Random Quote

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"Zeeman, E Christopher (1925 - )
Technical skill is mastery of complexity while creativity is mastery of simplicity.
Catastrophe Theory, 1977."

"Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas.
W.H. Auden and L. Kronenberger The Viking Book of Aphorisms, New York: Viking Press, 1966."

"Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
An Introduction to Mathematics."

"Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
No Roman ever died in contemplation over a geometrical diagram.
[A reference to the death of Archimedes.]
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972."

"Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century.
The Aims of Education."

"Whitehead, Alfred North (1861 - 1947)
The science of pure mathematics ... may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.
Science and the Modern World."

"Warner, Sylvia Townsend
For twenty pages perhaps, he read slowly, carefully, dutifully, with pauses for self-examination and working out examples. Then, just as it was working up and the pauses should have been more scrupulous than ever, a kind of swoon and ecstasy would fall on him, and he read ravening on, sitting up till dawn to finish the book, as though it were a novel. After that his passion was stayed; the book went back to the Library and he was done with mathematics till the next bout. Not much remained with him after these orgies, but something remained: a sensation in the mind, a worshiping acknowledgment of something isolated and unassailable, or a remembered mental joy at the rightness of thoughts coming together to a conclusion, accurate thoughts, thoughts in just intonation, coming together like unaccompanied voices coming to a close.
Mr. Fortune's Maggot."

"Turgenev, Ivan Sergeievich (1818 - 1883)
Whatever a man prays for, he prays for a miracle. Every prayer reduces itself to this: `Great God, grant that twice two be not four'."

"Tietze
The story was told that the young Dirichlet had as a constant companion all his travels, like a devout man with his prayer book, an old, worn copy of the Disquisitiones Arithmeticae of Gauss.
In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill Inc., 1992."

"Thomson, [Lord Kelvin] William (1824-1907)
Fourier is a mathematical poem."

"Sun Tze (5th - 6th century)
The control of large numbers is possible, and like unto that of small numbers, if we subdivide them.
Sun Tze Ping Fa."

"Smith, Henry John Stephen (1826 - 1883)
[His toast:]
Pure mathematics, may it never be of any use to anyone.
In H. Eves Mathematical Circles Squared, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1972."

"Shakespeare, William (1564 - 1616)
I cannot do it without comp[u]ters.
The Winter's Tale."

"Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
[Upon hearing via Littlewood an exposition on the theory of relativity:]
To think I have spent my life on absolute muck.
J.E. Littlewood, A Mathematician's Miscellany, Methuen and Co. ltd., 1953."

"Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.
The Impact of Science on Society, 1952"

"Russell, Bertrand (1872-1970)
At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as my tutor. This was one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love. I had not imagined there was anything so delicious in the world. From that moment until I was thirty-eight, mathematics was my chief interest and my chief source of happiness.
The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell ."

"Hugo Rossi

In the fall of 1972 President Nixon announced that the rate of increase of inflation was decreasing. This was the first time a sitting president used the third derivative to advance his case for reelection.
Mathematics Is an Edifice, Not a Toolbox, Notices of the AMS, v. 43, no. 10, October 1996."

"R. Rivest, A. Shamir, and L. Adleman
The magic words are squeamish ossifrage
[This sentence is the result when a coded message in Martin Gardner's column about factoring the famous number RSA-129 is decoded. See the article whose title is the above sentence by Barry Cipra, SIAM News July 1994, 1, 12-13.]"

"Renan, Ernest
The simplest schoolboy is now familiar with facts for which Archimedes would have sacrificed his life.
Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse."