Mathematics Quotes

math quotes
Quotations
about Math, Education, and Life
1. "There is no Royal Road to Geometry."

-- Euclid
2. "Mathematics is the Queen of the Sciences, and

number theory the queen of mathematics.."
-- Carl Friedrich Gauss
3. "We've all heard that a million monkeys

banging on a million typewriters will eventually
reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now,
thanks to the internet, we know this is not true."
-- Professor Robert Silensky
4. "One machine can do the work of fifty men. No

machine can do the work of one extraordinary
man."
5. "If I have seen farther than other men, it is

because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."
-- Isaac Newton
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (1 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM

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6. "When I get a little money, I buy books; and if

any is left, I buy food and clothes."
-- Erasmus
7. "The length of your education is less important

than its breadth, and the length of your life is less
important than its depth."
-- Marilyn vos Savant
8. "Your work is to discover your work and then

with all your heart to give yourself to it."
-- Buddha
9. "A mind is a fire to be kindled, not a vessel to

be filled."
-- Plutarch
10. "The greater part of our happiness or misery

depends on our dispositions, and not on our
circumstances."
-- Martha Washington
11. "The world is not given to you by your parents.

It is loaned to you by your children."
-- Kenyan proverb
12. "If a man hasn't found something he will die

for, he isn't fit to live."
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-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
13. "In a completely rational society, the best of us

would be teachers and the rest of us would have to
settle for something less, because passing
civilization along from one generation to the next
ought to be the highest honor and the highest
responsibility anyone could have."
-- Lee Iacocca
14. "What happens to you in life is not as

important as your attitude toward it."
15. "The secret of success is to have more good

days than bad days."
16. "The second most important job in the world,

second only to being a good parent, is being a
good teacher."
-- S.G. Ellis
17. "Small deeds done are better than great deeds

planned."
-- Peter Marshall.
18. "Forget committees. New, noble, world-

changing ideas always come from one person
working alone."
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-- H. Jackson Brown, Life's Little Instruction

Book
19. "The most important questions in life are, for

the most part, really only problems of probability."
--
Pierre Simon de La Place
20. "I do not teach, I relate."

-- Montaigne
21. "The more you know, the less sure you are."
-- Voltaire
22. "Well done is better than well said."

-- Ben Franklin
23. "Perfect numbers like perfect men are very

rare."
-- Descartes
24. "Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of

knowledge than any other that has been
bequeathed to us by human agency."
-- Descartes
25. "Cogito, Ergo Sum. I think, therefore I am."

-- Descartes

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26. "The reading of all good books is like a

conversation with the finest people of past
centuries."
-- Descartes
27. "We make a living by what we get, but we

make a life by what we give."
-- Winston Churchill
28. "Teaching high school, in addition to knowing

one's subject matter thoroughly and being able to
convey it to others, requires the grit of a long-
distance runner, the stamina of a boxer going 15
rounds, the temperament of a juggler and the street
smarts of a three-card monte dealer."
-- Professor Larry Cuban
29. "St. Augustine had good insight on the division

of labor between God and his children when he
wrote that we should work as if everything
depended on our efforts and pray as if everything
depended on the Almighty."
30. "If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 25 people in

his office at one time, all of whom had different
needs, and some of whom didn't want to be there
and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer,
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or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all

with professional excellence for nine months, then
he might have some conception of the classroom
teacher's job."
-- Colman McCarthy in The Washington Post
31. "Old principals never die, they just lose their

faculties."
32. "How you teach is more important than what

you teach."
33. "Life is too short for long division."
34. "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do

and I understand."
-- Chinese Proverb.
35. "Any teacher that can be replaced by a

computer should be replaced by a computer."
36. "Old math teachers never die, they just tend to

infinity."
37. "Old teachers never die; they just lose their

class."
38. "Natural numbers are better for your health."

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39. "Decimals have a point."
40. "Calculus has its limits."
41. "Geometry is just plane fun."
42. "Polar coordinates aren't just arctic fashions."
43. "The only time a question should be asked is

when all other possibilities of finding the answer
for yourself have been eliminated."
-- Ben Franklin
44. "A great memory does not make a mind, any

more than a dictionary is a piece of literature."
-- John H. Newman
45. "Old math teachers never die; they just pass

into another sphere."
46. "Knowledge exists to be imparted."

-- Emerson
47. "An educational system isn't worth a great deal

if it teaches young people how to make a living
and doesn't teach them how to live."
-- Charles Snitow.

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48. "Life is a ladder: Every step we take is either

up or down."
-- Brewster
49. "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a
lifetime."
50. "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you will realize why some
people think golf is exciting."
51. "Small minds discuss persons. Average minds

discuss events. Great minds discuss ideas. Really
great minds discuss mathematics."
52. "There is no branch of mathematics, however

abstract, which may not someday be applied to the
phenomena of the real world."
-- Nicolai Lobachevsky
53. "Logic is the anatomy of thought."

-- John Locke
54. "I tell them if they will occupy themselves

with the study of mathematics, they will find in it
the best remedy against the lusts of the flesh."

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-- Thomas Mann
55. "The mathematical rules of the universe are

visible to men in the form of beauty."
-- John Michel
56. "It is easier to square a circle than to get round

a mathematician."
-- de Morgan
57. "The union of the mathematician with the poet,

fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this
surely is the ideal."
-- William James
58. "We have to reinvent the wheel every once in a

while, not because we need a lot of wheels; but
because we need a lot of inventors."
-- Bruce Joyce
59. "It is impossible to be a mathematician without

being a poet in soul."
-- Sophia Kovalevskaya
60. "All the effects of nature are only

mathematical results of a small number of
immutable laws."
-- Pierre Simon de La Place
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61. "Music is the pleasure the human mind

experiences from counting without being aware
that it is counting."
-- Leibniz
62. "The essence of mathematics is not to make

simple things complicated, but to make
complicated things simple."
-- S. Gudder
63. "I recoil with dismay and horror at this

lamentable plague of functions which do not have
derivatives."
-- Charles Hermite
64. "The value of a problem is not so much

coming up with the answer as in the ideas and
attempted ideas it forces on the would be solver."
-- I.N. Herstein
65. "The infinite! No other question has ever

moved so profoundly the spirit of man."
-- David Hilbert
66. "The object of mathematics is the honor of the

human spirit.
-- C. Jacobi
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67. "One person's constant is another person's

variable."
-- Susan Gerhart
68. "People who don't count won't count."

