#thematic

You call a star a star, and say it is just a ball of matter moving on a mathematical course. But that is merely how you see it. By so naming things and describing them you are only inventing your own terms about them. And just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth. ↗

— Humphrey Carpenter

#invention #myths #mathematics

I studied mathematics which is the madness of reason. ↗

— Benjamin Moser

#mathematics #reason #biography

Some people believe in imaginary friends. I believe in imaginary numbers. ↗

— R.M. ArceJaeger

#math #mathematics #humor

Yet it is true—skin can mean a great deal. Mine means that any man may strike me in a public place and never fear the consequences. It means that my friends do not always like to be seen with me in the street. It means that no matter how many books I read, or languages I master, I will never be anything but a curiosity—like a talking pig or a mathematical horse. ↗

— Susanna Clarke

#racism #mathematics

The ingenious method of expressing every possible number using a set of ten symbols (each symbol having a place value and an absolute value) emerged in India. The idea seems so simple nowadays that its significance and profound importance is no longer appreciated ... The importance of this invention is more readily appreciated when one considers that it was beyod the two greatest men of antiquity, Archimedes and Apollonius. ↗

— Pierre Simon De Laplace

#mathematicians #mathematics #nullity #numbers #zero

Mark all mathematical heads which be wholly and only bent on these sciences, how solitary they be themselves, how unfit to live with others, how unapt to serve the world. ↗

— Roger Ascham

#heads #how #live #mark #mathematical

Mathematical discoveries, like springtime violets in the woods, have their season which no man can hasten or retard. ↗

— Janos Bolyai

#hasten #like #man #mathematical #retard

In mathematics the art of proposing a question must be held of higher value than solving it. ↗

— Georg Cantor

#held #higher #mathematics #must #proposing

I realise that in this undertaking I place myself in a certain opposition to views widely held concerning the mathematical infinite and to opinions frequently defended on the nature of numbers. ↗

— Georg Cantor

#concerning #defended #frequently #held #i

Mathematics as an expression of the human mind reflects the active will, the contemplative reason, and the desire for aesthetic perfection. Its basic elements are logic and intuition, analysis and construction, generality and individuality. ↗

— Richard Courant

#aesthetic #analysis #basic #basic elements #construction