#mathematics

Your Excellency, I have no need of this hypothesis. ↗

— Pierre Laplace

#atheist #god #humor #mathematics #napoleon

We have a closed circle of consistency here: the laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can then encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws of physics that gave rise to it. ↗

— Roger Penrose

#mathematics #physics #science #inspirational

I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly! ↗

— Richard P. Feynman

#humor #intelligence #mathematics #statistics #education

In mathematics we have long since drawn the rein, and given over a hopeless race. ↗

— Charles Babbage

#given #hopeless #long #mathematics #over

The problem is that no ethical system has ever achieved consensus. Ethical systems are completely unlike mathematics or science. This is a source of concern. ↗

— Daniel Dennett

#completely #concern #consensus #ethical #ever

Mathematics are the result of mysterious powers which no one understands, and which the unconscious recognition of beauty must play an important part. Out of an infinity of designs a mathematician chooses one pattern for beauty's sake and pulls it down to earth. ↗

— Marston Morse

#chooses #designs #down #down to earth #earth

The thing I want you especially to understand is this feeling of divine revelation. I feel that this structure was "out there" all along I just couldn't see it. And now I can! This is really what keeps me in the math game-- the chance that I might glimpse some kind of secret underlying truth, some sort of message from the gods. ↗

— Paul Lockhart

#math #mathematics #art

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

It might seem that the empirical philosopher is the slave of his material, but that the pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#mathematician #music #musician #philosopher #philosophy