Mathematically Quotes & Sayings

a singularity is not even mathematically describable. — Pierre St. Clair

Cold calculation, random spots of color, mathematically exact construction (clearly shown or concealed), drawing that is now silent and now strident ... Is this not form? — Giacomo Puccini

Although I am almost illiterate mathematically, I grasped very early in life that any one who can count to ten can count upward indefinitely if he is fool enough to do so. — Robertson Davies

The problem with cinema nowadays is that it's a math problem. People can read a film mathematically; they know when this comes or that comes; in about 30 minutes, it's going to be over and have an ending. So film has become a mathematical solution. And that is boring, because art is not mathematical. — Nicolas Winding Refn

What do we call visible light? We call it color. But the electromagnetic spectrum runs to zero in one direction and infinity in the other, so really, children, mathematically, all of light is invisible. — Anthony Doerr

It matters little whether a man be mathematically or philologically or artistically cultivated, so he be but cultivated. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

There is no doubt that Earth Central, the planetary and sector AIs, and even some ship and drone AIs are capable, without acquiring additional processing space, of setting up synergetic systems within themselves that result in an exponential climb in intelligence (mathematically defined as climbing beyond all known scales within minutes). So why not? Ask then why a human, capable of learning verbatim the complete works of Shakespeare, instead drinks a bottle of brandy, then giggles a lot and falls over. — Neal Asher

One might as well attempt to calculate mathematically the contingent forms of the tinkling bits of glass in a kaleidoscope as to look through the tube of the future and foretell its pattern. — Henry Ward Beecher

I am accustomed, as a professional mathematician, to living in a sort of vacuum, surrounded by people who declare with an odd sort of pride that they are mathematically illiterate. — David Mumford

Eureka!" Mungo yelled. It was a word that wasn't actually a word but which he'd mathematically proved to exist in a parallel realm and he quite liked the sound of it when it came to needing something to yell in moments of cerebral triumph. — Jeffery Russell

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

There's something mathematically satisfying about music: notes fit together and harmony and all that. And mathematics has to do with abstractions and making connections. — Tom Lehrer

What is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible. — Julian Barnes

I guess I think of lotteries as a tax on the mathematically challenged. — Roger Jones

Light control works; close control leads to overreaction, sometimes causing the machinery to break into pieces. In a famous paper "On Governors," published in 1867, Maxwell modeled the behavior and showed mathematically that tightly controlling the speed of engines leads to instability. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I don't mind nothing happening in a book, but nothing happening in a phony way
characters saying things people never say, doing jobs that don't fit, the whole works
is simply asking too much of a reader. Something happening in a phony way must beat nothing happening in a phony way every time, right? I mean, you could prove that, mathematically, in an equation, and you can't often apply science to literature. — Nick Hornby

But in my opinion, all things in nature occur mathematically. — Rene Descartes

Modernity needs to understand that being rich and becoming rich are not mathematically, personally, socially, and ethically the same thing. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The nature of a letter can also be revealed within its numeric value. All letters and numbers behave in a certain but recognizable way, from which we can deduce its nature. The number two is the only even prime. There is an inherent mathematical dilemma with, "one." No matter how many times you multiply it, by itself, you still can't get past "one" (1 x 1 x 1 x 1 = 1). So, how does "one" move beyond itself? How does the same, produce the different?
Mathematically, "one" is forced to divide itself and work from that duality. Therein, hides the divine puzzle of bet (b). To become "two," the second must revolt from wholeness - a separation. Yet, the second could not have existed without the benefit of the original wholeness. Also, the first wanted the second to exist, but the first doesn't know what the second will become. Again, two contains potential badness, to a Hebrew. (Ge 25:24) — Michael Ben Zehabe

Mathematically, debts grow exponentially at compound interest. Banks recycle the interest into new loans, so debts grow exponentially, faster than the economy can afford to pay. — Michael Hudson

I am the largest market shareholder of clothing in the U.K. and I am not a destination shop for food. If the clothing market is affected - and it has been - and I hold my market share mathematically, then fine, I am doing no worse than the market is doing, which is exactly the case, but I'm losing revenue. — Stuart Rose

