I have always hated machinery, and the only machine I ever understood was a wheelbarrow, and that but imperfectly.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Adieu, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1977.
Loci: Convergence
Mathematical Quotations
Our library of quotations is organized alphabetically by surname of the author.
Shaw, George Bernard (1856-1950)
Tyndall declared that he saw in Matter the promise and potency of all forms of life, and with his Irish graphic lucidity made a picture of a world of magnetic atoms, each atom with a positive and a negative pole, arranging itself by attraction and repulsion in orderly crystalline structure. Such a picture is dangerously fascinating to thinkers oppressed by the bloody disorders of the living world. Craving for purer subjects of thought, they find in the contemplation of crystals and magnets a happiness more dramatic and less childish than the happiness found by mathematicians in abstract numbers, because they see in the crystals beauty and movement without the corrupting appetites of fleshly vitality.
Shaw, J. B.
The mathematician is fascinated with the marvelous beauty of the forms he constructs, and in their beauty he finds everlasting truth.
Simmons, G. F.
Mathematical rigor is like clothing; in its style it ought to suit the occasion, and it diminishes comfort and restrains freedom of movement if it is either too loose or too tight.
Slaught, H.E.
[E.H.] Moore was presenting a paper on a highly technical topic to a large gathering of faculty and graduate students from all parts of the country. When half way through he discovered what seemed to be an error (though probably no one else in the room observed it). He stopped and re-examined the doubtful step for several minutes and then, convinced of the error, he abruptly dismissed the meeting -- to the astonishment of most of the audience. It was an evidence of intellectual courage as well as honesty and doubtless won for him the supreme admiration of every person in the group -- an admiration which was in no wise diminished, but rather increased, when at a later meeting he announced that after all he had been able to prove the step to be correct.
Smith, Adam
I have no faith in political arithmetic.
Smith, David Eugene
One merit of mathematics few will deny: it says more in fewer words than any other science. The formula, e^(i*pi) = -1 expressed a world of thought, of truth, of poetry, and of the religious spirit "God eternally geometrizes."
Smith, Henry John Stephen (1826 - 1883)
[His toast:]
Pure mathematics,
may it never be of
any use to anyone.
Smith, Henry John Stephen (1826-1883)
It is the peculiar beauty of this method, gentlemen, and one which endears it to the really scientific mind, that under no circumstance can it be of the smallest possible utility.
Soddy, Frederick (1877-1956)
Four circles to the kissing come,
The smaller are the benter.
The bend is just the inverse of
The distance from the centre.
Though their intrigue left Euclid dumb
There's now no need for rule of thumb.
Since zero bend's a dead straight line
And concave bends have minus sign,
The sum of squares of all four bends
Is half the square of their sum.
Somerville, Mary (1780-1872)
Nothing has afforded me so convincing a proof of the unity of the Deity as these purely mental conceptions of numerical and mathematical science which have been by slow degrees vouchsafed to man, and are still granted in these latter times by the Differential Calculus, now superseded by the Higher Algebra, all of which must have existed in that sublimely omniscient Mind from eternity.