Quotes & Sayings About Mathematicians

It was love, she thought, pretending to move her canvas, distilled and filtered; love that never attempted to clutch its object; but, like the love which mathematicians bear their symbols, or poets their phrases, was meant to be spread over the world and become part of the human gain. — Virginia Woolf

She hated everything. The library with its pile of books full of explanations about life; the school that had forced her to spend whole evenings learning algebra, even though she didn't know a single person, apart from teachers and mathematicians, who needed algebra in order to be happy. — Paulo Coelho

And in that same way, law school breaks a mind down. Novelists, poets, and artists don't often do well in law school, but neither, necessarily, do mathematicians, logicians and scientists. The first group fails because their logic is their own; the second fails because logic is all they own. — Hanya Yanagihara

In the work of Ramanujan, the number 24 appears repeatedly. This is an example of what mathematicians call magic numbers, which continually appear, where we least expect them, for reasons that no one understands. Miraculously, Ramanujan's function also appears in string theory. The number 24 appearing in Ramanujan's function is also the origin of the miraculous cancellations occurring in string theory. In string theory, each of the 24 modes in the Ramanujan function corresponds to a physical vibration of the string. Whenever the string executes its complex motions in space-time by splitting and recombining, a large number of highly sophisticated mathematical identities must be satisfied. These are precisely the mathematical identities discovered by Ramanujan. (Since physicists add two more dimensions when they count the total number of vibrations appearing in a relativistic theory, this means that space-time must have 24 + 2 = 26 space-time dimensions.) — Michio Kaku

Although I am even now still a layman in the area of mathematics, and although I lack theoretical knowledge, the mathematicians, and in particular the crystallographers, have had considerable influence on my work of the last twenty years. The laws of the phenomena around us
order, regularity, cyclical repetition, and renewals
have assumed greater and greater importance for me. The awareness of their presence gives me peace and provides me with support. I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, and not in a formless chaos, as it sometimes seems. — M.C. Escher

Mathematical thinking is not the same as doing mathematics - at least not as mathematics is typically presented in our school system. School math typically focuses on learning procedures to solve highly stereotyped problems. Professional mathematicians think a certain way to solve real problems, problems that can arise from the everyday world, or from science, or from within mathematics itself. The key to success in school math is to learn to think inside-the-box. In contrast, a key feature of mathematical thinking is thinking outside-the-box - a valuable ability in today's world. — Keith Devlin

He rises a copy of a poster. On the left is a quote from The New York Times dated October 9, 1903. It says,'The flying machine which will really fly might be evolved by the combined and continuous efforts of mathematicians in from one million to ten million years'. On the right is a quote from Orville Wright's diary, dated October 9, 1903. 'We started assembly today' it says. — Joel Garreau

The greatest mathematicians, as Archimedes, Newton, and Gauss, always united theory and applications in equal measure. — Felix Klein

By keenly confronting the enigmas that surround us, and by considering and analyzing the observations that I had made, I ended up in the domain of mathematics. Although I am absolutely without training in the exact sciences, I often seem to have more in common with mathematicians than with my fellow artists. — M.C. Escher

Mathematicians among my readers do not need to be informed that " ... " is the algebraical sign representing a blend of wheeze, croak, and hiccough. — P.G. Wodehouse

For example, the philosophers who were interested in logic were probably rather logical for mathematicians. But the ASL got us together, so we could talk to each other and publish in the same journal. — Stephen Cole Kleene

Sure, some [teachers] could give the standard limit definitions, but they [the students] clearly did not understand the definitions - and it would be a remarkable student who did, since it took mathematicians a couple of thousand years to sort out the notion of a limit, and I think most of us who call ourselves professional mathematicians really only understand it when we start to teach the stuff, either in graduate school or beyond. — Keith Devlin

[I]t is funny because economists are not real scientists, and because logicians think more clearly, but mathematicians are best. — Mark Haddon

The real work of us mathematicians, from now until, roughly, fifty years from now, when computers won't need us anymore, is to make the transition from human-centric math to machine-centric math as smooth and efficient as possible. — Doron Zeilberger

In geometry I find certain imperfections which I hold to be the reason why this science, apart from transition into analytics, can as yet make no advance from that state in which it came to us from Euclid.
As belonging to these imperfections, I consider the obscurity in the fundamental concepts of the geometrical magnitudes and in the manner and method of representing the measuring of these magnitudes, and finally the momentous gap in the theory of parallels, to fill which all efforts of mathematicians have so far been in vain. — Nikolai Lobachevsky