-- Anatole France
69. "An educated mind is, as it were, composed of

all the minds of preceding ages."
-- de Fontenelle
70. "Do not worry too much about your difficulties

in mathematics, I can assure you that mine are still
greater."
-- Albert Einstein
71. "Mathematics is the gate and key to the

sciences."
-- Roger Bacon
72. "Logic is invincible, because in order to

combat logic it is necessary to use logic."
-- Pierre Boatroux
73. "Algebra is generous; she often gives more

than is asked of her."
-- D'Alembert

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74. "A mathematician is a blind man in a dark

room looking for a black cat which isn't there."
-- Charles Darwin
(quoted by Jaime Escalante in the film, STAND
and DELIVER)
75. "Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of

logical ideas."
-- Albert Einstein
76. "Imagination is more important than

knowledge."
-- Albert Einstein
77. "The advancement and perfection of

mathematics are intimately connected with the
prosperity of the state."
-- Napoleon
78. "The calculus is the greatest aid we have to the

application of physical truth in the broadest sense
of the word."
-- W. F. Osgood
79. "The notion of infinity is our greatest friend; it

is also the greatest enemy of our peace of mind."
-- James Pierpont
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80. "Numbers are the highest degree of

knowledge. It is knowledge itself."
-- Plato
81. "Geometry existed before creation."

-- Plato
82. "God ever geometrizes."

-- Plato
83. "Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here."

-- inscription above Plato's Academy
84. "Circles to square and cubes to double would

give a man excessive trouble."
-- Matthew Prior
85. "Wherever there is number, there is beauty."

-- Proclus
86. "The real voyage of discovery consists not in

seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."
-- Marcel Proust
87. "There is geometry in the humming of the

string."
-- Pythagoras

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88. "What would life be without arithmetic but a

scene of horrors?"
-- Sydney Smith
89. "A mathematician who is not also something

of a poet will never be a complete mathematician."
-- Karl Weierstrass.
90. "Mathematics is the science of definiteness, the

necessary vocabulary of those who know."
-- W. J. White
91. "The pursuit of mathematics is a divine

madness of the human spirit."
-- Alfred North Whitehead
92. "Algebra is the intellectual instrument which

has been created for rendering clear the
quantitative aspects of the world."
93. "The science of Pure Mathematics, in its

modern developments, may claim to be the most
original creation of the human spirit."
94. "Black holes are where God divided by zero."

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-- Steven Wright
95. "The best teacher is not the one who knows

most, but the one who is most capable of reducing
knowledge to that simple compound of the
obvious and wonderful ..."
-- H.L. Mencken
96. "Math class is tough."

-- Barbie Doll (1992]
97. "After years of finding mathematics easy, I

finally reached integral calculus and came up
against a barrier. I realized that this was as far as I
could go, and to this day I have never successfully
gone beyond it in any but the most superficial
way."
-- Isaac Asimov
98. "It is clear that the chief end of mathematical

study must be to make the students think."
-- John Wesley Young
99. "Only professional mathematicians learn

anything from proofs. Other people learn from
explanations."
-- Ralph Boas

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100. "I must study politics and war that my sons

may have liberty to study mathematics and
philosophy."
-- John Adams
101. "Mathematics is not a spectator sport!"

-- Karl J. Smith
102. "He who can properly define and divide is to

be considered a god."
-- Plato
103. "The Good Lord made all the integers; the

rest is man's doing."
-- Leopold Kronecker
104. "Medicine makes people ill, mathematics

makes them sad, and theology makes them sinful."
-- Martin Luther
105. "There are two ways to do great mathematics.

The first is to be smarter than everybody else. The
second way is to be stupider than everybody else --
but persistent."
-- Raoul Bott
106. "Mathematics is the life of the gods."

-- Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg)
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107. "He is unworthy of the name of man who is

ignorant of the fact that the diagonal of a square is
incommensurable with its side."
-- Plato
108. "Mathematics consists in proving the most

obvious thing in the least obvious way."
-- George Polya
109. "Mathematicians are like Frenchmen:

whatever you say to them they translate into their
own language and forthwith it is something
entirely different."
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
110. "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."
-- W.H. Auden
111. "Obvious is the most dangerous word in

mathematics."
-- E.T. Bell
112. "Mathematics is written for mathematicians."

-- Copernicus
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113. "I was x years old in the year x2"

-- Augustus De Morgan (when asked about his
age)
114. "Each problem that I solved became a rule

which served afterwards to solve other problems."
-- Rene Descartes
115. "It is not enough to have a good mind. The

main thing is to use it well."
-- Descartes
116. "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned

lies, and statistics."
-- Benjamin Disraeli
117. "Everything that is really great and inspiring

is created by the individual who can labor in
freedom."
-- Albert Einstein
118. "Science without religion is lame; religion

without science is blind."
-- Albert Einstein
119. "The mathematician has reached the highest

rung on the ladder of human thought."
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-- Havelock Ellis
120. "Whenever you can, count."

-- Sir Francis Galton
121. "Mathematics is a game played according to

certain simple rules with meaningless marks on
paper."
-- David Hilbert
122. "I'm very good at integral and differential

calculus, I know the scientific names of beings
animalculous; in short, in matters vegetable,
animal, and mineral, I am the very model of the
modern Major General."
-- W.S. Gilbert in the Pirates of Penzance
123. "Mathematics is the science of what is clear

by itself."
-- Carl Jacobi
124. "Perhaps the greatest paradox of all is that

there are paradoxes in mathematics."
-- Kasner and Newman
125. "No human investigation can be called real

science if it cannot be demonstrated
mathematically."
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-- Leonardo da Vinci
126. "Who has not been amazed to learn that the

function y = ex, like a phoenix rising from its own
ashes, is its own derivative?"
-- Francois le Lionnais
127. "All great therorems were discovered after

midnight."
-- Adrian Mathesis
128. "In mathematics, you don't understand things.

You just get used to them."
-- Johann von Neumann
129. "Life is good for only two things: discovering

mathematics and teaching mathematics."
-- Simeon Poisson
130. "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."
-- Tolstoy
131. "I'm sorry to say that the subject I most

disliked was mathematics. I have thought about it.
I think the reason was that mathematics leaves no
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room for argument. If you made a mistake, that

was all there was to it."
-- Malcolm X
132. "Mathematics is no more computation than

typing is literature."
-- John Allen Paulos
133. "There are no solved problems; there are only

problems that are more or less solved."
-- Henri Poincare
134. "The mathematician does not study pure

mathematics because it is useful; he studies it
because he delights in it and he delights in it
because it is beautiful."
-- Henri Poincare
135. "Beauty in mathematics is seeing the truth

without effort."
-- George Polya
136. "Teaching is the royal road to learning."

-- Jassamyn West
137. "We only think when confronted with a

problem."
-- John Dewey
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138. "The life of a mathematician is dominated by

an insatiable curiosity, a desire bordering on
passion to solve the problems he is studying."
-- Jean Dieudonne
139. "One's work may be finished some day, but

one's education never."
-- Alexandre Dumas
140. "Geometry is the foundation of all painting."

-- Albrecht Durer
141. "The arithmetic of life does not always have a

logical answer."
-- Inshirah Abdur-Rauf
142. "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell

where his influence stops."
-- Henry Brooks Adams
143. "I am not a teacher, I am an awakener."

-- Robert Frost
144. "It is the duty of all teachers, and of teachers

of mathematics in particular, to expose their
students to problems much more than to facts."
-- Paul Halmos

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145. "Mathematics should be fun."

-- Peter J. Hilton
146. "I write rhymes with addition and algebra,

mental geometry."
-- Ice-T
147. "There is a famous formula, perhaps the most

compact and famous of all formulas -- developed
by Euler from a discovery of de Moivre:
e(i * pi) + 1 = 0... It appeals equally to the mystic,
the scientist, the philosopher, the mathematician."
-- Edward Kasner and James Newman
148. "God exists since mathematics is consistent

and the devil exists since we cannot prove the
consistency."
-- Morris Kline
149. "Science is what we understand well enough

to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we
do."
-- Donald Knuth
150. "Be ashamed to die until you have won some

victory for humanity."
-- Horace Mann
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151. "Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I may

not remember. Involve me, and I'll understand."
-- Native American saying
152. "Statistics are human beings with the tears

wiped away."
-- Paul Brodeur
153. "Education is what survives when what has

been learned has been forgotten."
-- B. F. Skinner
154. "Calculus is the most powerful weapon of

thought yet devised by the wit of man."
-- W. B. Smith
155. "Nature's great book is written in

mathematics."
-- Galileo
156. "Numbers constitute the only universal

language."
-- Nathanael West
157. "To err is human, but to really foul things up

requires a computer."

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158. "The essence of mathematics is in its

freedom."
-- Georg Cantor
159. "Mathematics, in one view, is the science of

infinity."
-- P. Davis and R. Hersh
160. "From the very beginning of his education,

the child should experience the joy of discovery."
161. "Mathematics -- this may surprise or shock

some -- is never deductive in creation."
-- Paul Halmos
162. "Mathematicians create by acts of insights

and intuition. Logic then sanctions the conquests
of intuition."
-- Morris Kline
163. "I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of

this, which however the margin is not large
enough to contain."
-- Pierre de Fermat, refering to the result
known as Fermat's Last Theorem
164. "How can it be that mathematics, a product of

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human thought independent of experience, is so

admirably adapted to the objects of reality?"
-- Albert Einstein
165. "Our greatest natural resource is the minds of

our children."
-- Walt Disney
166. "The moving power of mathematical

invention is not reasoning but imagination."
-- Augustus de Morgan
167. "Since the mathematicians have invaded the

theory of relativity, I do not understand it myself
any more."
-- Albert Einstein
168. "Every human activity, good or bad, except

mathematics, must come to an end."
-- Paul Erdos
169. "We are all concerned about the future of

American education. But as I tell my students, you
do not enter the future -- you create the future. The
future is created through hard work."
-- Jaime Escalante
170. "I never got a pass mark in math ... Just

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imagine -- mathematicians now use my prints to

illustrate their books."
-- M.C. Escher
171. "Mighty is geometry; joined with art,

resistless."
-- Euripides
172. "Getting the degree meant more to me than an

NCAA title, being named All-American or
winning an Olympic gold medal."
-- Patrick Ewing
173. "The calculus is one of the greatest edifices

constructed by mankind."
-- Cambridge Conference on School
Mathematics
174. "Statistics are no substitute for judgment."

-- Henry Clay
175. "Alcohol and Calculus Don't Mix; Never

Drink and Derive."
176. "You don't have to teach people to be human.

You need to teach them how to stop being
inhuman."
-- Eldridge Cleaver
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177. "By the end of the first month of the 1995

session, each senator will have made more money
than any person who works 40 hours a week at
minimum wage for the entire year."
-- Bill Clinton
178. "The title which I most covet is that of

teacher. The writing of a research paper and the
teaching of freshman calculus, and everything in
between, falls under this rubric. Happy is the
person who comes to understand something and
then gets to explain it."
-- Marshall Cohen
179. "All mathematicians share ... a sense of

amazement over the infinite depth and the
mysterious beauty and usefulness of mathematics."
-- Martin Gardner
180. "Mathematical knowledge adds vigour to the

mind, frees it from prejudice, credulity, and
superstition."
-- John Arbuthnot
181. "The mathematical sciences particularly

exhibit order, symmetry, and limitations; and these
are the greatest forms of the beautiful."
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-- Aristotle
182. "My philosophy of learning, like my blood

type, is "be positive." Keeping student attitudes
positive is vital to their success in learning."
-- David Pleacher
183. "Besides language and music, mathematics is

one of the primary manifestations of the free
creative power of the human mind."
-- Hermann Weyl
184. "A diagram is worth a thousand proofs."

-- Dr. Carl E. Linderholm
185. "Where the pessimist sees a half-closed

interval, the optimist sees a half-open interval."
186. "Discovery lessons, students writing to learn

mathematics, the teaching of so-called general
problem solving concepts, field trips, math lab
lessons, alternate assessments, collaborative
partner tests, student presentations, and open-
ended problems should all be used sparingly. I use
some of them, but they have limited value. Pencil-
and-paper analytic solutions are the heart of
mathematics education."
--Michael Stueben in Twenty Years Before the
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Blackboard
187. "There are 10 types of people in the world --

Those who understand binary, and those who
don't."
188. "Character is what you are when no one is

watching."
189. "Morality, like art, consists in drawing a line

somewhere."
190. "The heart of education is education of the

heart."
191. "Education is worth little if it teaches only

how to make a living rather than how to make a
life."
-- Mary Hatwood Futrell
192. "I have never let my schooling interfere with

my education."
-- Mark Twain
193. "Life is 10% what happens to us and 90%

how we respond to it."
-- Charles Swindoll

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194. "If you find a path with no obstacles, it

probably doesn't lead anywhere."
-- Frank A. Clark
195. "Arithmetic is being able to count up to

twenty without taking off your shoes."
-- Mickey Mouse
196. "Although I am absolutely without training or

knowledge in the exact sciences, I often seem to
have more in common with mathematicians than
with my fellow artists."
-- M.C. Escher
197. "The only angle from which to approach a

problem is the TRY-Angle."
198. "Education is what you get from reading the

small print. Experience is what you get from not
reading it!"
199. "Newton's First Law: Somedays it's better to

stay in bed."
200. "Education's purpose is to replace an empty

mind with an open one."
-- Malcolm S. Forbes

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201. "The shortest distance between two points is

under construction."
-- Bill Sanderson
202. "He who laughs, lasts."

-- Mary Pettibone Poole
203. "Positive attitudes bring positive results.

Negative attitudes bring negative results."
204. "Geometry is the science of correct reasoning

on incorrect figures."
-- George Polya
205. "If there is a problem you can't solve, then

there is an easier problem you can't solve: find it."
-- George Polya
206. "A GREAT discovery solves a great problem

but there is a grain of discovery in any problem."
-- George Polya
207. "The first rule of discovery is to have brains

and good luck. The second rule of discovery is to
sit tight and wait till you get a bright idea."
-- George Polya
208. "There are many questions which fools can

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ask that wise men cannot answer."

