#thematic

Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics. ↗

— Godfrey Harold Hardy

#first #mathematics #permanent #place #test

I'm no mathematician, so I'm stuck with the graphic representations. ↗

— Hugh Hopper

#i #mathematician #representations #stuck

...if there really is some day discovered a formula for all our desires and caprices - that is, an explanation of what they depend upon, by what laws they arise, how they develop, what they are aiming at in one case and in another and so on, that is a real mathematical formula - then, most likely, man will at once cease to feel desire, indeed, he will be certain to. For who would want to choose by rule? Besides, he will at once be transformed from a human being into an organ-stop or something of that sort; for what is a man without desires, without freewill and without choice, if not a stop in an organ? ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#free-will #mathematics

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

— Pierre Laplace

#atheist #god #humor #mathematics #napoleon

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

Proof is an idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself. ↗

— Arthur Eddington

#himself #idol #mathematician #proof #pure

My beautiful proof lies all in ruins. ↗

— Georg Cantor

#ruins #beauty

As the existence of a corps of professors of mathematics is peculiar to our navy, as well as an apparent, perhaps a real, anomaly, some account of it may be of interest. ↗

— Simon Newcomb

#anomaly #apparent #corps #existence #interest

The infinite in mathematics is alway unruly unless it is properly treated. ↗

— James Newman

#mathematics #properly #treated #unless #unruly

We have overcome the notion that mathematical truths have an existence independent and apart from our own minds. It is even strange to us that such a notion could ever have existed. ↗

— James Newman

#could #even #ever #existed #existence