Math Is Like Quotes

Mathematics began to seem too much like puzzle solving. Physics is puzzle solving, too, but of puzzles created by nature, not by the mind of man.

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.

Math is like going to the gym for your brain. It sharpens your mind.

There's no reason to stereotype yourself. Doing math is like going to the gym - it's a workout for your brain and it makes you smarter.

A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns.

Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.

Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.

A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Mathematicians are like lovers. Grant a mathematician the least principle, and he will draw from it a consequence which you must also grant him, and from this consequence another.

Mathematical proofs, like diamonds, are hard and clear, and will be touched with nothing but strict reasoning.

A mathematician who can only generalise is like a monkey who can only climb up a tree, and a mathematician who can only specialise is like a monkey who can only climb down a tree. In fact neither the up monkey nor the down monkey is a viable creature. A real monkey must find food and escape his enemies and so must be able to incessantly climb up and down. A real mathematician must be able to generalise and specialise.

The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.

When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second.

When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.

The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colours or the words must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.

The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful.

Math is like water. It has a lot of difficult theories, of course, but its basic logic is very simple. Just as water flows from high to low over the shortest possible distance, figures can only flow in one direction. You just have to keep your eye on them for the route to reveal itself. That’s all it takes. You don’t have to do a thing. Just concentrate your attention and keep your eyes open, and the figures make everything clear to you. In this whole, wide world, the only thing that treats me so kindly is math.

Why are numbers beautiful? It’s like asking why is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony beautiful. If you don’t see why, someone can’t tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren’t beautiful, nothing is.

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.

Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learned.

Mathematics is like draughts in being suitable for the young, not too difficult, amusing, and without peril to the state.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

The only way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics.

The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.