-- George Polya
209. "I am too good for philosophy and not good

enough for physics. Mathematics is in between."
-- George Polya
210. "God wrote the universe in the language of

mathematics."
-- Galileo
211. "If people do not believe that mathematics is

simple, it is only because they do not realize how
complicated life is."
212. "Inspiration is the impact of a fact on a well-

prepared mind."
-- Louis Pasteur
213. "New facts often trigger new ideas."

-- Osborn
214. "What is now proved was once only

imagined."
-- Proverb.
215. "Men who say it cannot be done should not

interrupt those who are doing it."

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216. "If you go fishing you may not catch any fish.
If you don’t go fishing, you’ll never catch any
fish."
-- Alex F. Osborn
217. "Some people study all their life, and at their

death have learned everything but to think."
-- Demergue
218. "The past must be a springboard, not a sofa."

-- Harold MacMillan
219. "A problem well stated is half-solved."

-- John Dewey
220. "The best way to have a good idea is to have

lots of ideas."
-- Linus Pauling
221. "Daring ideas are like chessmen moved

forward; they may be beaten but they may start a
winning game."
-- Goethe
222. "Questions are creative acts of intelligence."

-- Frank Kingdon

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223. "A learned man is an idler who kills time by

study."
-- George Bernard Shaw
224. "Nothing was ever achieved without

enthusiasm."
-- Emerson
225. "Our minds are finite, and even in these

circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by
possibilities that are infinite; and the purpose of
human life is to grasp as much as we can out of
that infinitude."
226. "From the intrinsic evidence of his creation,

the Great Architect of the Universe now begins to
appear as a pure mathematician."
-- James Hopwood Jeans
227. "It is truth very certain that, when it is not in

one's power to determine what is true, we ought to
follow what is more probable."
-- Rene Descartes
228. "Thus mathematics may be defined as the

subject in which we never know what we are
talking about, nor whether what we are saying is
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true."
-- Bertrand Russell
229. "But in the new (math) approach, the

important thing is to understand what you're doing,
rather than to get the right answer."
-- Tom Lehrer
230. "But don't panic. Base 8 is just like Base 10

really. If you're missing two fingers."
-- Tom Lehrer
231. "Sufficient unto the day is the rigor thereof."

-- Eliakim H. Moore
232. "Mathematics is a body of knowledge, but it

contains no truths."
- - Morris Kline
233. "Mathematics is on the artistic side a creation

of new rhythms, orders, designs, harmonies, and
on the knowledge side, is a systematic study of
various rhythms, orders, designs, and harmonies."
-- William L. Schaaf
234. "Mathematics -- the subtle fine art."

-- Jamie Byrnie Shaw

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235. "The mathematician's patterns, like the

painter's or 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."
-- G. H. Hardy
236. "Mathematics is the science which uses easy

words for hard ideas."
-- Edward Kasner and James R. Newman
237. "Mathematics, even in its present and most

abstract state, is not detached from life. It is just
the ideal handling of the problems of life."
-- Cassius Jackson Keyser
238. "The merit of painting lies in the exactness of

reproduction. Painting is a science and all sciences
are based on mathematics. No human inquiry can
be a science unless it pursues its path through
mathematical exposition and demonstration."
-- Leonardo Da Vinci
239. "Experience is the hardest kind of teacher. It

gives you the test first, and the lesson afterward."
240. "Not everything that counts can be counted.

math quotes
Not everything that can be counted counts."

-- Albert Einstein
241. "I had been to school ... and could say the
multiplication table up to 6 x 7 = 35, and I don't
reckon I could ever get any further than that if I
was to live forever. I don't take no stock in
mathematics anyway."
-- Huckleberry Finn (by Mark Twain)
242. "The creator of the universe works in

mysterious ways. But he uses a base ten counting
system and likes round numbers."
-- Scott Adams
243. "42.7% of all statistics are made up on the

spot."
-- Steven Wright
244. "Five out of four people have trouble with

fractions."
-- Steven Wright
245. "Two and two the mathematician continues to

make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for
three, or the cry of the critic for five."
-- James McNeill Whistler

math quotes
246. "Angling may be said to be so like the

mathematics that it can never be fully learnt."
-- Izaak Walton
247. "Mathematics is the science which draws

necessary conclusions."
-- Benjamin Pierce
248. "Mechanics is the paradise of the

mathematical sciences because by means of it one
comes to the fruits of mathematics."
-- Leonardo da Vinci
249. "Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not

only truth, but supreme beauty."
-- Bertrand Russell
250. "Mathematics takes us still further from what

is human, into the region of absolute necessity, to
which not only the actual world, but every possible
world, must conform."
-- Bertrand Russell
251. "The harmony of the world is made manifest

in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and
all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied
in the concept of mathematical beauty."
-- Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
math quotes
252. "Numerical precision is the very soul of

science."
-- Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
253. "All the mathematical sciences are founded

on the relations between physical laws and laws of
numbers."
-- James Clerk Maxwell
254. "I have hardly ever known a mathematician

who was capable of reasoning."
-- Plato
255. "Histories make men wise; poets witty; the

mathematics, subtile; natural philosophy, deep;
moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend."
-- Francis Bacon
256. "A few honest men are better than numbers."

-- Oliver Cromwell
257. "Q.E.D. (Quod Erat Demonstrandum: Which

was to be proven.)"
-- Euclid
258. "Population, when unchecked, increases in a

geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an
math quotes
arithmetical ratio."
-- Thomas Robert Malthus
259. "The theory of probabilities is at bottom

nothing but common sense reduced to calculus."
-- Pierre de La Place
260. "Now don't be sad, 'cause two out of three

ain't bad."
-- Meatloaf
261. "Statistics means never having to say you're

certain."
262. "Without geometry life is pointless."
263. "The work of a teacher -- exhausting,

complex, idiosyncratic, never twice the same -- is
at its heart, an intellectual and ethical enterprise.
Teaching is the vocation of vocations..."
-- William Ayres
264. "Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent

place in the world for ugly mathematics."
-- Godfrey Harold Hardy, A Mathematician's
Apology (1940)
265. "We think it's about little techniques and

math quotes
tricks, but techniques only take you so far. We

need teachers who care about kids, who care about
what they teach, and who can communicate with
kids."
-- Parker I. Palmer, The Courage to Teach
266. "Physicists defer only to mathematicians, and

mathematicians defer only to God."
267. "Biologists think they are biochemists,

Biochemists think they are Physical Chemists,
Physical Chemists think they are Physicists,
Physicists think they are Gods, And God thinks he
is a Mathematician."
268. "Old math teachers never die -- they just lose

their functions."
269. "Ganas is all you need."

