Euclid Math Quotes & Sayings

Sisyphus, I. I cling to my rock, you don't have to chain me. Stand back! I roll it up - up, up. And ... down we go. I knew that would happen. See, I'm on my feet again. See, I'm starting to roll it up again. Don't try to talk me out of it. Nothing, nothing could tear me away from this rock. — Susan Sontag

I think gardens are fantastic, and I'd love to draw and design and stuff like that. I love just planting flowers during the summer. There's something very humble about it, and natural and beautiful. — Ed Westwick

These estimates may well be enhanced by one from F. Klein (1849-1925), the leading German mathematician of the last quarter of the nineteenth century. 'Mathematics in general is fundamentally the science of self-evident things.' ... If mathematics is indeed the science of self-evident things, mathematicians are a phenomenally stupid lot to waste the tons of good paper they do in proving the fact. Mathematics is abstract and it is hard, and any assertion that it is simple is true only in a severely technical sense - that of the modern postulational method which, as a matter of fact, was exploited by Euclid. The assumptions from which mathematics starts are simple; the rest is not. — Eric Temple Bell

The cowboys have a way of trussing up a steer or a pugnacious bronco which fixes the brute so that it can neither move nor think. This is the hog-tie, and it is what Euclid did to geometry. — Eric Bell

Believe me, if Archimedes ever had the grand entrance of a girl as pretty as Gloria to look forward to, he would never have spent so much time calculating the value of Pi. He would have been baking her a Pie! If Euclid had ever beheld a vision of loveliness like the one I see walking into my anti-math class, he would have forgotten all the geometry of lines and planes, and concentrated on the sweet simplicity of soft curves. If Pythagoras had ever had a girl look at him the way Gloria's eyes fix in my direction, he would have given up his calculations on the hypotenuse of right triangles and run for the hills to pick a bouquet of wildflowers. — David Klass

The earth is a planet that contains living things; I am a planet that contains living dreams! The earth revolves around the sun; I revolve around my passion! — Israelmore Ayivor

I then began to study arithmetical questions without any great apparent result, and without suspecting that they could have the least connexion with my previous researches. Disgusted at my want of success, I went away to spend a few days at the seaside, and thought of entirely different things. One day, as I was walking on the cliff, the idea came to me, again with the same characteristics of conciseness, suddenness, and immediate certainty, that arithmetical transformations of indefinite ternary quadratic forms are identical with those of non-Euclidian geometry. — Henri Poincare

Our learned egocentric and judgmental consciousness is the source of unhappiness; however, universal consciousness is always blissful. — Debasish Mridha

I left Caen, where I was living, to go on a geological excursion under the auspices of the School of Mines. The incidents of the travel made me forget my mathematical work. Having reached Coutances, we entered an omnibus to go to some place or other. At the moment when I put my foot on the step, the idea came to me, without anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it, that the transformations I had used to define the Fuchsian functions were identical with those of non-Euclidean geometry. I did not verify the idea; I should not have had time, as upon taking my seat in the omnibus, I went on with a conversation already commenced, but I felt a perfect certainty. On my return to Caen, for convenience sake, I verified the result at my leisure. — Henri Poincare

Nik stands and walks over to us. He kisses my cheek before taking Ash in a full-blown man hug. A long one. They both seem to be a little emotional. Nik whispers something to Ash and Ash nods before he slaps Nik's back a few times and they part. Nik moves to stand between us and says, "It's my honor to present the new Mr. and Mrs. Asher Collins."
Everyone stands up, whooping and cheering. And that's about the time I burst into tears.
I'm suddenly being group hugged and Tina wails, "I'm so happy for you, you crazy lady!"
I wail right back, "I'm so happy I could shit rainbows!"
Lola cheers. "I'm so f**king happy right now!"
Mimi kisses my head and rocks me slightly. She says in a sing-song voice, "I knew all along! — Belle Aurora

The wise traveler [to Beirut] will pack shirts or blouses with ample breast pockets. Reaching inside a jacket for your passport looks too much like going for the draw and puts armed men out of countinence — P. J. O'Rourke

Sitting in the shadows, with a killer, in an empty building, gazing at the corpse of another killer. When had her life grown so strange? — Lindsay Buroker

During my youth, I was fascinated by the colors of Van Goth's paintings — Joseph Pisani

As to the need of improvement there can be no question whilst the reign of Euclid continues. My own idea of a useful course is to begin with arithmetic, and then not Euclid but algebra. Next, not Euclid, but practical geometry, solid as well as plane; not demonstration, but to make acquaintance. Then not Euclid, but elementary vectors, conjoined with algebra, and applied to geometry. Addition first; then the scalar product. Elementary calculus should go on simultaneously, and come into vector algebraic geometry after a bit. Euclid might be an extra course for learned men, like Homer ... — Oliver Heaviside

Create a life and make it your own — Mary M. Forbes

What is a medium like telepresence but the extension--no, the very definition--of ourselves? Are we, who live things at a distance, the same species as our ancestors, we could hear of events in the same town only by going there? If you met a person from that time, would you have any more in common with him than with a whale, or a chimpanzee? You have traveled to meet me with better than seven-league boots; and I have done more math this morning than Pythagoras, and Euclid, and all Ancient Greece and Rome. Surely, if we are human, they were animals; and we a race of gods, if they were men. — Raphael Carter

Watch human nature; we are so built that if we do not get thrilled in the right way, we will get thrilled in the wrong. If we are without the thrill of communion with God, we will try to get thrilled by the devil, or by some concoction of human ingenuity. — Oswald Chambers

Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

May you live unenvied, and pass many pleasant years unknown to fame; and also have congenial friends.
[Lat., Vive sine invidia, mollesque inglorius annos
Exige; amicitias et tibi junge pares.] — Ovid

Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician's finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess play: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game. — G.H. Hardy