, bicause noe .2. thynges,
can be moare equalle.--The invention of the "equals sign", Robert Recorde, The Whetstone of Witte. London, 1557
Mathematicians do not study objects, but relations among
objects; they are indifferent to the replacement of objects by
others as long as relations do not change. Matter is not
important, only form interests them.
--Henri Poincaré
I had a feeling once about Mathematics – that I saw it
all. Depth beyond depth was revealed to me – the Byss and
Abyss. But it was after dinner and I let it go.
--Winston Churchill
A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a
black cat which isn't there.
--Charles Darwin
In the beginning everything is self-evident, and it is hard to
see whether one self-evident proposition follows from another or
not. Obviousness is always the enemy of correctness.
--Bertrand Russell
Mathematicians are a species of Frenchmen: if you say
something to them they translate it into their own language and
presto! It is something entirely different.
--Johann Wolfgang Goethe
Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a
mathematician's finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any
chess gambit: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or
even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game.
--G. H. Hardy
This principle is so perfectly general that no particular
application of it is possible.
--George Polya
Life is good for only two things, discovering mathematics and
teaching mathematics.
--Siméon Poisson
What can I say about the exact sciences? Most of them seem to
have already been carried forth to their highest stage of
development. Arithmetic, geometry, algebra, and higher
mathematics are sciences that can rightly be regarded as having
been completed, as it were; and nothing more remains to be done
with them except to find new areas of useful applications.
--Augustin-Louis Cauchy (1811)
Cauchy is mad and there is nothing that can be done about him,
although, right now, he is the only one who knows how mathematics
should be done.
--Niels Henrik Abel
And to auoide the tediouse repetition of these woordes: is
equalle to: I will sette as I doe often in woorke use, a paire of
parallels, or Gemove lines of one lengthe, thus: , bicause noe .2. thynges,
can be moare equalle.
--The invention of the "equals sign", Robert Recorde, The Whetstone of Witte. London, 1557
I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of
infinite space.
--William Shakespeare (Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2)
Geometry has two great treasures: One is the theorem of
Pythagoras; the other, the division of a line into extreme and
mean ratio. The first we may compare to the measure of gold; the
second we may name a precious jewel.
--J. Kepler
Anything that has survived for centuries with such awesome
notation must really be useful.
--Ronald Graham, Donald Knuth, Oren Patashnik (Stanford
University)
Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary
condition.
--Alan Turing
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