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Mathematicians do not study objects, but the relations between objects.
Sep 11, 2025
It would be better for the true physics if there were no mathematicians on earth.
Mathematics is not only real, but it is the only reality.
Mathematics is the science which uses easy words for hard ideas.
But mathematics is the sister, as well as the servant, of the arts and is touched with the same madness and genius.
You know we all became mathematicians for the same reason: we were lazy.
Logic is the hygiene the mathematician practices to keep his ideas healthy and strong.
The mathematician has reached the highest rung on the ladder of human thought.
Mathematics is the handwriting on the human consciousness of the very Spirit of Life itself.
A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns.
God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world.
I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.
We never know what we are talking about.
Mathematics is the supreme judge; from its decisions there is no appeal.
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.
What is this frog and mouse battle among the mathematicians?
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.
If things are nice there is probably a good reason why they are nice: and if you do not know at least one reason for this good fortune, then you still have work to do.
Mathematics, however, is, as it were, its own explanation; this, although it may seem hard to accept, is nevertheless true, for the recognition that a fact is so is the cause upon which we base the proof.
Mathematicians have tried in vain to this day to discover some order in the sequence of prime numbers, and we have reason to believe that it is a mystery into which the human mind will never penetrate.
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.
If only I had the Theorems! Then I should find the proofs easily enough.
Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.
The good Christian should beware the mathematician and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell.
The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
Mathematics is no more computation than typing is literature.
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.
It should seem that it is easier to square the circle than to get round a mathematician.
It is not certain that everything is uncertain.
How happy the lot of the mathematician. He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve.
Mathematics, in the common lay view, is a static discipline based on formulas...But outside the public view, mathematics continues to grow at a rapid rate...the guid to this growth is not calculation and formulas, but an open ended search for pattern.
A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.
A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.
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.
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.
The mathematician's best work is art, a high perfect art, as daring as the most secret dreams of imagination, clear and limpid. Mathematical genius and artistic genius touch one another.
If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.
Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.
Mathematics compares the most diverse phenomena and discovers the secret analogies that unite them.
Mathematics is like draughts in being suitable for the young, not too difficult, amusing, and without peril to the state.
Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads; ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant general the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned, if at all.
The only way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics.
In the company of friends, writers can discuss their books, economists the state of the economy, lawyers their latest cases, and businessmen their latest acquisitions, but mathematicians cannot discuss their mathematics at all. And the more profound their work, the less understandable it is.
It is not the job of mathematicians... to do correct arithmetical operations. It is the job of bank accountants.
Mathematics is the tool specially suited for dealing with abstract concepts of any kind and there is no limit to its power in this field.
There is no branch of mathematics, however abstract, which may not some day be applied to phenomena of the real world.