Math Numbers Quotes & Sayings

Why are numbers beautiful? It's like asking why is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony beautiful.
If you don't see why, someone can't tell you. I know numbers are beautiful.
If they aren't beautiful, nothing is. — Paul Erdos

I was very into math and calculus, and just always was very - really interested in that. But any sort of numbers. — David Plouffe

The concept of number is the obvious distinction between the beast and man. — Joseph De Maistre

If you love math, have a knack for numbers, study hard and become a successful accountant; who cares if you can't draw a straight line or sing on key? — Nick Carter

Infinity ... is used in physics simply as a shorthand for a very big number. — Victor J. Stenger

C.S. Lewis says that fiction is able to sneak past the watchful dragons of religion. It becomes more powerful to speak in poetry.
The song goes straight to the heart while the numbers
and the math of it will never be able to reach that. — Jon Foreman

The Planeswalker know
YOu take the card from the library
And bury it when you're done.
On the path, you face history.
Walk the path, do the math:

Start with the prime numbers under 100
Whose digits give you 10.
Choose the happy median.
Add it to: The square root of
The cube of five divided by
The sum of 3 and 2. — Megan Frazer Blakemore

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head. — Carl Sandburg

Look, this is a man, he's got great numbers. He talks about numbers. I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the Internet, but he invented the calculator. It's fuzzy math. It's a scaring - trying to scare people in the voting booth. Under my tax plan, that he continues to criticize, I set a third - the federal government should take no more than a third of anybody's check. — George W. Bush

God made the integers; all the rest is the work of Man. — Leopold Kronecker

Wherever there is number, there is beauty. — Proclus

Another mistaken notion connected with the law of large numbers is the idea that an event is more or less likely to occur because it has or has not happened recently. The idea that the odds of an event with a fixed probability increase or decrease depending on recent occurrences of the event is called the gambler's fallacy. For example, if Kerrich landed, say, 44 heads in the first 100 tosses, the coin would not develop a bias towards the tails in order to catch up! That's what is at the root of such ideas as "her luck has run out" and "He is due." That does not happen. For what it's worth, a good streak doesn't jinx you, and a bad one, unfortunately , does not mean better luck is in store. — Leonard Mlodinow

The universe is math on fire. — Scott Westerfeld

Having neurons wire together can be a good thing. A positive experience with a math teacher can lead to neural connections that link math with pleasure, accomplishment, and feeling good about yourself as a student. But the opposite is equally true. Negative experiences with a harsh instructor or a timed test and the anxiety that accompanies it can form connections in the brain that create a serious obstacle to the enjoyment not only of math and numbers, but exams and even school in general. — Daniel J. Siegel

The feeling of mathematical beauty, of the harmony of numbers and of forms, of geometric elegance. It is a genuinely aesthetic feeling, which all mathematicians know — Henri Poincare

Math is the great equalizer. If you can do the numbers, the boys have to respect you. — Audrey MacLean

Let's take some extra time to talk about one: Only the number one can create all numbers with this simple equation, 111111111 x 111111111 = 12345678987654321. One, expressed nine times, multiplied by itself, produces all subsequent numbers progressively and then inversely. Zero is not a number. — Michael Ben Zehabe

I'm not good at math. Numbers are a terrifying thing to me. My father is a whiz with money and the stock market, and he tries to explain it to me, and I find it terrifying. — Chris Gethard

Man had been given a brain that could think in numbers, and it could not be coincidence that the world was unlocked by that very tool. To understand any aspect of the cosmos was to look on the face of God: not directly, but by a species of triangulation, because to think mathematically was to feel the action of God in oneself. — Kate Grenville

He calculated the number of bricks in the wall, first in twos and then in tens and finally in sixteens. The numbers formed up and marched past his brain in terrified obedience. Division and multiplication were discovered. Algebra was invented and provided an interesting diversion for a minute or two. And then he felt the fog of numbers drift away, and looked up and saw the sparkling, distant mountains of calculus. — Terry Pratchett

Oh, figures!' answered Ned. 'You can make figures do whatever you want. — Jules Verne

