To state a theorem and then to show examples of it is literally to teach backwards.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1988.
Loci: Convergence
Mathematical Quotations
Our library of quotations is organized alphabetically by surname of the author.
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R. Rivest, A. Shamir
The magic words are
squeamish
ossifrage.
[This sentence is
the result when a
coded message in
Martin Gardner's
column about
factoring the famous
number RSA-129 is
decoded.]
Raleigh, [Sir] Walter Alexander (1861-1922)
In an examination those who do not wish to know ask questions of those who cannot tell.
Recorde, Robert (1557)
To avoide the tediouse repetition of these woordes: is equalle to: I will settle as I doe often in woorke use, a paire of paralleles, or gemowe [twin] lines of one lengthe: =, bicause noe .2. thynges, can be moare equalle.
Reid, Thomas
It is the invaluable merit of the great Basel mathematician Leonard Euler, to have freed the analytical calculus from all geometric bounds, and thus to have established analysis as an independent science, which from his time on has maintained an unchallenged leadership in the field of mathematics.
Renan, Ernest
The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with facts for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.
Renyi, Alfred
If I feel unhappy, I do mathematics to become happy. If I am happy, I do mathematics to keep happy.
Richardson, Lewis Fry (1881 - 1953)
Another advantage of a mathematical statement is that it is so definite that it might be definitely wrong; and if it is found to be wrong, there is a plenteous choice of amendments ready in the mathematicians' stock of formulae. Some verbal statements have not this merit; they are so vague that they could hardly be wrong, and are correspondingly useless.
Riskin, Adrian
(after Edna St. Vincent Millay)
...Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare.
He turned away at once;
Far too polite to stare.
Rohault, Jacques (17th century)
It was by just such a hazard, as if a man should let fall a handful of sand upon a table and the particles of it should be so ranged that we could read distinctly on it a whole page of Virgil's Aenead.
Rosenlicht, Max (1949)
You know we all became mathematicians for the same reason: we were lazy.
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