When we encounter a natural style we are always surprised and delighted, for we thought to see an author and found a man.
W. H. Auden and L. Kronenberger (eds.) The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York: Viking Press, 1966.
Loci: Convergence
Mathematical Quotations
Our library of quotations is organized alphabetically by surname of the author.
Aiken, Conrad
[At a musical
concert:]
... the music's pure
algebra of
enchantment.
Allen, Woody
Standard mathematics has recently been rendered obsolete by the discovery that for years we have been writing the numeral five backward. This has led to reevaluation of counting as a method of getting from one to ten. Students are taught advanced concepts of Boolean algebra, and formerly unsolvable equations are dealt with by threats of reprisals.
Anglin, W.S.
Mathematics is not a careful march down a well-cleared highway, but a journey into a strange wilderness, where the explorers often get lost. Rigour should be a signal to the historian that the maps have been made, and the real explorers have gone elsewhere.
Anonymous
Referee's report: This paper contains much that is new and much that is true. Unfortunately, that which is true is not new and that which is new is not true.
Anonymous
Defendit numerus: There is safety in numbers.
Anonymous
Like the crest of a peacock, like the gem on the head of a snake, so is mathematics at the head of all knowledge.
Anonymous
If thou art able, O stranger, to find out all these things and gather them together in your mind, giving all the relations, thou shalt depart crowned with glory and knowing that thou hast been adjudged perfect in this species of wisdom.
Arbuthnot, John
The Reader may here observe the Force of Numbers, which can be successfully applied, even to those things, which one would imagine are subject to no Rules. There are very few things which we know, which are not capable of being reduc'd to a Mathematical Reasoning; and when they cannot it's a sign our knowledge of them is very small and confus'd; and when a Mathematical Reasoning can be had it's as great a folly to make use of any other, as to grope for a thing in the dark, when you have a Candle standing by you.
Aristophanes (ca 444 - 380 BC)
Meton: With the
straight ruler I set
to work
To make
the circle
four-cornered.
Aristotle
To Thales the primary question was not what do we know, but how do we know it.