A typical mathematician does not actively try to be useful. Individual mathematicians are motivated primarily by a subtle mixture of ambition and intellectual curiosity, and not by a wish to benefit society, nevertheless, mathematics as a whole does benefit society. — Timothy Gowers

It may be true that people who are merely mathematicians have certain specific shortcomings; however that is not the fault of mathematics, but is true of every exclusive occupation. Likewise a mere linguist, a mere jurist, a mere soldier, a mere merchant, and so forth. One could add such idle chatter that when a certain exclusive occupation is often connected with certain specific shortcomings, it is on the other hand always free of certain other shortcomings. — Carl Friedrich Gauss

Mathematicians - for what they do - are really poorly rewarded. And it's a very competitive field, almost as bad as being a concert pianist. — Gian-Carlo Rota

I am a Christian which means that I believe in the deity of Christ, like Tycho de Brahe, Copernicus, Descartes, Newton, Leibnitz, Pascal ... like all great astronomers mathematicians of the past. — Augustin-Louis Cauchy

There is nothing as dreamy and poetic, nothing as radical, subversive, and psychedelic, as mathematics. It is every bit as mind blowing as cosmology or physics (mathematicians conceived of black holes long before astronomers actually found any), and allows more freedom of expression than poetry, art, or music (which depends heavily on properties of the physical universe). Mathematics is the purest of the arts, as well as the most misunderstood. — Paul Lockhart

Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules ... Mathematicians are more like classical composers. — Brian Greene

Great physicists, great mathematicians, great chemists, and publishers knew that one was always feeling one's way in the dark. — Roberto Bolano

TO ALL THE
ambulance drivers
firewatchers
air-raid wardens
nurses
canteen workers
airplane spotters
rescue workers
mathematicians
vicars
vergers
shopgirls
chorus girls
librarians
debutantes
spinsters
fishermen
retired sailors
servants
evacuees
Shakespearean actors
and mystery novelists
WHO WON THE WAR. — Connie Willis

Abel has left mathematicians enough to keep them busy for five hundred years. — Charles Hermite

The mathematicians of this world regard themselves as 'physicists,' yet they know next to nothing about Physics. — Bill Gaede

Artists realise that mathematicians have a way of looking at the world that can make them see things differently. — Marcus Du Sautoy

It appears that the solution of the problem of time and space is reserved to philosophers who, like Leibniz, are mathematicians, or to mathematicians who, like Einstein, are philosophers. — Hans Reichenbach

Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders. — Carl Friedrich Gauss

The only thing that might have annoyed some mathematicians was the presumption of assuming that maybe the axiom of choice could fail, and that we should look into contrary assumptions. — Alonzo Church

Credulous: having views about the world, the universe and humanity's place in it that are shared only by very unsophisticated people and the most intelligent and advanced mathematicians and physicists. — Terry Pratchett

It really is worth the trouble to invent a new symbol if we can thus remove not a few logical difficulties and ensure the rigour of the proofs. But many mathematicians seem to have so little feeling for logical purity and accuracy that they will use a word to mean three or four different things, sooner than make the frightful decision to invent a new word. — Gottlob Frege

Some of the greatest mathematical minds of all ages, from Pythagoras and Euclid in ancient Greece, through the medieval Italian mathematician Leonardo of Pisa and the Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler, to present-day scientific figures such as Oxford physicist Roger Penrose, have spent endless hours over this simple ratio and its properties. But the fascination with the Golden Ratio is not confined just to mathematicians. Biologists, artists, musicians, historians, architects, psychologists, and even mystics have pondered and debated the basis of its ubiquity and appeal. In fact, it is probably fair to say that the Golden Ratio has inspired thinkers of all disciplines like no other number in the history of mathematics. — Mario Livio

After preliminary work by a number of other distinguished mathematicians and economists, game theory as a systematic theory started with von Neumann and Morgenstern's book, 'Theory of Games and Economic Behavior,' published in 1944. — John Harsanyi

As we have seen with reference to the experiences of Gauss and Poincare, the mathematicians also discovered the fact that our representations are "ordered" before we become aware of them. B.L. van der Waerden, who cites many examples of essential mathematical insights arising from the unconscious, concludes: " ... the unconscious is not only able to associate and combine, but even to judge. The judgment of the unconscious is an intuitive one, but it is under favorable circumstances completely sure. — C. G. Jung

