Random Quotation

Egrafov, M.

If you ask mathematicians what they do, you always get the same answer. They think. They think about difficult and unusual problems. They do not think about ordinary problems: they just write down the answers.

Mathematics Magazine, v. 65 no. 5, December 1992.

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Mathematical Quotations

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Babbage, Charles (1792-1871)

I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam.

Babbage, Charles (1792-1871)

On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

Babbage, Charles (1792-1871)

Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.

Charles Babbage (1864)

Every game of skill is susceptible of being played by an automaton.

Charles Babbage

[To the poet Tennyson:]
Sir: In your otherwise beautiful poem 'The Vision of Sin' there is a verse which reads -- 'Every moment dies a man, Every moment one is born.' It must be manifest that if this were true, the population of the world would be at a standstill ... I would suggest that in the next edition of your poem you have it read -- 'Every moment dies a man, Every moment 1 1/16 is born.' The actual figure is so long I cannot get it onto a line, but I believe the figure 1 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry.

Bacon, Roger

In the mathematics I can report no deficience, except that it be that men do not sufficiently understand the excellent use of the pure mathematics, in that they do remedy and cure many defects in the wit and faculties intellectual. For if the wit be too dull, they sharpen it; if too wandering, they fix it; if too inherent in the sense, they abstract it. So that as tennis is a game of no use in itself, but of great use in respect it maketh a quick eye and a body ready to put itself into all postures; so in the mathematics, that use which is collateral and intervenient is no less worthy than that which is principal and intended.

Bacon, Roger

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

Bacon, Sir Francis (1561-1626)

And as for Mixed Mathematics, I may only make this prediction, that there cannot fail to be more kinds of them, as nature grows further disclosed.

Bagehot, Walter

Life is a school of probability.

Baker, H. F.

[On the concept of group:]
... what a wealth, what a grandeur of thought may spring from what slight beginnings.

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