Martin Gardner Quotes & Sayings

Politicians, real-estate agents, used-car salesmen, and advertising copy-writers are expected to stretch facts in self-serving directions, but scientists who falsify their results are regarded by their peers as committing an inexcusable crime. Yet the sad fact is that the history of science swarms with cases of outright fakery and instances of scientists who unconsciously distorted their work by seeing it through lenses of passionately held beliefs. — Martin Gardner

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

Her constant orders for beheading are shocking to those modern critics of children's literature who feel that juvenile fiction should be free of all violence and especially violence with Freudian undertones. Even the Oz books of L. Frank Baum, so singularly free of the horrors to be found in Grimm and Andersen, contain many scenes of decapitation. As far as I know, there have been no empirical studies of how children react to such scenes and what harm if any is done to their psyche. My guess is that the normal child finds it all very amusing and is not damaged in the least, but that books like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz should not be allowed to circulate indiscriminately among adults who are undergoing analysis. — Martin Gardner

Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals - the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned, if at all. — Martin Gardner

Consider a cow. A cow doesn't have the problem-solving skill of a chimpanzee, which has discovered how to get termites out of the ground by putting a stick into a hole. Evolution has developed the brain's ability to solve puzzles, and at the same time has produced in our brain a pleasure of solving problems. — Martin Gardner

The rub is that any work of nonsense abounds with so many inviting symbols that you can start with any assumption you please about the author and easily build up an impressive case for it. Consider, for example, the scene in which Alice seizes the end of the White King's pencil and begins scribbling for him. In five minutes one can invent six different interpretations. — Martin Gardner

The universe is almost like a huge magic trick and scientists are trying to figure out how it does what it does. — Martin Gardner

Speaking about symmetry, look out our window, and you may see a cardinal attacking its reflection in the window. The cardinal is the only bird we have who often does this. If it has a nest nearby, the cardinal thinks there is another cardinal trying to invade its territory. It never realizes it is attacking its own reflection. Cardinals don't know much about mirror symmetry! — Martin Gardner

If present trends continue, our country may soon find itself far behind many other nations in both science and technology nations where, if you inform strangers that you are a mathematician, they respond with admiration and not by telling you how much they hated math in school, and how they sure could use you to balance their checkbooks. — Martin Gardner

[T]he more the public is confused, the easier it falls prey to doctrines of pseudo-science which may at some future date recieve the backing of politically powerful groups [ ... ]a renaissance of German quasi-science paralleled the rise of Hitler. — Martin Gardner

Although Lewis Carroll thought of The Hunting of the Snark as a nonsense ballad for children, it is hard to imagine - in fact one shudders to imagine - a child of today reading and enjoying it. — Martin Gardner

Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips? — Martin Gardner

[7] The Shadows Code In the 1930's a mysterious crime-fighter called the Shadow was the hero of a popular pulp magazine and an even more popular radio show. Dressed all in black, the Shadow could glide unseen through the darkness to battle the forces of evil. Stories about the Shadow, written by Maxwell Grant (pseudonym for the Shadow's creator, Walter B. Gibson), often contained curious codes. This cipher, from a novelette called The Chain of Death, is one of the best. — Martin Gardner

One day, when I was doing well in class and had finished my lessons, I was sitting there trying to analyze the game of tic-tac-toe ... The teacher came along and snatched my papers on which I had been doodling ... She did not realize that analyzing tic-tac-toe can lead into dozens of non-trivial mathematical questions. — Martin Gardner

At St. John's College, Annapolis, where Robert Hutchins' educational views have been most successfully practiced, they make, it is true, a great hubbub about science. The school's catalog boasts that more mathematics and laboratory work are required than at any other college, and there is even a pretentious listing of all pieces of apparatus used by the student, down to such items as compass, calipers, and ruler. But so heavy is the emphasis on highlights in the past history of science, that little time is left for acquiring a solid grasp of current scientific opinion. — Martin Gardner

