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Why do we believe that in all matters the odd numbers are more powerful?
Sep 10, 2025
In mathematics alone each generations adds a new story to the old structure.
Few realize that the world of modern mathematics is rich with vivid images and provocative ideas.
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.
But mathematics is the sister, as well as the servant, of the arts and is touched with the same madness and genius.
Number theorists are like lotus-eaters -- having once tasted of this food they can never give it up.
We could use up two Eternities in learning all that is to be learned about our own world and the thousands of nations that have arisen and flourished and vanished from it. Mathematics alone would occupy me eight million years.
The control of large numbers is possible, and like unto that of small numbers, if we subdivide them.
Mathematics allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness.
I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren't beautiful, nothing is.
Mathematics is the only good metaphysics.
A mathematician's reputation rests on the number of bad proofs he has given.
If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.
Mathematics are well and good but Nature keeps dragging us around by the nose.
Mathematics is the supreme judge; from its decisions there is no appeal.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best, he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear his shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.
Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.
When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it.
I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.
Can you do Division? Divide a loaf by a knife - what's the answer to that?
He who can properly define and divide is to be considered a god.
Uneven numbers are the gods' delight.
Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.
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 purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.
There can be very little of present-day science and technology that is not dependent on complex numbers in one way or another.
Nixon's motto was, if two wrongs don't make a right, try three.
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.
It should seem that it is easier to square the circle than to get round a mathematician.
It seems to me now that mathematics is capable of an artistic excellence as great as that of any music, perhaps greater; not because the pleasure it gives (although very pure) is comparable, either in intensity or in the number of people who feel it, to that of music, but because it gives in absolute perfection that combination, characteristic of great art, of godlike freedom, with the sense of inevitable destiny; because, in fact, it constructs an ideal world where everything is perfect and yet true.
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.
A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.
To most outsiders, modern mathematics is unknown territory. Its borders are protected by dense thickets of technical terms; its landscapes are a mass of indecipherable equations and incomprehensible concepts. Few realize that the world of modern mathematics is rich with vivid images and provocative ideas.
Although he may not always recognize his bondage, modern man lives under a tyranny of numbers.
The trouble with integers is that we have examined only the very small ones. Maybe all the exciting stuff happens at really big numbers, ones we can't even begin to think about in any very definite way. Our brains have evolved to get us out of the rain, find where the berries are, and keep us from getting killed. Our brains did not evolve to help us grasp really large numbers or to look at things in a hundred thousand dimensions.
To all of us who hold the Christian belief that God is truth, anything that is true is a fact about God, and mathematics is a branch of theology.
If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again.
The concept of number is the obvious distinction between the beast and man.
If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.
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.
Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.
If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.
Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.
Two wrongs don't make a right.
Indeed, nowadays no electrical engineer could get along without complex numbers, and neither could anyone working in aerodynamics or fluid dynamics.
The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.
In most sciences one generation tears down what another has built and what one has established another undoes. In mathematics alone each generations adds a new story to the old structure.
It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity and the great ease which it has lent to computations put our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the grandeur of the achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity.
The theory of numbers is particularly liable to the accusation that some of its problems are the wrong sort of questions to ask. I do not myself think the danger is serious; either a reasonable amount of concentration leads to new ideas or methods of obvious interest, or else one just leaves the problem alone. "Perfect numbers" certainly never did any good, but then they never did any particular harm.