Around my eighth or ninth year I became interested in the world's religions. I was mathematically retarded but theologically precocious. I began to correspond with seikhs in India. After about the third letter they would ask about job opportunities in America. — Jean Houston

An exciting feature of string theory is that the particles emerge from the theory itself: a distinct species of particle arises from each distinct string vibrational pattern. And since the vibrational pattern determines the properties of the corresponding particle, if you understood the theory well enough to delineate all vibrational patterns, you'd be able to explaine all properties of all particles. The potential and the promies, then, is that string theory will transcent quantum field theory by deriving all particle properties mathematically. Not only would this unify everything under the umbrella of vibrating strings, it would establish that future "surprises"-such as the discovery of currently unknown particle species-are built into string theory from the outset and so would be accessible, in principle, to sufficiently industrious calculation. String theory doesn't build piecemeal toward an ever more complete description of nature. It seeks a complete description from the get-go. — Brian Greene

Mathematics is natural. Love is natural. It only makes sense that it's mathematically quantifiable. — Ally Blake

Yes," I continued, "I discovered this model recently and her style never fails to be mathematically perfect. She seems to come by it naturally. As if she were born resonant. I notice Japanese models tend to do this. Like I said, they seem to have resonance somewhere deep in their culture. But Yuri Nakagawa, she's the best I've ever seen. The best model, with the most powerful resonance. I need her to probe deeper
into this profound mathematical instinct, which I call resonance. — Alexei Maxim Russell

Mint's business model became, 'We'll go for free, and then we'll find these savings opportunities for you.' You know, better interest rate on your credit cards, when should you consolidate your student loans, when does it mathematically make sense to refinance your mortgage, and Mint figures all that stuff out for you. — Aaron Patzer

What of Thought? The Crew had developed a kind of shorthand whereby they could set forth any visions that might come their way. Conversations at the Spoon had become little more than proper nouns, literary allusions, critical or philosophical terms linked in certain ways. Depending on how you arranged the building blocks at your disposal, you were smart or stupid. Depending on how others reacted they were In or Out. The number of blocks, however, was finite.
"Mathematically, boy," he told himself, "if nobody else original comes along, they're bound to run out of arrangements someday. What then?" What indeed. This sort of arranging and rearranging was Decadence, but the exhaustion of all possible permutations and combinations was death.
It scared Eigenvalue, sometimes. He would go in back and look at the set of dentures. Teeth and metals endure. — Thomas Pynchon

a negative charge moving backward in time is mathematically equivalent to a positive charge moving forward in time! — Lawrence M. Krauss

We chose to do this work mathematically, which has the advantage of precision but is not always appreciated by readers. It is perhaps for this reason that anthropologists have not shown much interest in these models, unlike economists, for example, for whom the use of mathematics poses no problem. However, one could reach the same conclusions by using just a bit of common sense. — Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza

The chances of your being harmed by terrorists are mathematically minute. The chance of your being robbed by your own government? That's easy: 100 per cent. — Joseph Sobran

The average IQ in America is - and this can be proven mathematically - average. — P. J. O'Rourke

The complexity of economics can be calculated mathematically. Write out the algebraic equation that is the human heart and multiply each unknown by the population of the world. — P. J. O'Rourke

Both for practical reasons and for mathematically verifiable moral reasons, authority and responsibility must be equal - else a balancing takes place as surely as current flows between points of unequal potential. To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy. The unlimited democracies were unstable because their citizens were not responsible for the fashion in which they exerted their sovereign authority ... other than through the tragic logic of history ... No attempt was made to determine whether a voter was socially responsible to the extent of his literally unlimited authority. If he voted the impossible, the disastrous possible happened instead - and responsibility was then forced on him willy-nilly and destroyed both him and his foundationless temple. — Robert A. Heinlein

What humans do with the language of mathematics is to describe patterns ... To grow mathematically children must be exposed to a rich variety of patterns appropriate to their own lives through which they can see variety, regularity, and interconnections. — Lynn Steen

