#mathematics

It is hard to know what you are talking about in mathematics, yet no one questions the validity of what you say. There is no other realm of discourse half so queer. ↗

— James Newman

#discourse #half #hard #know #mathematics

I'm sure that some of them will be very hard and I'll have a sense of achievement again, but nothing will mean the same to me - there's no other problem in mathematics that could hold me the way that this one did. ↗

— Andrew Wiles

#again #could #did #hard #hold

I should attempt to treat human vice and folly geometrically... the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, follow from the necessity and efficacy of nature... I shall, therefore, treat the nature and strength of the emotion in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes, and solids. ↗

— Baruch Spinoza

#philosophy #anger

The oldest problem in economic education is how to exclude the incompetent. A certain glib mastery of verbiage-the ability to speak portentously and sententiously about the relation of money supply to the price level-is easy for the unlearned and may even be aided by a mildly enfeebled intellect. The requirement that there be ability to master difficult models, including ones for which mathematical competence is required, is a highly useful screening device. ↗

— John Kenneth Galbraith

#mathematics #education

I had been to school most all the time, and could spell, and read, and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don't take no stock in mathematics, anyway. ↗

— Mark Twain

#humor #mathematics #school #education

I lose faith in mathematics, logical and rigid. What with those that even zero doesn’t accept? ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#acceptance #dejan-stojanovic #faith #literature #literature-quotes

De mathematen worden samen met de natuur- en scheikundigen, de medicijnmannen van de twintigste eeuw genoemd, waarbij velen zich dan nog zeer argwanend afvragen of deze profeten van de nieuwe tijd het geluk van de mensheid voor ogen hebben. Het is stellig ten dele vanwege het gebruik van deze symbolen dat men de wiskunde gaat beschouwen als een geheimtaal van ingewijden, die zich aldus een eigen wereld scheppen waarin het moeiljk verkeren is, indien men niet van jongs af aan zijn weg daarin heeft gevonden. ↗

— Theodorus Martinus Eduard Liket

#men

I hate math. It's hard, it's stupid, and it's nature's way of separating spinsters from women who end up breeding. ↗

— Douglas Coupland

#nature

If you can't test it, it's not theorics -- it's metatheorics. A branch of philosophy. So, if you want to think of it this way, our test equipment is what defines the boundary separating theorics from philosophy. ↗

— Neal Stephenson

#philosophy #religion #science #religion

There cannot be a language more universal and more simple, more free from errors and obscurities...more worthy to express the invariable relations of all natural things [than mathematics]. [It interprets] all phenomena by the same language, as if to attest the unity and simplicity of the plan of the universe, and to make still more evident that unchangeable order which presides over all natural causes ↗

— Joseph Fourier

#mathematics #religion #science #nature