is not only a religion, it is the only religion that can prove itself to be one."

John Barrow



"Obvious is the most dangerous word in mathematics."

E. T. Bell



"Mathematics is a collection of cheap tricks and dirty jokes."

Lipman Bers



"We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?"

Niels Bohr (1885-1962)



"5 out of 4 people have trouble with fractions."

Board in Danby, NY



"There are three kinds of people: those who can count and those who can't."

Bumpersticker on a car in Ithaca, NY



"The essense of mathematics resides in its freedom."

"To ask the right question is harder than to answer it."

G. Cantor



"Alice laughed: 'There's no use trying,' she said; 'one can't believe impossible things.' 'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.' "

"Where shall I begin" he asked. "Begin at the beginning", the king said, "and stop when you get to an end."

L. Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)



"I'm a mathematical optimist: I deal only with positive integers."

"The hardest thing being with a mathematician is that they always have problems."

Tendai Chitewere



"I saw, as one might see the transit of Venus, a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly how it happened... but it was after dinner and I let it go."

Winston Churchill (My early life, 1930)



"The mathematical phenomenon always develops out of simple arithmetic, so useful in everyday life, out of numbers, those weapons of the gods: the gods are there, behind the wall, at play with numbers."

Le Corbusier



"A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there."

Charles R. Darwin



"The grand thing is to be able to reason backwards."

Arthur Conan Doyle (A study in scarlet)



"Apu: In fact I can recite pi to 40000 places. The last digit is one!

Homer: Mmmm, pie."



"Homer: This time tomorrow, you'll be wearing high heels!

Ned: Nope, you will.

Homer: 'Fraid not.

Ned: 'Fraid so!

Homer: 'Fraid not.

Ned: 'Fraid so!

Homer: 'Fraid not infinity!

Ned: 'Fraid so infinity plus one!

Homer: D'oh!"



"Internet Guy: Your stock is at zero.

Bart: But I have 52 million shares! What's 52 million times zero?! And don't tell me it's zero!"

"(Homer has disappeared into a wall in the living room.)

Lisa: Well, where's my dad?

Frink: Well, it should be obvious to even the most dimwitted individual who holds an advanced degree in hyperbolic topology, n'gee, that Homer Simpson has stumbled into...[the lights go off] the third dimension.

Lisa: [flips the light switch back] Sorry.

Frink: [drawing on a blackboard] Here is an ordinary square....

Wiggum: Whoa, whoa--slow down, egghead!

Frink: ... but suppose we extend the square beyond the two dimensions of our universe, along the hypothetical z-axis, there.

Everyone: [gasps]

Frink: This forms a three-dimensional object known as a "cube," or a "Frinkahedron" in honor of its discoverer, n'hey, n'hey.

Homer's voice: Help me! Are you helping me, or are you going on and on?

Frink: Oh, right. And, of course, within, we find the doomed individual."

Matt Groening (Be sure to check out Andrew Nestler's Guide to Mathematics and Mathematicians on The Simpsons!)