Quotes & Sayings About Imaginary Numbers

My age and the ages of my children are imaginary numbers. — Carol L. Covin

If you divide something that is essentially one,
you will end up with imaginary infinite numbers. — Toba Beta

Complete knowledge of the nature of an analytic function must also include insight into its behavior for imaginary values of the arguments. Often the latter is indispensable even for a proper appreciation of the behavior of the function for real arguments. It is therefore essential that the original determination of the function concept be broadened to a domain of magnitudes which includes both the real and the imaginary quantities, on an equal footing, under the single designation complex numbers. — Carl Friedrich Gauss

Love the battle between chaos and imagination.
Remember: Acting is living truthfully in imaginary circumstances.
Remember: Acting is the way to live the greatest number of lives.
Remember: Acting is the same as real life, lived intentionally.
Never forget: The Fruit is out on the end of the limb. Go there. — Robert Fulghum

History counts its skeletons in round numbers.
A thousand and one remains a thousand,
as though the one had never existed:
an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle,
...
emptiness running down steps toward the garden,
nobody's place in line. — Wislawa Szymborska

Some people believe in imaginary friends. I believe in imaginary numbers. — R.M. ArceJaeger

Pi is not merely the ubiquitous factor in high school geometry problems; it is stitched across the whole tapestry of mathematics, not just geometry's little corner of it. Pi occupies a key place in trigonometry too. It is intimately related to e, and to imaginary numbers. Pi even shows up in the mathematics of probability — Robert Kanigel

Whoa, whoa, whoa," I said, not being able to stop myself. "What's the i?"
"The i is an imaginary number," he said, and coughed.
"There are imaginary numbers now?" I said in disbelief. "Are there unicorns in the next lesson? — Chris Colfer

Silly man, doesn't he know money is imaginary? It's paper that turns into numbers on screens, after all. It's there, then it's gone. I put it places, I take it out, I move it someplace else. Imaginary. Most things are imaginary, when you think about it. — Kiersten White

Did you know that in mathematics they determined what was real by what was not imaginary?" Finn's voice was just a soft rumble beneath my fingertips that had found his lips
"What?"
"When mathematicians came up with imaginary numbers, accepted them, defined them, they had to come up with a name for everything that wasn't imaginary. Everything that wasn't an imaginary number from that point on became a 'real' number."
What's an imaginary number?"
"The square root of negative one is an imaginary number."
"Is that all?"
"Any number that was once the square root of a negative number becomes an imaginary number. Square root of -4 becomes 2i, square root of -100 becomes 10i."
"Is infinity an imaginary number?"
"No."
"Is it a real number?"
"No. It isn't a number at all. It's a concept of endlessness, unreachableness.
"I knew it. See? You are just a figment of my imagination. — Amy Harmon

Adam and Eve are like imaginary numbers, like the square root of minus one ... If you include it in your equation, you can calculate all manners of things, which cannot be imagined without it. — Philip Pullman

Imaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful refuge of the divine spirit almost an amphibian between being and non-being. — Gottfried Leibniz

The more science I studied, the more I saw that physics becomes metaphysics and numbers become imaginary numbers. The farther you go into science, the mushier the ground gets. You start to say, 'Oh, there is an order and a spiritual aspect to science.' — Dan Brown

Except for that stuff about the barnacle peckers that was some of the boringest shit I've heard since school got out." I couldn't even look at him. "Cheer up," he said. "I brought some real entertainment." He pulled a brittle copy of The Godfather from his backpack and started reading some scene that began on page twenty-seven - he knew the sexy page numbers by heart - in which some imaginary woman described how big this imaginary Sonny was to — Jim Lynch

I believe in numbers. The ones you can see and the ones you can't. The real and the imaginary, the rational and the irrational, and every point on lines that go on forever. Numbers have never let me down. They don't waffle. They don't lie. They don't pretend to be what they're not. They're timeless. — Amy Harmon

One might think this means that imaginary numbers are just a mathematical game having nothing to do with the real world. From the viewpoint of positivist philosophy, however, one cannot determine what is real. All one can do is find which mathematical models describe the universe we live in. It turns out that a mathematical model involving imaginary time predicts not only effects we have already observed but also effects we have not been able to measure yet nevertheless believe in for other reasons. So what is real and what is imaginary? Is the distinction just in our minds? — Stephen Hawking

A defrocked heretic accountant, Grimm had learned just enough mathemagics to be a nuisance, if not actually dangerous, and had been thrown out of the Accountants' Guild for unethical use of imaginary numbers. — Simon R. Green