Quotes about mathematics

„It was the White Race who produced men like Columbus who crossed the unknown Atlantic; men like Magellan who first circumnavigated the globe; men like Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Velazquez, Bernini, Rubens, Raphael and thousands of other geniuses who created beautiful and exquisite productions in the fields of sculpture and painting; geniuses like Beethoven, Bach, Wagner and Verdi who created beautiful music; men like James Watt who invented the steam engine; men like Daimler who invented and built the reciprocating internal combustion engine; production geniuses like Henry Ford, inventors like Thomas Edison; such a prodigal genius as Nikola Tesla in the field of physics and electricity; literary geniuses like Shakespeare, Goethe and thousands of others, untold geniuses in the fields of mathematics, in the fields of chemistry and physics.“

—  Ben Klassen American engineer, author and politician 1918 - 1993

Nature's Eternal Religion (1973), Ch. 2, Paragraph 4
Nature's Eternal Religion (1973)

„Pure mathematics is in its way the poetry of logical ideas.“

—  Albert Einstein German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity 1879 - 1955

1930s, Obituary for Emmy Noether (1935)
Context: Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas. One seeks the most general ideas of operation which will bring together in simple, logical and unified form the largest possible circle of formal relationships. In this effort toward logical beauty spiritual formulas are discovered necessary for the deeper penetration into the laws of nature.

„If in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics…“

—  Roger Bacon, book Opus Majus

Bk. 1, ch. 4. Translated by Robert B. Burke, in: Edward Grant (1974) Source Book in Medieval Science. Harvard University Press. p. 93
Opus Majus, c. 1267

„Mathematics is the gate and key of the sciences. … Neglect of mathematics works injury to all knowledge, since he who is ignorant of it cannot know the other sciences or the things of this world. And what is worse, men who are thus Ignorant are unable to perceive their own ignorance and so do not seek a remedy.“

—  Roger Bacon, book Opus Majus

cited in: Morris Kline (1969) Mathematics and the physical world. p. 1
Opus Majus, c. 1267

„For the things of this world cannot be made known without a knowledge of mathematics.“

—  Roger Bacon, book Opus Majus

Cited in: Opus majus: A translation by Robert Belle Burke. Vol 1 (1962). p. 128
Opus Majus, c. 1267
Context: For the things of this world cannot be made known without a knowledge of mathematics. For this is an assured fact in regard to celestial things, since two important sciences of mathematics treat of them, namely theoretical astrology and practical astrology. The first … gives us definite information as to the number of the heavens and of the stars, whose size can be comprehended by means of instruments, and the shapes of all and their magnitudes and distances from the earth, and the thicknesses and number, and greatness and smallness, … It likewise treats of the size and shape of the habitable earth … All this information is secured by means of instruments suitable for these purposes, and by tables and by canons.. For everything works through innate forces shown by lines, angles and figures.

„He is the master who, after reaching the furthest shores and plumbing the inmost depths of the sea of ultimate knowledge of mathematics, kinematics and spherics, handed over the three sciences to the learned world.“

—  Aryabhata Indian mathematician-astronomer 476 - 550

Bhaskara I, quoted in: J J O'Connor and E F Robertson "Aryabhata the Elder".

„I don’t think that everyone should become a mathematician, but I do believe that many students don’t give mathematics a real chance.“

—  Maryam Mirzakhani Iranian mathematician 1977 - 2017

Interview with Research Fellow Maryam Mirzakhani | january 2008

„The beauty of mathematics only shows itself to more patient followers.“

—  Maryam Mirzakhani Iranian mathematician 1977 - 2017

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/aug/13/interview-maryam-mirzakhani-fields-medal-winner-mathematician

„But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.“

—  Albert Einstein German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity 1879 - 1955

Earliest source located is the book Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists by Robert Jungk (1958), p. 249, which says that Einstein made the comment during "a walk with Ernst Straus, a young mathematician acting as his scientific assistant at Princeton."
Variant: "Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity." From A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking (2005), p. 144 http://books.google.com/books?id=4Y0ZBW19n_YC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA144#v=onepage&q&f=false.
Earlier, Straus recalled the German version of the quote in Helle Zeit, Dunkle Zeit: In Memoriam Albert Einstein (1956) edited by Carl Seelig<!-- Zurich: Europa Verlag -->, p. 71. There the quote was given as Ja, so muß man seine Zeit zwischen der Politik und unseren Gleichungen teilen. Aber unsere Gleichungen sind mir doch viel wichtiger; denn die Politik ist für die Gegenwart da, aber solch eine Gleichung is etwas für die Ewigkeit.
Attributed in posthumous publications
Context: Yes, we now have to divide up our time like that, between politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.