It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done. Statesmen despise publicists, painters despise art-critics, and physiologists, physicists, or mathematicians have usually similar feelings: there is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds. — G.H. Hardy

The fact that we cannot write down all the digits of pi is not a human shortcoming, as mathematicians sometimes think. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

I hope that seeing the excitement of solving this problem will make young mathematicians realize that there are lots and lots of other problems in mathematics which are going to be just as challenging in the future. — Andrew Wiles

As for mathematicians themselves: don't expect too much help. Most of them are too far removed in their ivory towers to take up such challenges. And anyway, they are not competent. After all, they are just mathematicians-what we need is paramathematicians, like you ... It is you who can be the welding force, between mathematicians and stories, in order to achieve the synthesis. — Apostolos Doxiadis

What has philosophy got to do with measuring anything? It's the mathematicians you have to trust, and they measure the skies like we measure a field. — Galileo Galilei

Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. — G.K. Chesterton

What is this frog and mouse battle among the mathematicians? — Albert Einstein

The greatest problem for mathematicians now is probably the Riemann Hypothesis. — Andrew Wiles

Oh these mathematicians make me tired! When you ask them to work out a sum they take a piece of paper, cover it with rows of A's, B's, and X's and Y's ... scatter a mess of flyspecks over them, and then give you an answer that's all wrong! — Thomas A. Edison

All mathematicians share ... a sense of amazement over the infinite depth and the mysterious beauty and usefulness of mathematics. — Martin Gardner

Oh yes, children often commit murders. And quite clever ones, too. Some murderers, particularly the distinguished ones who are going to make great names for themselves, start amazingly early ... Like mathematicians and musicians. Poets develop later. — John Lee Mahin

Mathematicians are a bit like the laconic Vermonter who, when asked if he's lived in the state his whole life, replies, "Not yet." — John Allen Paulos

Only professional mathematicians learn anything from proofs. Other people learn from explanations. — Ralph P. Boas Jr.

Mathematicians have, according to Wright, been "unreasonably successful" in finding applications to apparently useless theorems, and often years after the theorems were first discovered. — Alex Bellos

It was the engineer who determined what problems to investigate, designed the experiments, and defined the assignments for the mathematicians. — Margot Lee Shetterly

Through all this ordeal his root horror had been isolation, and there are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematicians that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one. That is why, in spite of a hundred disadvantages, the world will always return to monogamy. — G.K. Chesterton

Since the mathematicians have grabbed hold of the theory of relativity, I myself no longer understand it. — Walter Isaacson

Nevertheless, many of these models encoded human prejudice, misunderstanding, and bias into the software systems that increasingly managed our lives. Like gods, these mathematical models were opaque, their workings invisible to all but the highest priests in their domain: mathematicians and computer scientists. Their verdicts, even when wrong or harmful, were beyond dispute or appeal. And — Cathy O'Neil

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

A mathematician says that an electromagnetic wave travels from Andromeda to your eye and that it also extends from Andromeda to your eye. — Bill Gaede

The inner circle of pure mathematicians will respond to the book with delight. — Philip J. Davis

Some humans are mathematicians-others aren't. — Jane Goodall

It is almost as hard to define mathematics as it is to define economics, and one is tempted to fall back on the famous old definition attributed to Jacob Viner, "Economics is what economists do," and say that mathematics is what mathematicians do. A large part of mathematics deals with the formal relations of quantities or numbers. — Kenneth E. Boulding

We must establish all over the country schools of our own to train our own children to become scientists, to become mathematicians. We must realize the need for adult education and for job retraining programs that will emphasize a changing society in which automation plays the key role. We intend to use the tools of education to help raise our people to an unprecedented level of excellence and self respect through their own efforts. — Malcolm X

Mathematicians aren't satisfied because they know there are no solutions up to four million or four billion, they really want to know that there are no solutions up to infinity. — Andrew Wiles

If there should chance to be any mathematicians who, ignorant in mathematics yet pretending to skill in that science, should dare, upon the authority of some passage of Scripture wrested to their purpose, to condemn and censure my hypothesis, I value them not, and scorn their inconsiderate judgement.
De Revolutionibus Coelestibus — Nicolaus Copernicus

Everyone knows that physicists are concerned with the laws of the universe and have the audacity sometimes to think they have discovered the choices God made when He created the universe in thus and such a pattern. Mathematicians are even more audacious. What they feel they discover are the laws that God Himself could not avoid having to follow. — David Mumford

