In [great mathematics] there
In [great mathematics] there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy. G. H. Hardy
Quotes for All
In [great mathematics] there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy. G. H. Hardy
Perhaps the greatest paradox of all is that there are paradoxes in mathematics. Edward Kasner
There are problems to whose solution I would attach an infinitely greater importance than to those of mathematics, for example touching ethics, or our relation to God, or concerning our destiny and our future; but their solution lies wholly beyond us and completely outside the province of science. Carl Friedrich Gauss
It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. When I have clarified and exhausted a subject, then I turn away from it, in order to go into darkness again; the never-satisfied man is so strange if he has completed a structure, … Read more
It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. Carl Friedrich Gauss
The method of “postulating” what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil. Bertrand Russell
Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty-a beauty cold and austere … yet sublimely pure and capable of stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. Bertrand Russell
But as the work proceeded I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. Having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was not more secure than the … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more