[Ganas is Spanish for passion, guts,
determination, desire]
-- Jaime Escalante
270. "I do not believe in the gifted. If [the

students] have ganas [Spanish for desire], I can
make them do it."
-- Jaime Escalante

math quotes
271. "Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-

nine per cent perspiration."
-- Thomas Alva Edison
272. "To teach is to learn."
273. "To learn, you must want to be taught."

-- Proverbs 12:1
274. "Failure is the opportunity to begin again,

more intelligently."
-- Henry Ford
275. "To infinity and beyond."

-- Buzz Lightyear
276. "I think, therefore I laugh."

-- John Allen Poulos
277. "I do not think -- therefore I am not."
278. "Philosophy is a game with objectives and no

rules. Mathematics is a game with rules and no
objectives."
279. "The good Christian should beware of

mathematicians and all those who make empty
prophecies. The danger already exists that

math quotes
mathematicians have made a covenant with the

devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the
bonds of Hell."
-- St. Augustine
280. "The lottery is a tax on people who are bad at

math."
281. "With an absurd oversimplification, the

'invention' of the calculus is sometimes ascribed to
two men, Newton and Leibniz. In reality, the
calculus is the product of a long evolution that was
neither initiated nor terminated by Newton and
Leibniz, but in which both played a decisive part."
-- Richard Courant and Herbert Robbins
282. "The whole apparatus of the calculus takes on

an entirely different form when developed for the
complex numbers."
-- Keith Devlin
283. "It is clear that Economics, if it is to be a

science at all, must be a mathematical science ...
simply because it deals with quantities... As the
complete theory of almost every other science
involves the use of calculus, so we cannot have a
true theory of Economics without its aid."

math quotes
-- W. S. Jevons
284. "The Mean Value Theorem is the midwife of

calculus - not very important or glamorous by
itself, but often helping to deliver other theorems
that are of major significance."
-- E. Purcell and D. Varberg
285. "But just as much as it is easy to find the

differential [derivative] of a given quantity, so it is
difficult to find the integral of a given differential.
Moreover, sometimes we cannot say with certainty
whether the integral of a given quantity can be
found or not."
-- Johann Bernoulli
286. "You live your life between your ears."

-- Bebe Moore Campbell
287. "'What's one and one and one and one and
one and one and one and one and one and one?' 'I
don't know,' said Alice. 'I lost count.' 'She can't do
addition,' said the Red Queen."
-- Lewis Carroll
288. "Education is the key to unlock the golden

door of freedom."
-- George Washington Carver
math quotes
289. "Infinity converts the possible into the

inevitable."
-- Norman Cousins
290. "Education is learning more than it is being

taught. It's the chemistry of curiosity exposed to
information. In that sense all of life is potentially
school. And even I can pass that."
-- Bob Guiccione, Jr.
291. "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."
-- Gosta Mittag-Leffler
292. "How many pizzas are consumed each year in

the United States? How many words have you
spoken in your life? How many different peoples
names appear in the New York Times each year?
How many watermelons would fit inside the U.S.
Capitol building? What is the volume of all the
human blood in the world?"
-- John A. Paulos
293. "[Paradoxes of the infinite arise] only when

we attempt, with our finite minds, to discuss the
math quotes
infinite, assigning to it those properties which we

give to the finite and limited;"
-- Galileo Galilei
294. "We must say that there are as many squares

as there are numbers."
-- Galileo Galilei
295. "The study of mathematics is apt to

commence in disappointment."
296. "Bees ... by virtue of a certain geometrical

forethought ... know that the hexagon is greater
than the square and the triangle, and will hold
more honey for the same expenditure of material."
-- Pappas
297. "The Universe is a grand book which cannot

be read until one first learns which it is composed.
It is written in the language of mathematics..."
-- Galilei Galileo
298. "I am persuaded that this method [for

calculating the volume of a sphere] will be of no
little service to mathematics. For I foresee that
once it is understood and established, it will be
used to discover other theorems which have not
math quotes
yet occurred to me, by other mathematicians, now

living or yet unborn."
-- Archimedes
299. "Education is indoctrination if you're white;

subjugation if you're black."
-- James Baldwin
300. "The purpose of education...is to create in a

person the ability to look at the world for himself,
to make his own decisions."
-- James Baldwin
301. "No set of principles can guarantee a recipe

for good practice (in teaching)."
-- D. Ball and T. Schroeder
302. "All of us are slaves to the prejudices of our

own dimension."
-- Thomas Banchoff (in introduction to
Flatland)
303. "The calculus is the story this [the Western]

world first told itself as it became the modern
world."
-- David Berlinski
304. "The definition of a limit is essentially his

math quotes
[Cauchy's] creation and is as much of a miracle as

those fantastic Swiss clocks of the period in which
hundreds of gleaming cogs are made to celebrate
not only the time and date but the phases of the
moon."
-- David Berlinski
305. "Everything tries to be round."

-- Black Elk
306. "Somebody came up to me after a talk I had

given, and say, 'You make mathematics seem like
fun.' I was inspired to reply, 'If it isn't fun, why do
it?'"
-- Ralph P. Boas
307. "Major paradoxes provide food for logical

thought for decades and sometimes centuries."
-- Nicholas Bourbaki
308. "Mathematics is the handwriting on the

human consciousness of the very Spirit of Life
itself."
-- Claude Bragdon
309. "The schools are a great theater in which we

play out the conflicts in the culture."
-- David Cohen and Barbara Neufeld
math quotes
310. "Learning without thought is labor lost;

thought without learning is perilous."
-- Confucius
311. "Starting in the seventeenth century, the

general theory of extreme values -- maxima and
minima -- has become one of the systematic
integrating principles of science."
-- Richard Courant and Herbert Robbins
312. "Every new body of discovery is

mathematical in form, because there is no other
guidance we can have."
-- Charles Darwin
313. "One of the endlessly alluring aspects of

mathematics is that its thorniest paradoxes have a
way of blooming into beautiful theories."
-- P.J. Davis
314. "Common integration is only the memory of

differentiation..."
-- A. De Morgan
315. "I see it, but I don't believe it." [On Cantor's
proof that the points in the unit interval were in
one-to-one correspondence with points in the unit
math quotes
square.]
-- Richard Dedekind
316. "Numbers are the free creation of the human

mind."
-- Richard Dedekind
317. "The linear-programming was -- and is --

perhaps the single most important real-life
problem."
-- Keith Devlin
318. "There can be very little of present-day

science and technology that is not dependent on
complex numbers in one way or another."
-- Keith Devlin
319. "Failure is instructive. The person who really

thinks learns quite as much from his failures as
from his successes."
-- John Dewey
320. "Education is not a preparation for life,

education is life itself."
-- John Dewey
321. "One of the most important concepts in all of

mathematics is that of function."
math quotes
-- T.P. Dick and C.M. Patton
322. "The life of a mathematician is dominated by

an insatiable curiosity, a desire bordering on
passion to solve the problems he is studying."
-- Jean Dieudonne
323. "When I was four years old they tried to test

my IQ. They showed me a picture of three oranges
and a pear. They asked me, 'which one is different
and does not belong?' They taught me different
was wrong."
-- Ani DiFranco
324. "you got to look outside-- your eyes-- you got

to think outside-- your brain-- you got to walk
outside-- your life-- to where the neighborhoods
change."
-- Ani DiFranco
325. "A book on the new physics, if not purely

descriptive of experimental work, must essentially
be mathematical."
-- P.A.M. Dirac
326. "Success isn't permanent, and failure isn't

fatal."
-- Mike Ditka
math quotes
327. "If there's no struggle, there's no progress."

-- Frederick Douglass
328. "How often have I said to you that when you

have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable, must be the truth?"
-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
329. "Education must not simply teach work - it

must teach life."
-- W.E.B. DuBois
330. "How is it that little children are so intelligent

and men so stupid? It must be education that does
it."
-- Alexandre Dumas
331. "One factor that has remained constant

through all the twists and turns of the history of
physical science is the decisive importance of the
mathematical imagination."
-- Freeman Dyson
332. "Proof is an idol before which the

mathematician tortures himself."
-- Sir Arthur Eddington

math quotes
333. "There ain't no rules around here! We're

trying to accomplish something!"
-- Thomas Edison
334. "The most beautiful thing we can experience

is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and
science."
-- Albert Einstein
335. "It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken

joy in creative expression and knowledge."
-- Albert Einstein
336. "The series of integers is obviously an

invention of the human mind, a self-created tool
which simplifies the ordering of certain sensory
experiences."
-- Albert Einstein
337. "I have no particular talent. I am only

inquisitive."
-- Albert Einstein
338. "In the beginning (if there was such a thing),

God created Newton’s laws of motion together
with the necessary masses and forces. This is all;
everything beyond this follows from the
development of appropriate mathematics methods
math quotes
by means of deduction."
-- Albert Einstein
339. "The grand aim of all science is to cover the

greatest number of empirical facts by logical
deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses
or axioms."
-- Albert Einstein
340. "The value of an education ... is not the

learning of many facts but the training of the mind
to think something that cannot be learned from
textbooks."
-- Albert Einstein
341. "Every great and commanding moment in the

annals of the world is the triumph of some
enthusiasm."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
342. "It will be another million years, at least,

before we understand the primes."
-- Paul Erdos
343. "Science and art sometimes can touch one

another, like two pieces of the jigsaw puzzle which
is our human life, and that contact may be made
across the boderline between the two respective
math quotes
domains."
-- M.C. Escher
344. "Father [M.C. Escher] had difficulty

comprehending that the working of his mind was
akin to that of a mathematician. He greatly
enjoyed the interest in his work by mathematicians
and scientists, ..."
-- George Escher
345. "For since the fabric of the universe is most

perfect and the work of a most wise Creator,
nothing at all takes place in the universe in which
some rule of maximum or minimum does not
appear."
-- Leonhard Euler
346. "After exponential quantities the circular

functions, sine and cosine, should be considered
because they arise when imaginary quantities are
involved in the exponential."
-- Leonhard Euler
347. "Mathematics serves as a handmaiden for the

explanation of the quantitative situations in other
subjects, such as economics, physics, navigation,
finance, biology and even the arts."

math quotes
-- H. F. Fehr
348. "On the other hand, it is impossible for a cube

to be written as a sum of two cubes or a fourth
power to be written as a sum of two fourth powers
or, in general for any number which is a power
greater than the second to be written as a sum of
two like powers. For this I have discovered a truly
wonderful proof, but the margin is too small to
contain it."
-- P. Fermat
349. "The journey for an education starts with a

childhood question."
-- David L. Finn
350. "Mathematics compares the most diverse

phenomena and discovers the secret analogies that
unite them."
-- Joseph Fourier
351. "The deep study of nature is the most fruitful

source of mathematical discoveries."
-- Jean-Baptist-Joseph Fourier
352. "What science can there be more noble, more

excellent, more useful for men, more admirably
high and demonstrative, than this of mathematics?"
math quotes
-- Benjamin Franklin
353. "A surprising proportion of mathematicians

are accomplished musicians. Is it because music
and mathematics share patterns that are beautiful?"
-- Martin Gardner
354. "One would be hard put to find a set of whole

numbers with a more fascinating history and more
elegant properties surrounded by greater depths of
mystery--and more totally useless--than the perfect
numbers."
-- Martin Gardner
355. "The most important outcome of education is

to help students to become independent of formal
education."
-- Paul E. Gray
356. "The only way to learn mathematics is to do

mathematics. That tenet is the foundation of the do-
it-yourself, Socratic, or Texas method, ..."
-- Paul Halmos
357. "A good stack of examples, as large as

possible, is indispensable for a thorough
understanding of any concept, and when I want to
learn something new, I make it my first job to
math quotes
build one."
-- Paul Halmos
358. "The purpose of computing is insight, not

numbers!"
-- R. W. Hamming
359. "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."
-- G. H. Hardy
360. "In most sciences one generation tears down

what another has built and what one has
established another undoes. In mathematics alone
each generation adds a new story to the old
structure."
-- Herman Henkel
361. "The struggle to become a better teacher

begins all over again with the advent of each new
class."
-- Martin Henley
362. "Before beginning [to try to prove Fermat's

Last Theorem] I should have to put in three years
of intensive study, and I haven't that much time to
math quotes
squander on a probable failure."

-- David Hilbert
363. "The discoveries of Newton have done more

for England and for the race, than has been done
by whole dynasties of British monarchs."
-- Thomas Hill
364. "The infinite in mathematics is alway unruly

unless it is properly treated."
-- Edward Kasner and James Newman
365. "Where there is matter, there is geometry."

-- Johannes Kepler
366. "The greater our knowledge increases, the

greater our ignorance unfolds."
-- John F. Kennedy
367. "...it is the greatest achievement of a teacher

to enable his students to surpass him."
-- John Kemeny
368. "The function of education is to teach one to

think intensively and to think critically.
Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true
education."
-- Martin Luther King, jr.
math quotes
369. "Among all of the mathematical disciplines

the theory of differential equations is the most
important... It furnishes the explanation of all those
elementary manifestations of nature which involve
time."
-- Sophus Lie
370. "The Mandelbrot set is the most complex

mathematical object known to mankind."
-- Benoit Mandelbrot
371. "The teacher who is attempting to teach

without inspiring the pupil to learn is hammering
on cold iron."
-- Horace Mann
372. "God created infinity, and man, unable to

understand infinity, had to invent finite sets."
-- Gian Carlo Rota
373. "We cannot hope that many children will

learn mathematics unless we find a way to share
our enjoyment and show them its beauty as well as
its utility."
-- Mary Beth Ruskai
374. "Three passions ... have governed my life: the

math quotes
longing for love, the search for knowledge, and the

unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind."
-- Bertrand Russell
375. "Zeno was concerned with three problems...

