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It would be better for the true physics if there were no mathematicians on earth.
Sep 10, 2025
Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.
To understand this for sense it is not required that a man should be a geometrician or a logician, but that he should be mad.
Statistics: the mathematical theory of ignorance.
Pure mathematics, may it never be of any use to anyone.
Mathematics is the science which uses easy words for hard ideas.
I tell them that if they will occupy themselves with the study of mathematics they will find in it the best remedy against the lusts of the flesh.
Here at Wisconsin we didn't get an undergraduate course in mathematical logic until the '60s.
What seems certain is that Pythagoras developed the idea of mathematical logic. He realized that numbers exist independently of the tangible world and therefore their study was untainted by inaccuracies of perception. This meant he could discover truths which were independent of opinion of prejudice and which were more absolute than any previous knowledge.
Logic is the hygiene the mathematician practices to keep his ideas healthy and strong.
If I feel unhappy, I do mathematics to become happy. If I am happy, I do mathematics to keep happy.
When introduced at the wrong time or place, good logic may be the worst enemy of good teaching.
We never know what we are talking about.
Since the mathematicians have invaded the theory of relativity I do not understand it myself any more.
Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper.
Mathematics consists in proving the most obvious thing in the least obvious way.
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 formal manipulator in mathematics often experiences the discomforting feeling that his pencil surpasses him in intelligence.
You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order symmetry and limitations; and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about mathematics is that it is so surprising.
I had a feeling once about mathematics - that I saw it all... but it was after dinner and I let it go.
Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.
I know that two and two make four - and should be glad to prove it too if I could - though I must say if by any sort of process I could convert 2 and 2 into five it would give me much greater pleasure.
Six is a number perfect in itself, and not because God created the world in six days; rather the contrary is true. God created the world in six days because this number is perfect, and it would remain perfect, even if the work of the six days did not exist.
The mathematician is entirely free, within the limits of the imagination, to construct what worlds he pleases.
Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.
Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.
One of the big misapprehensions about mathematics that we perpetrate in our classrooms is that the teacher always seems to know the answer to any problem that is discussed.
The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
It is not certain that everything is uncertain.
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
It is all about numbers. It is all about sequence. It's the mathematical logic of being alive. If everything kept to its normal progression, we would live with the sadness-cry and then walk-but what really breaks us cleanest are the losses that happen out of order.
Russell's books should be bound in two colours, those dealing with mathematical logic in red - and all students of philosophy should read them; those dealing with ethics and politics in blue - and no one should be allowed to read them.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
As for everything else, so for a mathematical theory: beauty can be perceived but not explained.
The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful.
Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.
Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.
A fist is more than the sum of its fingers.
The world is more than the sum of its suffering.
A painting is more than the sum of its parts
The whole is more than the sum of its parts.
I think part of the appeal of mathematical logic is that the formulas look mysterious - you write backward Es!
There are three kinds of people: those who can count, and those who cannot.
Mathematics is like draughts in being suitable for the young, not too difficult, amusing, and without peril to the state.
Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.
Ordinary language is totally unsuited for expressing what physics really asserts, since the words of everyday life are not sufficiently abstract. Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.