Being a scientist means that you should be able to put your faith to the test, and be willing to surrender it should evidence so require. But it does not mean we have no beliefs. In fact, the very discipline of science is based on the belief that the world is comprehensible, and even more audaciously, that it is mathematically describable. The thing about scientific beliefs is that they are not arbitrary. They're not just random opinions we plucked out of the sky; we came to them through observation and experience, and so far, these beliefs have always been vindicated. — Tasneem Zehra Husain

It's like simulating earthquakes: we can over and over study a bubble, crash, bubble, crash. Then we can see mathematically if there's some regular pattern and what's going on in people's brains when prices are going up and before the crash is happening. — Colin Camerer

Surely if we all try hard, we can all lift ourselves up high above the average. It looks a little difficult mathematically, but that's nothing. — Stephen Leacock

A thing is obvious mathematically after you see it. — Robert Daniel Carmichael

The semanticists maintained that everything depends on how you interpret the words "potato," "is" and "moving." Since the key here is the operational copula "is," one must examine "is" rigorously. Whereupon they set to work on an Encyclopedia of Cosmic Semasiology, devoting the first four volumes to a discussion of the operational referents of "is." The neopositivists maintained that it is not clusters of potatoes one directly perceives, but clusters of sensory impressions. Then, employing symbolic logic, they created terms for "cluster of impressions" and "cluster of potatoes," devised a special calculus of propositions all in algebraic signs and after using up several seas of ink reached the mathematically precise and absolutely undeniable conclusion that 0=0. — Stanislaw Lem

Mathematically, maybe," I said. "But trust isn't one of those things that lends itself well to math." "Sure it does," Bob said. "You trust somebody, they betray you, you get a negative value. You never trust, they can never disappoint you, you break even. — Jim Butcher

I liked science. I wasn't mathematically oriented, so I became an organic chemist. — Koji Nakanishi

Time grabs you by the scruff of your neck and drags you forward. You get over it, of course. Everyone was right about that. One mathematically insignificant day, you stop hoping for happiness and become actually happy. — Sloane Crosley

The more I read, to me the more incredible everything is. Based on what I've read, there are all these other dimensional planes and spaces, mathematically proven. — Dwight Schultz

You are from alone in the community of scientists, and here is a professional secret to encourage you: many of the most successful scientists in the world today are mathematically no more than semiliterate. A metaphor will clarify the paradox in this statement. Where elite mathematicians often serve as architects of theory in the expanding realm of science, the remaining large majority of basic and applied scientists map the terrain, scout the frontier, cut the pathways, and raise the first buildings along the way. They define the problems that mathematicians, on occasion, may help solve. They think primarily in images and facts, and only marginally in mathematics. — Edward O. Wilson

Until now, physical theories have been regarded as merely models with approximately describe the reality of nature. As the models improve, so the fit between theory and reality gets closer. Some physicists are now claiming that supergravity is the reality, that the model and the real world are in mathematically perfect accord. — Paul Davies

Nothing is impossible, only mathematically improbable. — Sean Connery

Coincidence, Jim, is just a word superstitious people use to describe complex events that in truth are the mathematically inevitable consequences of a primary cause. - Michael quoting Mr. Spock — Dean Koontz

Okay. So, Koturovic studied the structure of the brain and how much bio-electricity it put out and what frequencies that electricity was on. He moved to London and in 1877 he attended a lecture given by a mathematician named William Clifford who was one of the first people to propose the idea of other dimensions. He noticed - " "Wait," said Tim. "Other dimensions?" She nodded. "I looked him up. Clifford did a lot of work with concepts like curved space and there being more to the world than just the standard three dimensions. At least a fourth, mathematically speaking, and probably a fifth, sixth, seventh, and so on." Tim raised an eyebrow but said nothing else. — Peter Clines

Height, weight and body mass index.' Gene was skimming ahead. 'Can't you do the calculation yourself?' 'That's the purpose of the question,' I said. 'Checking they can do basic arithmetic. I don't want a partner who's mathematically illiterate. — Graeme Simsion

