I cannot do it without comp[u]ters.
The Winter's Tale.
Loci: Convergence
Mathematical Quotations
Our library of quotations is organized alphabetically by surname of the author.
Chesterton, G. K. (1874 - 1936)
Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.
Christie, Agatha
I continued to do arithmetic with my father, passing proudly through fractions to decimals. I eventually arrived at the point where so many cows ate so much grass, and tanks filled with water in so many hours. I found it quite enthralling.
Christie, Agatha
"I think you're begging the question," said Haydock, "and I can see looming ahead one of those terrible exercises in probability where six men have white hats and six men have black hats and you have to work it out by mathematics how likely it is that the hats will get mixed up and in what proportion. If you start thinking about things like that, you would go round the bend. Let me assure you of that!"
Churchill, Sir Winston Spencer (1874-1965)
I had a feeling once about Mathematics - that I saw it all. Depth beyond depth was revealed to me - the Byss and Abyss. I saw - as one might see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor's Show - a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly why it happened and why the tergiversation was inevitable but it was after dinner and I let it go.
Churchman, C. W.
The measure of our intellectual capacity is the capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better and better problems.
Cocteau
The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its freedom.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)
...from the time of Kepler to that of Newton, and from Newton to Hartley, not only all things in external nature, but the subtlest mysteries of life and organization, and even of the intellect and moral being, were conjured within the magic circle of mathematical formulae.
Comte, Auguste (1798-1857)
C'este donc par
l'etude des
mathematiques, et
seulement par elle,
que l'on peut se
faire une idee juste
et approfondie de ce
que c'est qu'une
science.
[It is through the
study of
mathematics, and
only through it,
that one can form a
fair and
comprehensive idea
of what science is.]
Conrad, Joseph
Don't talk to me of your Archimedes' lever. He was an absentminded person with a mathematical imagination. Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.
Coolidge, Julian Lowell (1873 - 1954)
[Upon proving that the best betting strategy for "Gambler's Ruin" was to bet all on the first trial.]
It is true that a man who does this is a fool. I have only proved that a man who does anything else is an even bigger fool.