Top Mathematics Quotes

Physics depends on a universe infinitely centred on an equals sign.

In mathematics, in physics, people are concerned with what you say, not with your certification. But in order to speak about social reality, you must have the proper credentials, particularly if you d...

Mathematics Definition

(n.) That science, or class of sciences, which treats of the exact relations existing between quantities or magnitudes, and of the methods by which, in accordance with these relations, quantities sought are deducible from other quantities known or supposed; the science of spatial and quantitative relations.

Mathematics began to seem too much like puzzle solving. Physics is puzzle solving, too, but of puzzles created by nature, not by the mind of man.

The appearance of Professor Benjamin Peirce, whose long gray hair, straggling grizzled beard and unusually bright eyes sparkling under a soft felt hat, as he walked briskly but rather ungracefully acr...

If one is working from the point of view of getting beauty into one's equation, ... one is on a sure line of progress.

One must divide one's time between politics and equations. But our equations are much more important to me, because politics is for the present, while our equations are for eternity.

I entered Princeton University as a graduate student in 1959, when the Department of Mathematics was housed in the old Fine Hall. This legendary facility was marvellous in stimulating interaction amon...

For we may remark generally of our mathematical researches, that these auxiliary quantities, these long and difficult calculations into which we are often drawn, are almost always proofs that we have...

Philosophers and psychiatrists should explain why it is that we mathematicians are in the habit of systematically erasing our footsteps. Scientists have always looked askance at this strange habit of...

I call you my soulmate because I lost myself in you and then found myself through you. Sure, when you are gone, I will be a fraction but the common denominator has always been me.

The integrals which we have obtained are not only general expressions which satisfy the differential equation, they represent in the most distinct manner the natural effect which is the object of the...

The spectacular thing about Johnny [von Neumann] was not his power as a mathematician, which was great, or his insight and his clarity, but his rapidity; he was very, very fast. And like the modern co...

This success permits us to hope that after thirty or forty years of observation on the new Planet [Neptune], we may employ it, in its turn, for the discovery of the one following it in its order of di...

To the average mathematician who merely wants to know his work is securely based, the most appealing choice is to avoid difficulties by means of Hilbert's program. Here one regards mathematics as a fo...

Mathematics, which most of us see as the most factual of all sciences, constitutes the most colossal metaphor imaginable, and must be judged, aesthetically as well as intellectually in terms of the su...

A mathematician believes that describing the speed of Mercury with equations amounts to science.

I carried this problem around in my head basically the whole time. I would wake up with it first thing in the morning, I would be thinking about it all day, and I would be thinking about it when I wen...

From the age of 13, I was attracted to physics and mathematics. My interest in these subjects derived mostly from popular science books that I read avidly. Early on I was fascinated by theoretical phy...

Two wrongs never add up to a right. But it's okay, I always sucked at maths.

[...] provability is a weaker notion than truth