Mathematics is not only real, but it is the only reality. — Martin Gardner

Let the Bible be the Bible. It's not about science. It's not accurate history. It is a grab bag of religious fantasies written by many authors. Some of its myths, like the Star of Bethlehem, are very beautiful. Others are dull and ugly. Some express lofty ideals, such as the parables of Jesus. Others are morally disgusting. — Martin Gardner

Modern science should indeed arouse in all of us a humility before the immensity of the unexplored and a tolerance for crazy hypotheses. — Martin Gardner

LEWIS CARROLL'S CIPHER — Martin Gardner

There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry. — Martin Gardner

In no other branch of mathematics is it so easy for experts to blunder as in probability theory. — Martin Gardner

In many cases a dull proof can be supplemented by a geometric analogue so simple and beautiful that the truth of a theorem is almost seen at a glance. — Martin Gardner

Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic. — Martin Gardner

Mathemagical mathematics combines the beauty of mathematical structure with the entertainment value of a trick. — Martin Gardner

A god whose creation is so imperfect that he must be continually adjusting it to make it work properly seems to me a god of relatively low order, hardly worthy of any worship. — Martin Gardner

The sudden hunch, the creative leap of mind that "sees" in a flash how to solve a problem in a simple way, is something quite different from general intelligence. — Martin Gardner

I'm not sure why I enjoy debunking. Part of it surely is amusement over the follies of true believers, and [it is] partly because attacking bogus science is a painless way to learn good science. You have to know something about relativity theory, for example, to know where opponents of Einstein go wrong ... Another reason for debunking is that bad science contributes to the steady dumbing down of our nation. Crude beliefs get transmitted to political leaders and the result is considerable damage to society. — Martin Gardner

University of Chicago is a Baptist school, where atheist professors teach Jewish students about St. Thomas Aquinas. — Martin Gardner

If God creates a world of particles and waves, dancing in obedience to mathematical and physical laws, who are we to say that he cannot make use of those laws to cover the surface of a small planet with living creatures? — Martin Gardner

It is part of the pholosophic dullness of our time that there are millions of rational monsters walking about on their hind legs, observing the world through pairs of flexible little lenses, periodically supplying themselves with energy by pushing organic substances through holes in their faces, who see nothing fabulous whatever about themselves. — Martin Gardner

All mathematicians share ... a sense of amazement over the infinite depth and the mysterious beauty and usefulness of mathematics. — Martin Gardner

Debunking bad science should be constant obligation of the science community, even if it takes time away from serious research or seems to be a losing battle. One takes comfort from the fact there is no Gresham's laws in science. In the long run, good science drives out bad. — Martin Gardner

If you ask me to tell you anything about the nature of what lies beyond the phaneron ... my answer is "How should I know?" ... I am not dismayed by ultimate mysteries ... I can no more grasp what is behind such questions as my cat can understand what is behind the clatter I make while I type this paragraph. — Martin Gardner

There are, and always have been, destructive pseudo-scientific notions linked to race and religion; these are the most widespread and damaging. Hopefully, educated people can succeed in shedding light into these areas of prejudice and ignorance, for as Voltaire once said: 'Men will commit atrocities as long as they believe absurdities. — Martin Gardner

Let us hope that Lysenko's success in Russia will serve for many generations to come as another reminder to the world of how quickly and easily a science can be corrupted when ignorant political leaders deem themselves competent to arbitrate scientific disputes. — Martin Gardner

The Rail Fence Cipher Suppose — Martin Gardner

The last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician. — Martin Gardner

We cannot tell that we are constantly splitting into duplicate selves because our consciousness rides smoothly along only one path in the endlessly forking chains — Martin Gardner

The greatest scandal of the century in American psychiatry ... is the growing mania among thousands of inept therapists, family counselors, and social workers for arousing false memories of childhoood sexual abuse. — Martin Gardner

If all sentient beings in the universe disappeared, there would remain a sense in which mathematical objects and theorems would continue to exist even though there would be no one around to write or talk about them. Huge prime numbers would continue to be prime, even if no one had proved them prime. — Martin Gardner