These are the problem of the infinitesimal, the
infinite, and continuity."
-- Bertrand Russell
376. "You get what you settle for."

-- Louise Sawyer, from the movie Thelma and
Louise
377. "Think! Think and wonder. Wonder and

think. How much water can 55 elephants drink?"
-- Dr. Seuss
378. "If you hold yourself up to your children,

hold yourself up as an object lesson and not as an
example."
379. "One can invent mathematics without

knowing much of its history. One can use
mathematics without knowing much, if any, of its
history. But one cannot have a mature appreciation
of mathematics without a substantial knowledge of
its history."
math quotes
-- Abe Shenitzer
380. "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 guide to this growth is not
calculation and formulas, but an open ended search
for pattern."
-- Lynn A. Steen
381. "What humans do with the language of

mathematics is to describe patterns..."
-- Lynn A. Steen
382. "There is a difference between not knowing

and not knowing yet."
-- Shelia Tobias
383. "Some mathematician, I believe, has said that

true pleasure lies not in the discovery of truth, but
in the search for it."
-- Tolstoy
384. "Out of the public schools comes the

greatness of the nation."
-- Mark Twain
385. "Calculators can only calculate - they cannot

math quotes
do mathematics."
-- John A. Van de Walle
386. "There is an astonishing imagination even in

the science of mathematics... We repeat, there is
far more imagination in the head of Archimedes
than in that of Homer."
-- Francios Voltaire
387. "Truth is much too complicated to allow

anything but approximations."
-- John von Neumann
388. "Symmetry, as wide or as narrow as you

define its meaning, is one idea by which man
through the ages has tried to comprehend and
create order, beauty and perfection."
-- Hermann Weyl
389. "I don't know if I should care for a man who

made life easy; I should want someone who made
it interesting."
-- Edith Wharton
390. "If I feel unhappy, I do mathematics to

become happy. If I am happy, I do mathematics to
keep happy."
-- Alfréd Rényi
math quotes
391. "A mathematician's reputation rests on the

number of bad proofs he has given."
-- A. S. Besicovitch
392. "Statistics: the mathematical theory of

ignorance."
-- Morris Kline
393. "Poetry is as exact a science as geometry."

-- Gustave Flaubert
394. "God is a child; and when he began to play,

he cultivated mathematics. It is the most godly of
man's games."
-- V. Erath
395. "There still remain three studies suitable for

free man. Arithmetic is one of them."
-- Plato
396. "Mathematics is like checkers in being

suitable for the young, not too difficult, amusing,
and without peril to the state."
-- Plato
397. "In the fall of 1972 President Nixon

announced that the rate of increase of inflation was
math quotes
decreasing. This was the first time a sitting

president used the third derivative to advance his
case for reelection."
-- Hugo Rossi
398. "Inspiration is needed in geometry, just as

much as in poetry."
-- Aleksandr Pushkin
399. "With me everything turns into mathematics."

-- Descartes
400. "The real danger is not that computers will

begin to think like men, but that men will begin to
think like computers."
-- Sydney J. Harris
401. "God not only plays dice. He also sometimes

throws the dice where they cannot be seen."
-- Stephen Hawking
402. "One should always generalize."

-- Carl Jacobi
403. "The greatest unsolved theorem in

mathematics is why some people are better at it
than others."
-- Adrian Mathesis
math quotes
404. "Logic doesn't apply to the real world."

-- Marvin Lee Minsky
405. "You know we all became mathematicians

for the same reason: we were lazy."
-- Max Rosenlicht
406. "Calculus required continuity, and continuity

was supposed to require the infinitely little; but
nobody could discover what the infinitely little
might be."
-- Bertrand Russell
407. "If you would make a man happy, do not add

to his possessions but subtract from the sum of his
desires."
-- Seneca
408. "We think in generalities, but we live in

details."
409. "Learning to solve problems is the principal

reason for studying mathematics."
-- National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
410. "High achievement always takes place in the

math quotes
framework of high expectation."

-- Jack Kinder
411. "To state a theorem and then to show

examples of it is literally to teach backwards."
-- E. Kim Nebeuts
412. "Man can not discover new oceans unless he

has the courage to lose sight of the shore."
-- Andre Gide
413. "Mathematics is not a deductive science –

that's a cliché. When you try to prove a theorem,
you don't just list the hypotheses, and then start to
reason. What you do is trial and error,
experimentation, guesswork."
-- Paul Halmos
414. "It's not the situation ... it's your reaction to

the situation."
-- Robert Conklin
415. "God grant me the serenity to accept the

things I cannot change, the courage to change the
things I can, and the wisdom to know the
difference."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr

math quotes
416. "Success does not consist in never making

mistakes, but in never making the same one a
second time."
417. "Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton

asked why."
-- Bernard Baruch
418. "In the book of life, the answers aren't in the

back."
-- Charlie Brown (Charles Schulz)
419. "The symbolism of algebra is its glory. But it

also is its curse."
-- William Betz
420. "I have always wished that my computer

would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish
has come true ... I no longer know how to use my
telephone."
-- Bjarne Stroustrup
421. "If we couldn't laugh, we just would go

insane. If we weren't all crazy, we would go
insane."
-- Jimmy Buffett

math quotes
422. "We use only 10% of our brains… Imagine

how smart we would be if we used the other 60%!"
-- Ellen DeGeneres
423. "The most powerful single idea in

mathematics is the notion of a variable."
-– K. Dewdney
424. "Home computers are being called upon to

perform many new functions, including the
consumption of homework formerly eaten by the
dog."
-- Doug Larson
425. "Only two things are infinite, the universe

and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the
former."
–- Albert Einstein
426. "You can not feed the hungry on statistics."

-- Heinrich Heine
427. "A word to the wise ain't necessary -- it's the

stupid ones that need our advice."
-- Bill Cosby
428. "When you are courting a nice girl an hour

seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot
math quotes
cinder a second seems like an hour. That's

relativity."
-- Albert Einstein
429. "Start every day off with a smile and get it

over with."
-- W.C. Fields
430. "I refuse to join any club that would have me

as a member."
-- Groucho Marx
431. "Hardware -- the parts of a computer that can

be kicked."
-- Jeff Pesis
432. "He who asks a question is a fool for five

minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a
fool forever."
-- Confucius
433. "Do the math: Count your blessings."
434. "Students learn more when they complete

homework that is graded, commented upon, and
discussed by their teachers. The teacher's feedback
-- reinforcing what has been done correctly and re-
teaching what has not -- is key."
math quotes
-- Nancy Protheroe
435. "If one puts an infinite number of monkeys in

front of typewriters, and lets them clap away, there
is a certainty that one of them will come out with
an exact version of the 'Iliad.'"
-- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
436. "A math student's best friend is BOB (the

Back Of the Book), but remember that BOB
doesn't come to school on test days."
-- Josh Folb
437. "The surest sign of wisdom is constant

cheerfulness."
-- Montaigne
438. "Do math and you can do anything."

-- N.C.T.M. slogan
439. "A mathematician is a device for turning

coffee into theorems."
-- Paul Erdos
440. "The pursuit of learning is not a piece of

content that can be taught. It is a value that
teachers model. Only teachers who are avid,
internally motivated learners can truly teach their
math quotes
students the joy of learning."

-- Martin Haberman
441. "It isn't enough just to learn -- one must learn

how to learn, how to learn without classrooms,
without teachers, without textbooks. Learn, in
short, how to think and analyze and decide and
discover and create."
-- Michael Bassis
442. "It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is

that they can't see the problem."
-- G. K. Chesterton
443. "Mathematics is an independent world

created out of pure intelligence."
-- William Wordsworth
444. "Read Euler: he is our master in everything."

-- Pierre-Simon de Laplace
445. "I advise my students to listen carefully the

moment they decide to take no more mathematics
courses. They might be able to hear the sound of
closing doors."
-- James Caballero
446. "Charlie Chaplin once allegedly said to

math quotes
Albert Einstein: "The people applaud me because

everyone understands me, and they applaud you
because no one understands you."
447. "Share knowledge, not answers."
448. "Any fool can know. The point is to

understand."
-- Albert Einstein
449. "It has been said that Newton was born in the
same year that Galileo died because God wanted
someone of that caliber on Earth at all times."
450. "Light travels faster than sound. This is why

some people appear bright until you hear them
speak."
451. "Happiness is a state of the heart. It is not a

function of circumstances."
452. "Baseball is 90% mental. The other half is

physical."
-- Yogi Berra
453. "Mathematics is the art of giving the same

name to different things."
-- J. H. Poincare

math quotes
454. "Mathematics is like checkers in being

suitable for the young, not too difficult, amusing,
and without peril to the state."
-- Plato
455. "The difference between an introvert

mathematician and an extrovert mathematicians is:
An introvert mathematician looks at his shoes
while talking to you. An extrovert mathematician
looks at your shoes."
456. "Golden rule of deriving: never trust any

result that was proved after 11 PM."
457. "If I have not seen as far as others, it is

because giants were standing on my shoulders."
-- Hal Abelson
458. "The reason that every major university

maintains a department of mathematics is that it is
cheaper to do this than to institutionalize all those
people."
459. "Analytic Geometry immortalized the name

of Descartes, and constitutes the greatest single
step ever made in the progress of the exact
sciences."
math quotes
-- John Stuart Mill
460. "Old Saying: If you really want to learn

something, teach it to someone.
New Saying: If you really want to learn
something, teach it to a computer."
461. "The shortest distance between two pixels on

a computer screen is not necessarily a straight line"
462. "Progress has little to do with speed, but

much to do with direction."
463. "The sacred writings excepted, no Greek has

been so much read and so variously translated as
Euclid."
-- Augustus De Morgan
464. "Euler -- The unsurpassed master of analytic

invention."
-- Richard Courant
465. "Number rules the universe."

-- Pythagoras
466. "Nature and nature's laws lay hid in the night;

God said, 'Let Newton be' and all was light."
-- Alexander Pope

math quotes
467. "Do not then train boys to learning by force

and hardness; but direct them to it by what amuses
their minds."
-- Plato
468. "The great thing in this world is not so much

where we are, but in what direction we are
moving."
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
469. "Without the assistance of the Divine Being...

I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot
fail."
-- Abraham Lincoln
470. "I can teach you anything, once I have your

undivided attention."
471. "You can and will learn if you come to my

class."
472. "Optimism is the one quality more associated

with success and happiness than any other." --
Brian Tracy
473. "Laughter is a shock absorber that eases the

blows of life."

math quotes
474. "A goal without a plan is just a wish." --

Antoine de Saint-Exupery
475. "Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'." -- Billy

Preston
476. "Perhaps the greatest shortcoming as a

society is in the low expectations we set for both
ourselves and our children." -- Jim Rubillo
477. "Students don't care how much you know

until they know how much you care." -- Mrs.
Theiler
478. "Too many students give up upon

encountering difficulties in math, when just trying
a few strategies could mean the difference between
succeeding and failing." -- Arthur E. Schwartz
Handley Math Page

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math quotes

1. "There is no Royal Road to Geometry."

2. "Mathematics is the Queen of the Sciences, and

3. "We've all heard that a million monkeys

4. "One machine can do the work of fifty men. No

5. "If I have seen farther than other men, it is

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6. "When I get a little money, I buy books; and if

7. "The length of your education is less important

8. "Your work is to discover your work and then

9. "A mind is a fire to be kindled, not a vessel to

10. "The greater part of our happiness or misery

11. "The world is not given to you by your parents.

12. "If a man hasn't found something he will die

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

13. "In a completely rational society, the best of us

14. "What happens to you in life is not as

15. "The secret of success is to have more good

16. "The second most important job in the world,

17. "Small deeds done are better than great deeds

18. "Forget committees. New, noble, world-

-- H. Jackson Brown, Life's Little Instruction

19. "The most important questions in life are, for

20. "I do not teach, I relate."

22. "Well done is better than well said."

23. "Perfect numbers like perfect men are very

24. "Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of

25. "Cogito, Ergo Sum. I think, therefore I am."

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26. "The reading of all good books is like a

27. "We make a living by what we get, but we

28. "Teaching high school, in addition to knowing

29. "St. Augustine had good insight on the division

30. "If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 25 people in

or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all

31. "Old principals never die, they just lose their

32. "How you teach is more important than what

33. "Life is too short for long division."

34. "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do

35. "Any teacher that can be replaced by a

36. "Old math teachers never die, they just tend to

37. "Old teachers never die; they just lose their

38. "Natural numbers are better for your health."

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39. "Decimals have a point."

40. "Calculus has its limits."

41. "Geometry is just plane fun."

42. "Polar coordinates aren't just arctic fashions."

43. "The only time a question should be asked is

44. "A great memory does not make a mind, any

45. "Old math teachers never die; they just pass

46. "Knowledge exists to be imparted."

47. "An educational system isn't worth a great deal

http://www.doe.virginia.gov/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/mquotes.html (7 of 78)3/27/2008 12:32:54 AM

48. "Life is a ladder: Every step we take is either

51. "Small minds discuss persons. Average minds

52. "There is no branch of mathematics, however

53. "Logic is the anatomy of thought."

54. "I tell them if they will occupy themselves

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