There was a blithe certainty that came from first comprehending the full Einstein field equations, arabesques of Greek letters clinging tenuously to the page, a gossamer web. They seemed insubstantial when you first saw them, a string of squiggles. Yet to follow the delicate tensors as they contracted, as the superscripts paired with subscripts, collapsing mathematically into concrete classical entities - potential; mass; forces vectoring in a curved geometry - that was a sublime experience. The iron fist of the real, inside the velvet glove of airy mathematics. — Gregory Benford

O that everything he does is not done by his willing it, but is done of itself, by the laws of nature. Consequently we have only to discover these laws of nature, and man will no longer have to answer for his actions and life will become exceedingly easy for him. All human actions will then, of course, be tabulated according to these laws, mathematically, like tables of logarithms up to 108,000, and entered in an index; or, better still, there would be published certain edifying works of the nature of encyclopaedic lexicons, in which everything will be so clearly calculated and explained that there will be no more incidents or adventures in the world. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There are many aspects of time we just do not understand. That's the thing about writing a popular book: You realize the things you understand because for those you can give a really simple explanation. But some things about time I just don't know how to give simple explanations for, even though I can tell you mathematically what's going on. — Lisa Randall

I don't feel any different than I did when I was 40. But I realize mathematically, I'm equidistant between that and 80. I'll keep doing this for a while, but I'm not going to be one of these people who hang on just for the sake of being on the air. — Bob Costas

Once i asked myself ," what is time? " , in a second or two , i find the answer - " 't' for tension , 'i' for imaginative character of time , 'm' as it is mathematically expressed , 'e' as it has elegance — Suman Kundu

One might almost reckon mathematically that, having undergone the double composition of public opinion and of the author, their history reaches us at third hand and is thus separated by two stages from the original fact. — Alfred De Vigny

It's mathematically impossible to reach infinity. Every step toward it gets us no closer. In the end, all we've done is move farther from where we bagan. — Shannon Lee Alexander

Tom felt his darkness. His father was beautiful and clever, his mother was short and mathematically sure. Each of his brothers and sisters had looks or gifts or fortune. Tom loved all of them passionately, but he felt heavy and earth-bound. He climbed ecstatic mountains and floundered in the rocky darkness between the peaks. He had spurts of bravery but they were bracketed in battens of cowardice. — John Steinbeck

Art is what can't be proven mathematically, right, it's where science ends. It's the part that makes you feel good, but you don't know why. — Jim McKelvey

I do believe there is life in outer space. Mathematically, there has to be, and if you believe as I do that there is a creator of the universe, then how can we be so arrogant to believe he created life here and nowhere else? — Eugene Cernan

If they will not understand that we are bringing them a mathematically faultless happiness, our duty will be to force them to be happy. But before we take up arms, we shall try the power of words. — Yevgeny Zamyatin

Numerically speaking, half the population cannot be a minority. Yet when it comes to women, the numbers plainly show that the mathematically impossible is the socially acceptable. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Human beings are more or less formulas. Pun intended. We are not any one thing that is mathematically provable. We are more or less than we are anything. We are more or less kind, or more or less not. More or less selfish, happy, wise, lonely. — Adi Alsaid

When all actions are mathematically calculated, they also take on a stupid quality. — Theodor Adorno

The world operates by number, by physical laws, expressed mathematically. If you know these, you will have a better grasp of things. And some possible job skills. — Kim Stanley Robinson

The spiral in a snail's shell is the same mathematically as the spiral in the Milky Way galaxy, and it's also the same mathematically as the spirals in our DNA. It's the same ratio that you'll find in very basic music that transcends cultures all over the world. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

The reasons why anthropologists haven't been able to come up with a simple, compelling story for the origins of money is because there's no reason to believe there could be one. Money was no more ever "invented" than music or mathematics or jewelry. What we call "money" isn't a "thing" at all; it's a way of comparing things mathematically, as proportions: of saying one of X is equivalent to six of Y. As such it is probably as old as human thought. — David Graeber

People do dollar cost averaging because they have regret of making one big mistake. But the fact of the matter is that, mathematically, the market rises more of the time than it falls. It falls, but it rises more of the time than it falls. — Kenneth Fisher

