quotations about mathematics
A Mathematician who is not also something of a poet will never be a complete mathematician.
KARL WEIERSTRASS
attributed, Journal of Applied Mechanics, 1939
Now the denominator ... why don't they just call it the bottom number? The denominator ... that sounds like a Schwarzenegger movie doesn't it? [impersonating Arnold Schwarzenegger] I am the Denominator. I'll give your leg a compound fraction!
TIM ALLEN
Home Improvement
Unfortunately, mathematics is always encumbered by the repetition in text-books of numberless subsidiary propositions, whose importance has been lost by their absorption into the role of particular cases of more general truths--and, as we have already insisted, generality is the soul of mathematics.
ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD
An Introduction to Mathematics
In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
"Tips for Teens", Social Studies
I had a feeling once about Mathematics, that I saw it all--Depth beyond depth was revealed to me--the Byss and the Abyss. I saw, as one might see the transit of Venus--or even the Lord Mayor's Show, a quantity passing through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly how it happened and why the tergiversation was inevitable: and how the one step involved all the others. It was like politics. But it was after dinner and I let it go!
WINSTON CHURCHILL
My Early Life: A Roving Commission
Mathematicians deal with large numbers sometimes, but never in their income.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Prelude to Foundation
Mathematics does not exercise the judgment, and if too exclusively pursued, may leave the student very ill qualified for moral reasoning.
R. WHATELY
attributed, Day's Collacon