Inspirational Mathematical Quotes & Sayings

The highly complex, almost mathematical, nature of music creates for it an ironclad protection against the microbes of dilletantism, which penetrate much more easily into the fields of painting, literature, and the theater. — Yevgeny Zamyatin

Getting what you want is a serious matter. It is far more transformative than frustration. — Bruce Sterling

A mathematical formula for happiness:Reality divided by Expectations.There were two ways to be happy:improve your reality or lower your expectations. — Jodi Picoult

I know some people are offended by the fact that I'm spending a lot of money trying to win the America's Cup. I could have given all that money to charity. — Larry Ellison

[...] confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever touches. — William Faulkner

It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course. — Henry David Thoreau

But he needed to be certain before committing to something so - the word, certain, arrested his thoughts. A person can't be absolutely certain about anything, not certainty in the sense of a mathematical proof. He wasn't certain about Kate. He saw her, observed her, wanted to be with her. Somehow, he just knew. For reasons already set in his heart, the way he was wired, Josh knew Kate was a person he wanted in his life. She was the proof. Would it be the same way with God? — H.L. Wegley

The books of the 1920s and '30s that are most inviting, with their handy size, generous margins, and sharp letterpress type. — John Updike

Flyfishing, which has a vaguely mystical aura, is a lot like work. I'm a frenetic flyfisherman. I wade up and down streams, looking for good spots, usually falling and breaking some piece of equipment. Or I stand still and work myself into a frenzy about what fly I should use. I love fishing, but it has never given me a moments peace. — James P. Gorman

A wall is happy when it is well designed, when it rests firmly on its foundation, when its symmetry balances its part and produces no unpleasant stresses. Good design can be worked out on the mathematical principles of mechanics. — Isaac Asimov

Naturally, we are inclined to be so mathematical and calculating that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing ... Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness; it should rather be an expression of breathless expectation. — Oswald Chambers

The paradox of quantum physics in the 21st Century, awakens us to the realisation that "nothing matters" in and of itself. That nothing can be stated with certainty; but everything is just a mathematical probability occurring in an instance of space-time convergence, which forms our objective reality in the present moment. — Denis John George

It is an unfortunate fact that proofs can be very misleading. Proofs exist to establish once and for all, according to very high standards, that certain mathematical statements are irrefutable facts. What is unfortunate about this is that a proof, in spite of the fact that it is perfectly correct, does not in any way have to be enlightening. Thus, mathematicians, and mathematics students, are faced with two problems: the generation of proofs, and the generation of internal enlightenment. To understand a theorem requires enlightenment. If one has enlightenment, one knows in one's soul why a particular theorem must be true. — Herbert S. Gaskill

If not, well, Libby didn't care anymore. She'd turn 17 in a few months, and that was practically 18 — Angie Stanton

I felt as though the
past and the future, cause and effect, patterns and connections, were a huge complicated artifice, and it was only by my efforts that they kept going.
If I gave up it would all dissolve into the raw chaos of the senses. That's all we really have. The rest is romanticism and storytelling. But we need
those stories. I guess I do. — Ann Brashares

We are mathematical equations where your life is the sum of all choices you've made until now. The good news is you can change the equation so that you start making a difference in your life. — Steve Maraboli