„Cats can work out mathematically the exact place to sit that will cause most inconvenience.“

—  Pam Brown Australian poet 1948

„The mere formulation of a problem is far more often essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and makres real advances in science.“

—  Albert Einstein German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity 1879 - 1955

http://umich.edu/~scps/html/01chap/html/summary.htm
Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and Religion (1999)

„The books to be read should not be limited to those written in English…. Instead it should be devoted to the great works of history, biography, philosophy, theology, natural science, social science, and mathematics, as well as the… tradition of Western literature -- in English translation… Its aim should not be a survey of Western civilization, but an effort to understand the basic ideas and issues in Western thought.“

—  Mortimer J. Adler American philosopher and educator 1902 - 2001

Source: Reforming Education: The Opening of the American Mind (1990), p. 316

„Mathematics knows no races or geographic boundaries; for mathematics, the cultural world is one country.“

—  David Hilbert German prominent mathematician 1862 - 1943

Quoted in Mathematical Circles Revisited (1971) by Howard Whitley Eves

„The organic unity of mathematics is inherent in the nature of this science, for mathematics is the foundation of all exact knowledge of natural phenomena. That it may completely fulfil this high mission, may the new century bring it gifted masters and many zealous and enthusiastic disciples!“

—  David Hilbert, Mathematical Problems

Mathematical Problems (1900)

„His work, called Aryabhatiya, is composed of three parts, in only the first of which use is made of a special notation of numbers. It is an alphabetical system in which the twenty-five consonants represent 1-25, respectively; other letters stand for 30, 40, …., 100 etc. The other mathematical parts of Aryabhatiya consists of rules without examples. Another alphabetic system prevailed in Southern India, the numbers 1-19 being designated by consonants, etc.“

—  Aryabhata Indian mathematician-astronomer 476 - 550

Florian Cajori in: A History of Mathematical Notations http://books.google.co.in/books?id=_byqAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT961&dq=Notations&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Wz65U5WYDIKulAW1qIGYDA&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Notation&f=false, Courier Dover Publications, 26 September 2013, p. 47.

„If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.“

—  John Von Neumann Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath 1903 - 1957

Remark made by von Neumann as keynote speaker at the first national meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery in 1947, as mentioned by Franz L. Alt at the end of "Archaeology of computers: Reminiscences, 1945--1947", Communications of the ACM, volume 15, issue 7, July 1972, special issue: Twenty-fifth anniversary of the Association for Computing Machinery, p. 694.

„Would you like to know, for instance, to what extent higher mathematics is used in our two great industries? Well, it is never used at all. Having found this to be the case in my own experience, after quite a long career, I wondered whether I was not an exception; so I made enquiries, and I found that it was a general rule that neither engineers nor managers used higher mathematics in carrying out their duties. We must, of course, learn mathematics that goes without saying but the question is how much must we learn? Up to the present this point has nearly always been decided simply by professors, but it seems to me to be a question in which professors do not count very much, and in which they count less as they become more learned and more devoted to their work. They would like to pass on all their scientific knowledge and they find that their pupils always leave them too soon.“

—  Henri Fayol Developer of Fayolism 1841 - 1925

Source: Henri Fayol addressed his colleagues in the mineral industry, 1900, p. 909

„There is a noticeable general difference between the sciences and mathematics on the one hand, and the humanities and social sciences on the other.“

—  Noam Chomsky american linguist, philosopher and activist 1928

Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994, Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent, 1992
Context: There is a noticeable general difference between the sciences and mathematics on the one hand, and the humanities and social sciences on the other. It's a first approximation, but one that is real. In the former, the factors of integrity tend to dominate more over the factors of ideology. It's not that scientists are more honest people. It's just that nature is a harsh taskmaster. You can lie or distort the story of the French Revolution as long as you like, and nothing will happen. Propose a false theory in chemistry, and it'll be refuted tomorrow.

„Music is a mysterious mathematical process whose elements are part of Infinity. … There is nothing more musical than a sunset.“

—  Claude Debussy French composer 1862 - 1918

As quoted in The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music (1996) by Don Michael Randel
Context: Music is a mysterious mathematical process whose elements are part of Infinity. … There is nothing more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development in all that book which, alas, musicians read but too little — the book of Nature.