The aspirations of democracy are based on the notion of an informed citizenry, capable of making wise decisions. The choices we are asked to make become increasingly complex. They require the longer-term thinking and greater tolerance for ambiguity that science fosters. The new economy is predicated on a continuous pipeline of scientific and technological innovation. It can not exist without workers and consumers who are mathematically and scientifically literate. — Ann Druyan

A circle may be small, yet it may be as mathematically beautiful and perfect as a large one. — Isaac D'Israeli

Wise leaders know that if an individual doesn't count, the institution doesn't count for much either. Put mathematically, if the individual is a zero, together a lot of zeros add up to a whole lot of nothing. — Diane Dreher

That the divided but contiguous particles of bodies may be separated from one another is a matter of observation; and, in the particles that remain undivided, our minds are able to distinguish yet lesser parts, as is mathematically demonstrated. — Isaac Newton

She swore she could prove it mathematically, but the calculations required were so involved that they would have required a computer the size of the universe, running for a length of time that would have taken them past the projected heat-death of the universe, to work them out. It was pretty much the definition of moot. — Lev Grossman

There is a physical problem that is common to many fields, that is very old, and that has not been solved. It is not the problem of finding new fundamental particles, but something left over from a long time ago - over a hundred years. Nobody in physics has really been able to analyze it mathematically satisfactorily in spite of its importance to the sister sciences. It is the analysis of circulating or turbulent fluids. — Richard Feynman

Psychedelics are not flashlights into the chaos of the Freudian unconscious, they are tools for mathematically unpacking your mind into a higher dimensional space. In the Newtonian and print created space that we are walking around in you, are like a self extracting archive, that hasn't self extracted itself yet. — Terence McKenna

When you have a lot of money, there's so many places you can go to manage your money. But when you don't have money, mathematically you actually need a financial plan more. You can't really afford to make mistakes. So why is this such a luxury product? — Alexa Von Tobel

If we are not married by within three months time, we shall be the first batch of spinsters in the history of the school," Olivia said in a small voice. "No one has ever ended their fourth season unwed. Except for us."
( ... )"In the one-hundred-year history of the school, it was bound to happen," Prudence said. "Mathematically speaking. — Maya Rodale

You're perfect," I tell him, so overcome I forget myself. "All of you. Your entire body.
Proportionally. Symmetrically. You're absurdly, mathematically perfect. It doesn't even make sense
that a person could look like you, — Tahereh Mafi

Time allows change to take place and the very evolution of the universe is what requires some conception of time. Mathematically can we write down a universe that doesn't have time? Sure. Do we think that would be realised in the larger reality that is out there? None of us take that possibility seriously. — Brian Greene

The Sublime. The almost tangible, entirely believable, mathematically verifiable nirvana just a few right-angle turns away from dear boring old reality: a vast, infinite, better-than-virtual ultra-existence with no Off switch, to which species and civilizations had been hauling their sorry tired-with-it-all behinds off to since - the story went - the galaxy had still been in metaphorical knee socks. — Iain M. Banks

It was magic, I felt the bond between us.
She was a jelly to my peanuts, Mars to Venus,
The Earth to my sun, moon and stars,
We added up mathematically ...
It's like I had a bad habit, B! — Ghostface Killah

All these constructions and the laws connecting them can be arrived at by the principle of looking for the mathematically simplest concepts and the link between them. — Albert Einstein

In brief, the whole world is the totality of mathematically expressible motions of objects in space and time, and the entire universe is a great, harmonious, and mathematically designed machine. — Morris Kline

Love and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as two sides of an algebraic equation. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is scarcely a subject that cannot be mathematically treated and the effects calculated or the results determined beforehand from the available theoretical and practical data. — Nikola Tesla

An arguing couple spiraling into negativity and teetering on the brink of divorce is actually mathematically equivalent to the beginning of a nuclear war. — Hannah Fry