I succeeded at math, at least by the usual evaluation criteria: grades. Yet while I might have earned top marks in geometry and algebra, I was merely following memorized rules, plugging in numbers and dutifully crunching out answers by rote, with no real grasp of the significance of what I was doing or its usefulness in solving real-world problems. Worse, I knew the depth of my own ignorance, and I lived in fear that my lack of comprehension would be discovered and I would be exposed as an academic fraud
psychologists call this "imposter syndrome". — Jennifer Ouellette

God is real unless declared integer — David

Uneven numbers are the gods' delight. — Virgil

God created everything by number, weight and measure. — Isaac Newton

Asian children can perform basic functions, such as addition, far more easily. Ask an English-speaking seven-year-old to add thirty-seven plus twenty-two in her head, and she has to convert the words to numbers (37 + 22). Only then can she do the math: 2 plus 7 is 9 and 30 and 20 is 50, which makes 59. Ask an Asian child to add three-tens-seven and two-tens-two, and then the necessary equation is right there, embedded in the sentence. No number translation is necessary: It's five-tens-nine. — Malcolm Gladwell

I've got a few ideas," (Amy) admitted. "But I don't know where we're going in the long term. I mean - have you ever thought about what this ultimate treasure could be?"
"Something cool." (Dan)
"Oh, that's real helpful. I mean, what could make somebody the most powerful Cahill in history? And why thirty-nine clues?"
Dan shrugged. "Thirty-nine is a sweet number. It's thirteen times three. It's also the sum of five prime numbers in a row - 3,5,7,11,13. And if you add the first three powers of three, 3 to the first, 3 to the second, and s to the third, you get thirty-nine."
Amy stared at him. "How did you know that?"
"What do you mean? It's obvious. — Rick Riordan

It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity and the great ease which it has lent to computations put our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the grandeur of the achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

Indeed, nowadays no electrical engineer could get along without complex numbers, and neither could anyone working in aerodynamics or fluid dynamics. — Keith Devlin

Gematria is simply a man-made game that uses numbers; and NO, this is NOT Math! Projecting a game unto nature does not deem it to be part of, Science! — Ibrahim Ibrahim

Numbers are the free creation of the human mind. — Richard Dedekind

Of course, there can be clear indications that a teacher is not worth paying attention to. A history as a fabulist or a con artist should be considered fatal; thus, the spiritual opinions of Joseph Smith, Gurdjieff, and L. Ron Hubbard can be safely ignored. A fetish for numbers is also an ominous sign. Math is magical, but math approached like magic is just superstition - and numerology is where the intellect goes to die. Prophecy is also a very strong indication of chicanery or madness on the part of a teacher, and of stupidity among his students. One can extrapolate from scientific data or technological trends (climate models, Moore's law), but most detailed predictions about the future lead to embarrassment right on schedule. — Sam Harris

Quadratic reciprocity is the song of love in the land of prime numbers. — Kato

A term meant to convey a person's inability to make sense of the numbers that run their lives. — Douglas R. Hofstadter

Weight Watchers points is a beautiful system for someone who is absentminded about food. They aren't the greatest for someone who has had eating disorders all her life. The world became numbers to me and I was doing more math than I ever had before. I got off Weight Watchers and went back to just counting calories. The world became different kinds of numbers, the old, familiar kind. This is how I eat now. The world is still numbers, but it is algebra, not calculus. — Melissa Broder

The special knowledge you are about to learn will reveal a "letter theory" that was set into motion from the very first verse in your Bible. It is as though the divine author is telling the reader to expect Hebrew letters and numbers to weave messages, in the sub-text, through the rest of the Bible - starting with verse one. — Michael Ben Zehabe

If equations are trains threading the landscape of numbers, then no train stops at pi. — Richard Preston

A mathematician's reputation rests on the number of bad proofs he has given. — Abram Samoilovitch Besicovitch

I can't stop biting my nails. It's a bad habit of mine. I like anything to do with math and numbers. I know a lot of people don't like geometry, but for me it's fun. — Khleo

Wherever there is a number, there is beauty. — Proclus

Numbers are the highest degree of knowledge. It is knowledge itself. — Plato

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarely, in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science. — William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin

The most common anxiety I hear about learning to program is that people think it requires a lot of math. Actually, most programming doesn't require math beyond basic arithmetic. In fact, being good at programming isn't that different from being good at solving Sudoku puzzles. To solve a Sudoku puzzle, the numbers 1 through 9 must be filled in for each row, each column, and each 3x3 interior square of the full 9x9 board. You find a solution by applying deduction and logic from the starting numbers. For — Albert Sweigart

When an official report in the UK was commissioned to examine the mathematics needed in the workplace, the investigator found that estimation was the most useful mathematical activity. Yet when children who have experienced traditional math classes are asked to estimate, they are often completely flummoxed and try to work out exact answers, then round them off to look like an estimate. This is because they have not developed a good feel for numbers, which would allow them to estimate instead of calculate, and also because they have learned, wrongly, that mathematics is all about precision, not about making estimates or guesses. Yet both are at the heart of mathematical problem solving. — Jo Boaler

I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind. — Lord Kelvin

I'm real good with math, with numbers, like my dad was. I'm pretty much dialed in. — Hulk Hogan

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

Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer. — Carl Sandburg

probably heard that math is the language of science, or the language of Nature is mathematics. Well, it's true. The more we understand the universe, the more we discover its mathematical connections. Flowers have spirals that line up with a special sequence of numbers (called Fibonacci numbers) that you can understand and generate yourself. Seashells form in perfect mathematical curves (logarithmic spirals) that come from a chemical balance. Star clusters tug on — Arthur Benjamin

In Korea, math moved fluidly. When the teacher asked questions, the kids answered as if math were a language that they knew by heart. As in Tom's class in Poland, calculators weren't allowed, so kids had learned mental tricks to manipulate numbers quickly. — Amanda Ripley

My algebra was relatively poor. I found it very difficult to use equations that substituted numbers - to which I had a synesthetic and emotional response - for letters, to which I had none. It was because of this that I decided not to continue math at Advanced level, but chose to study history, French and German instead. — Daniel Tammet

Numbers still gave Astrid pleasure. That was the great thing about numbers: it required no faith to believe that two plus two equaled four. And math never, ever condemned you for your thoughts and desires. — Michael Grant

But you know the minute I graduated high school I never looked at a single math problem again, right? I send everything with numbers on it to my accountant, or I make Michael deal with it." "Great. Spoken like a true feminist, — Meg Cabot

Mathematicians deal with large numbers sometimes, but never in their income. — Isaac Asimov

Pickover's lively, provocative travel guide takes readers into the fascinating realm of mystic math, from perfectly strange numbers to fractured geometries and other curious nooks and crannies of ancient worlds and modern times. — Ivars Peterson

I had authority issues. In my defense, my math teacher had it coming. She'd made me write one hundred on the black board, so I wrote one, zero, zero in words since one hundred consisted of those numbers. Because she hadn't been specific in her instructions,she'd berated me for being a smart aleck. The whole class had laughed at me. The next morning, they had to cut her out of her chair. — Kate Evangelista

If you plug in a number and the math starts getting creepy (anything involving fractions or negative numbers is creepy) ... — Doug Pierce

Spending when the math's not there and the numbers aren't there and if they look in the social security trust fund, it's filled with IOUs because the government's been pilfering it for years on end. We have to do something. We have to start having this discussion. — Ben Quayle

Once I dated a woman I only liked 43%.
So I only listened to 43% of what she said.
Only told the truth 43% of the time.
And only kissed with 43% of my lips.
Some say you can't quantify desire,
attaching a number to passion isn't right,
that the human heart doesn't work like that.
But for me it does-I walk down the street
and numbers appear on the foreheads
of the people I look at. In bars, it's worse.
With each drink, the numbers go up
until every woman in the joint has a blurry
eighty something above her eyebrows,
and the next day I can only remember 17%
of what actually happened. That's the problem
with booze-it screws with your math. — Jeffrey McDaniel

