Mathematical Pattern Quotes & Sayings

How can a modern anthropologist embark upon a generalization with any hope of arriving at a satisfactory conclusion? By thinking of the organizational ideas that are present in any society as a mathematical pattern. — Edmund Leach

Personalization filters serve a kind of invisible autopropaganda, indoctrinating us with our own ideas, amplifying our desire for things that are familiar in leaving us oblivious to the dangers lurking in the dark territory of the unknown. — Eli Pariser

In a society that judges self-worth on productivity, it's no wonder we fall prey to the misconception that the more we do, the more we're worth — Ellen Stern

Looking down from the heavens, she saw how small, and yet how important each human life is. Drops in the bucket of eternity. She saw her minute place in the organic machine of the Cosmos, witnessed the give and take and the slow, steady swinging of life's pendulum. The world relies on order, pattern, and repetition. The earth spins and swings around the sun with rational, mathematical predictability.

But she also saw the chaotic nature of things. No matter what, you can never know with certainty what will happen. Lightening can strike, the ground can open up and swallow you, and the very air you breathe can tear your life away. — Gwen Mitchell

It had been well known for twenty years that the distribution of large and small earthquakes followed a particular mathematical pattern, precisely the same scaling pattern that seemed to govern the distribution of personal incomes in a free-market economy. — James Gleick

My grandmother had flawless skin just from using basic skincare - an old herbal remedy in the form of a white powder and cream. I don't actually know what was in it because when you're young, you're not interested in skincare, and I didn't want to walk around the house with a white face. — Michelle Yeoh

Mathematics is the science of patterns, and nature exploits just about every pattern that there is. — Ian Stewart

We should expect nothing less from the language that was originally given by God, to His human family. Hebrew was the method that God chose for mankind to speak to Him, and Him to them. Adam spoke Hebrew - and your Bible confirms this. Everyone who got off the ark spoke one language - Hebrew.
Even Abraham spoke Hebrew. Where did Abraham learn to speak Hebrew? Abraham was descended from Noah's son, Shem. (Ge 11:10-26) Shem's household was not affected by the later confusion of languages, at Babel. (Ge 11:5-9) To the contrary, Shem was blessed while the rest of Babel was cursed. (Ge 9:26) That is how Abraham retained Hebrew, despite residing in Babylon.
So, Shem's language can be traced back to Adam. (Ge 11:1) And, Shem (Noah's son) was still alive when Jacob and Esau was 30 years of age. Obviously, Hebrew (the original language) was clearly spoken by Jacob's sons. (Ge 14:13) — Michael Ben Zehabe

He had a particular facination with the I Ching, that art of tossing three coins three times and divining a pattern out of heads and tails. Pete would begin with questions:
What determined the pattern? Was it random? Was it a higher power? Was is mathematical? Wasn't poker based on mathematical probability and not just luck? Did that mean randomness was actually mathematical? And if the I Ching was governed by mathematics, hey, wouldn't that mean the I Ching was actually predictable, a prescribed answer? And if it was prescribed, did that mean that your life followed the I Ching, like some sort of equation? Or did the I Ching simply capture correctly what had already been determined as the next series of events in your life? — Amy Tan

The Bible is proved to be a revelation from God, by the reasonableness and holiness of its precepts; all its commands, exhortations, and promises having the most direct tendency to make men wise, holy, and happy in themselves, and useful to one another. — Adam Clarke

What governs what we choose to notice? The first (which we shall have to qualify later) is whatever seems advantageous or disadvantageous for our survival, our social status, and the security of our egos. The second, again working simultaneously with the first, is the pattern and the logic of all the notation symbols which we have learned from others, from our society and our culture. It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us (whether verbal, mathematical, or musical) have no description. This is why we borrow words from foreign languages. — Alan W. Watts

Brains operate ... not by logic but by pattern recognition. This process is not precise, as is logic and mathematics. Instead, it trades off specificity and precision, if necessary, to increase its range. It is likely, for example, that early human thought proceeded by metaphor, which, even with the late acquisition of precise means such as logic and mathematical thought, continues to be a major source of imagination and creativity in adult life. — Gerald Edelman

The more difficult the search, the stronger the bond, when it comes. — Christine Pope

If ever she is to die, it should be out here, in space. Born from stardust, returned to stardust. — Chuck Wendig

Whatever you do, think of next morning's headlines. — Eric Berne

Yoga isn't just about showing up on the mat. It's about showing up in your life, in your day; it's about opening your heart while standing firm and strong and believing in yourself. — Kathryn E. Livingston

Hurry was not a concept that could be symbolized in the Martian language and therefore must be presumed to be unthinkable. Speed, velocity, simultaneity, acceleration, and other mathematical abstractions having to do with the pattern of eternity were part of Martian mathematics, but not of Martian emotion. — Robert A. Heinlein

There can be glory in failure and despair in success. — Abraham Lincoln

I regard it in fact as the great advantage of the mathematical technique that it allows us to describe, by means of algebraic equations, the general character of a pattern even where we are ignorant of the numerical values which will determine its particular manifestation. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

Knowledge is a function of being. When there is a change in the being of the knower, there is a corresponding change in the nature and amount of knowing. — Aldous Huxley

We had sold our death to somebody at the door for the sum of £70:18:6d and lent our fear to somebody at the door as well on interest of £3:10:0d per month, so we did not care about death and we did not fear again. — Amos Tutuola

For the same uprush of fancy which had shown him with all the force of mathematical demonstration that life had no meaning, brought with it another idea; and that was why Cronshaw, he imagined, had given him the Persian rug. As the weaver elaborated his pattern for no end but the pleasure of his aesthetic sense, so might a man live his life, or if one was forced to believe that his actions were outside his choosing, so might a man look at his life, that it made a pattern. There was as little need to do this as there was use. It was merely something he did for his own pleasure. — W. Somerset Maugham

All of the patterns we've discussed of course exist in four dimensions rather than three, and the metaphors about braids, cables and trees, shouldn't be taken too literally. The key point is simply that you can be an unchanging pattern in spacetime-the specific details of this pattern are less important for the points we're making. This pattern is part of the mathematical structure that is our Universe, and the relations between different parts of the pattern are encoded in mathematical equations. As we saw in Chapter 8, Everett's quantum mechanics endows you with an even more interesting-but no less mathematical-structure, since a single you (the tree trunk) can split into many branches, each feeling that they're the one and only you
we'll return to this later. — Max Tegmark

I just have this feeling if I take pi, well past all this static, take pi to 10 million, 20 million digits, that I'll find something really incredible. Not just a pattern, not just an order, but a sign. A mathematical sign. — Andrew Schneider

I've travelled around the UK a lot recently and have discovered that I really like trains. If you're in the quiet carriage, nobody can get hold of you and you can relax. — Honor Blackman