Like, okay. Everyone in history thought they were the ones who finally knew everything. In their naissance, right, they were positive they knew exactly how the universe worked. Til the next set of guys came along and proved they were missing like a hundred important things. and then that set of guys were sure they had it all down, til another set came along and showed them parts they were missing." He glances at Julia, checking if she's laughing at him, which she isn't, and if she's listening, which she is, completely. "So." he says, "it's pretty unlikely, mathematically, that we are living in the one single era that has everything figured out. Which means there's a decent possibility that the reason we can't explain how ghosts and stuff could exist is because we haven't figured it out yet, not because they don't. And it is pretty arrogant of us to think it definitely has to be the other way around. — Tana French

The red indicator light just came on. I'm looking at the run-time error report. It's like a mathematically precise way of saying, This is not how you do this, man. Meaning life, I suppose. It's computer for Hey, buddy, you are massively bungling this up. I know it. I know it better than anyone. I don't need silicon wafers with a slightly neurotic interface to tell me that. — Charles Yu

All you have to know is mathematically how many times to scratch it and when to let it go - when certain things will enhance the record you're listening to. — Grandmaster Flash

Mathematically-minded persons will thus perceive immediately that the magnitude scale is a logarithmic one and that the number 2.512 is the fifth root of 100. — Robert Burnham Jr.

There is real danger that, by strengthening our abilities to analyze some questions mathematically, we acquire a general confidence in our beliefs, which extends unjustifiably to those things we're still wrong about. — Jordan Ellenberg

Never bring a lot of money to where a poor man lives. He can only lose what little he has. On the other hand it is mathematically possible that he might win whatever you bring with you. What you must do, with money and the poor, is never let them get too close to one another. — Charles Bukowski

Mathematical objects states "only the relationships between mathematically 'undefined objects' and the rules governing operations with them." It doesn't matter what mathematical things are: it's what they do that counts. Thus mathematics hovers uneasily between the real and the not-real; its meaning does not reside in formal abstractions, but neither is it tangible. This may cause problems for philosophers who like tidy categories, but it is the great strength of mathematics - what — Richard Courant

The more absolute the need, the more predictable the behavior becomes until it is mathematically certain. — William S. Burroughs

Nature doesn't feel compelled to stick to a mathematically precise algorithm; in fact, nature probably can't stick to an algorithm. — Margaret Wertheim

It is a curious historical fact that modern quantum mechanics began with two quite different mathematical formulations: the differential equation of Schroedinger and the matrix algebra of Heisenberg. The two apparently dissimilar approaches were proved to be mathematically equivalent. — Richard P. Feynman

The love of the famous, like all strong passions, is quite abstract. Its intensity can be measured mathematically, and it is independent of persons. — Susan Sontag

In the Christian religion, though perhaps not in any other, we frequently find a conception of god that is selfcontradictory and therefore corresponds to nothing. That is the conception formed by the following three propositions taken together:
1. God is all-powerful.
2. God is all-benevolent.
3. There is much misery in the world.
A god who was all-powerful but left much misery in the world would not be all-benevolent. An all-benevolent god in a world containing much misery would not be an all-powerful god. A world containing a god who was both all-powerful and all-benevolent would contain no misery.
Here, then, we have a mathematical proof bearing on a common religious doctrine. Anyone who is confident that he frequently comes across misery in the world may conclude with equal confidence that there is no such thing as an all-powerful and all-benevolent god. And this mathematically disposes of official Christianity, as has long been known. — Richard Robinson

The problem of the origin of the laws of physics is an acute one for physicists. Einstein's suggestion that they may turn out necessarily to possess the form that they do has little support. It is sometimes said that a truly unified theory of physics might be so tightly constrained logically that its mathematical formulation is unique. But this claim is readily refuted. It is easy to construct artificial universe models, albeit impoverished ones bearing only a superficial resemblance to the real thing, which are nevertheless mathematically and logically self-consistent. — Paul Davies

Baseball's Opening Day is full of time-honored traditions: the President throws out the first ball, the Cubs' starting pitcher walks away with a 54.00 ERA, the Royals get mathematically eliminated from the pennant race. — Rob Sheffield

Like most religious mathematicians from Pythagoras to Godel, Bolzano believes that math is the Language of God and that profound metaphysical truths can be derived and proved mathematically. — David Foster Wallace