A majority of students who come into community colleges are still stuck at high school level or remedial math. And when they take it in college, they still don't pass it. So the Carnegie Foundation got together and created two accelerated courses that focus on real-world applications of numbers like for health, for civics, for personal finance - concepts that you and I use every single day. — Anya Kamenetz

The root of the word "integrity" is "integer." It's a math term - and it refers to whole numbers. The word itself implies "wholeness." These are the questions we must ask ourselves frequently. "Am I whole?" "Are there parts of my character that are lacking? — Josh Hatcher

Why do we believe that in all matters the odd numbers are more powerful? — Pliny The Elder

Playing with numbers was still considered taboo, a subject best left to the later years, despite America's obvious and enduring math handicap. For too long, what American — Amanda Ripley

It is all about numbers. It is all about sequence. It's the mathematical logic of being alive. If everything kept to its normal progression, we would live with the sadness
cry and then walk
but what really breaks us cleanest are the losses that happen out of order. — Aimee Bender

We come astonishingly close to the mystical beliefs of Pythagoras and his followers who attempted to submit all of life to the sovereignty of numbers. Many of our psychologists, sociologists, economists and other latter-day cabalists will have numbers to tell them the truth or they will have nothing ... We must remember that Galileo merely said that the language of nature is written in mathematics. He did not say that everything is. And even the truth about nature need not be expressed in mathematics. For most of human history, the language of nature has been the language of myth and ritual. These forms, one might add, had the virtues of leaving nature unthreatened and of encouraging the belief that human beings are part of it. It hardly befits a people who stand ready to blow up the planet to praise themselves too vigorously for having found the true way to talk about nature. — Neil Postman

It never happens that, when we go home and open the refrigerator, we see all infinitely many prime numbers there. — Kato

People think they don't understand math, but it's all about how you explain it to them. If you ask a drunkard what number is larger, 2/3 or 3/5, he won't be able to tell you. But if you rephrase the question: what is better, 2 bottles of vodka for 3 people or 3 bottles of vodka for 5 people, he will tell you right away: 2 bottles for 3 people, of course. — Israel Gelfand

When it comes to our own well being, it is not a matter of doing the math, it is a matter of choosing the formula. When you add up the numbers, keep the primary factors in mind. Then multiply all sums by a positive outlook. The numbers will inevitably change and so will any undesirable equivalence. The math is merely the meter for the moment in an ever changing flux of the dynamic human equation. — Tom Althouse

Numbers rule the universe. — Pythagoras

Looking at numbers as groups of rocks may seem unusual, but actually it's as old as math itself. The word "calculate" reflects that legacy - it comes from the Latin word calculus, meaning a pebble used for counting. To enjoy working with numbers you don't have to be Einstein (German for "one stone"), but it might help to have rocks in your head. — Steven Strogatz

All I wanted to do was put together one of the best home maths systems in the world, and that's what we've done. I've loved numbers since I was two or three, and I get really excited about them. Now, I'm allowing myself to get excited about things. If you're doing it for a TV network or any major corporation, you have to put a lid on it a little. — Carol Vorderman

We had the schools we wanted, in a way. Parents did not tend to show up at schools demanding that their kids be assigned more challenging reading or that their kindergarteners learn math while they still loved numbers. They did show up to complain about bad grades, however. And they came in droves, with video cameras and lawn chairs and full hearts, to watch their children play sports. — Amanda Ripley

Although he may not always recognize his bondage, modern man lives under a tyranny of numbers. — Nicholas Eberstadt

Numbers are intellectual witnesses that belong only to mankind. — Honore De Balzac

Unfortunately I have never been good in math. Numbers simply do not interest me or seem as real to me as words. — Peter Cameron

You're smart then . . . aren't you, Finn?" I heard the awe in my own voice. It wasn't a question. I had never been school smart, and marveled at those who were. "I thought you were. I was never any good with numbers. Math has always been like a murky pond, and me, a hillbilly stabbing at the fish with a pokey stick, trying to get lucky."
"That doesn't make any sense, Bonnie." Finn laughed softly.
"That's my point, Clyde — Amy Harmon

I would hope that maybe math teachers could use 'Prime Baby' as a way of establishing an emotional connection between students and numbers. — Gene Luen Yang

My life depended on some math I'd done earlier. If I dropped a sign or added two numbers wrong, I might never wake up. — Andy Weir

...but numbers didn't lie. That was the reason I loved math. It was the only pure form of honesty left in this world. — Teresa Mummert

The introduction of numbers as coordinates is an act of violence. — Hermann Weyl

You get surreal numbers by playing games. I used to feel guilty in Cambridge that I spent all day playing games, while I was supposed to be doing mathematics. Then, when I discovered surreal numbers, I realized that playing games IS math. — John Horton Conway

Jesus' words are slightly less shocking when you consider that exclusive claims to truth are more common than we know. Truth is, by its nature, exclusive. Two differing claims cannot both be right. Math teachers make exclusive claims all the time. They will tell you that the multiplication table is not up for negotiation. There are right answers and wrong ones. A doctor's prescription is an exclusive claim as well. It excludes every medication except the one that is written on the prescription paper. A person who gives you their phone number is telling you to exclude dialing all other numbers except the digits they have provided you. — Jon Morrison

It'll turn out you mean love,' Sholto said. 'At the moment math is the only thing that excites you so you're nosing around numbers as if numbers are life. But in two years you'll be telling me about some boy. — Elizabeth Knox

Or an amicable pair," said Sam. "Sorry?" "In math, that's what we call two numbers each of which is equal to the sum of the divisors of the other. The smallest ones, 220 and 284, were regarded by the Pythagoreans as symbols of true friendship. — Reginald Hill

I can't talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A — John Green

My father says that if I hit 2,500 balls each day, I'll hit 17,500 balls each week, and at the end of one year I'll have hit nearly one million balls. He believes in math. Numbers, he says, don't lie. A child who hits one million balls each year will be unbeatable. — Andre Agassi

Mathematics is the only good metaphysics. — Lord Kelvin

Anything you try to quantify can be divided into any number of "anythings," or become the thing - the unit - itself. And what is any number, itself, but just another unit of measurement? What is a 'six' but two 'threes', or three 'twos' ... half a 'twelve', or just six 'ones' - which are what?
(attrib: F.L. Vanderson) — Mort W. Lumsden

Infinity exist unfortnately what will happen if we accept it??
After all numbers are taken what happens??
We will start with Omega+1 Then Omega+Omega+1... Think on this, this is the infinitive road, I gave it to you but what you will do? — Deyth Banger

On a plaque attached to the NASA deep space probe we [human beings] are described in symbols for the benefit of any aliens who might meet the spacecraft as bilaterly symmetrical, sexually differentiated bipeds, located on one of the outer spiral arms of the Milky Way, capable of recognising the prime numbers and moved by one extraordinary quality that lasts longer than all our other urges - curiosity. — David G. Wells

No mathematician in the world would bother making these senseless distinctions: 2 1/2 is a "mixed number " while 5/2 is an "improper fraction." They're EQUAL for crying out loud. They are the exact same numbers and have the exact same properties. Who uses such words outside of fourth grade? — Paul Lockhart

There was a young fellow from Trinity, Who took the square root of infinity. But the number of digits, Gave him the fidgets; He dropped Math and took up Divinity. — George Gamow

Let me say something at the outset. The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don't trust the media. This is not a cage match. And, you look at the questions - "Donald Trump, are you a comic-book villain?" "Ben Carson, can you do math?" "John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?" "Marco Rubio, why don't you resign?" "Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?" How about talking about the substantive issues the people care about? — Ted Cruz

If other people thought art was important, then it would be required to graduate. But no, I don't have to take art. I do have to take math, which is just a waste of time because the numbers get all switched up in my brain, plus, calculators exist for a reason. I do have to take history, which is basically memorizing tariff acts till your brain bleeds. I do have to take four years of gym class with a bunch of jerks who punch me if they don't like what I say. But art? Optional. Even though art and music and literature and all that are what make us human. Algebra doesn't make us human. Games don't make us human. — Laura Ruby

Number was the substance of all things. — Pythagoras

... I just figured it would be easier to do the math problem with the numbers in the correct colors. — Wendy Mass