Of course, the set of logically consistent mathematical structures is many times larger than the set of physical principles. Therefore, some mathematical structures, such as number theory (which some mathematicians claim to be the purest branch of mathematics), have never been incorporated into any physical theory. Some argue that this situation may always exist: Perhaps the human mind will always be able to conceive of logically consistent structures that cannot be expressed through any physical principle. However, there are indications that string theory may soon incorporate number theory into its structure as well. — Michio Kaku

Like musicians who can read and write complicated scores in a world without sounds, for us mathematics is a source of delight, excitement, and even controversy which are hard to share with non mathematicians. In our small micro-cosmos we should ever seek the right balance between competition and solidarity, criticism and empathy, exclusion and inclusion. — Gil Kalai

The mathematicians have been very much absorbed with finding the general solution of algebraic equations, and several of them have tried to prove the impossibility of it. However, if I am not mistaken, they have not as yet succeeded. I therefore dare hope that the mathematicians will receive this memoir with good will, for its purpose is to fill this gap in the theory of algebraic equations. — Niels Henrik Abel

Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express. — James C. Maxwell

The only reason psychology students don't have to do more and harder mathematics than physics students is because the mathematicians haven't yet discovered ways of dealing with problems as hard as those in psychology. — John G. Kemeny

The ingenious method of expressing every possible number using a set of ten symbols (each symbol having a place value and an absolute value) emerged in India. The idea seems so simple nowadays that its significance and profound importance is no longer appreciated ... The importance of this invention is more readily appreciated when one considers that it was beyod the two greatest men of antiquity, Archimedes and Apollonius. — Pierre-Simon Laplace

When I told my mother that I have to give a talk, and was debating what could I possibly say to non-mathematicians, she said: "You got what to wear?". — Richard A. Falk

College is the grinding machine of the Mathematical Establishment, a conveyor belt that takes individuals from one cookie cutter to another so that the product comes within tight control limits out of the assembly line. — Bill Gaede

The things that fascinate me the most about mathematics are logical thought and the great importance attached to the correctness of propositions. Every step made during calculations is conclusive and mathematicians don't like to make false statements. This is the reason why people from this particular domain contemplate longer before they respond to questions. Recently I read a sentence in a book which summarizes all this fascinating stuff to me succinctly: 'Mathematics is the purest form of thought. — Barbara Meier

You know" - Hale's breath was warm against Kat's ear in the chilly ballroom- "I don't know that both of us really have to be here ... "
The slide changed. While hundreds of mathematicians waited with baited breath, the boy beside Kat whispered,
"I could go make some calls ... check on some things ... "
"Play some blackjack?"
"Well, when in Rome ... "
"Rome is tomorrow, babe," Kat reminded him.
He nodded. "Right. — Ally Carter

There have now been many studies of elite performers - international violinists, chess grand masters, professional ice-skaters, mathematicians, and so forth - and the biggest difference researchers find between them and lesser performers is the cumulative amount of deliberate practice they've had. Indeed, the most important talent may be the talent for practice itself. — Atul Gawande

Mathematicians have sought knowledge in figures, Philosophers in systems, Logicians in subtleties, and Metaphysicians in sounds. It is not in any nor in all of these. He that studies only men, will get the body of knowledge without the soul, and he that studies only books, the soul without the body. — Charles Caleb Colton

The mathematicians are well acquainted with the difference between pure science, which has only to do with ideas, and the application of its laws to the use of life, in which they are constrained to submit to the imperfections of matter and the influence of accidents. — Samuel Johnson

Mathematicians finally developed a financial model to accurately compare apples and oranges. Any two kinds of fruit can be compared, although guavas still cause minor rounding errors. — Graham Parke

Proof then, has retreated in the face of belief. Science, once heralded as the arbiter of truth, has had its facade of objectivity punctured. Intellectuals may point to the uncertainty of Heisenberg, but generally this has more to do with the growing distrust of statistics and the knowledge that scientists in the pay of governments and multi-nationals are no more objective than their masters. Science, once the avowed enemy of religion, now sees books BT Christian physicists and Taoist mathematicians. Science sells washing powders and status symbols and comes in the form of icons of technological nostalgia. — Phil Hine

The Internet gives you access to a lot of material, and it's fun to sit and read. I go to something like Wikipedia and look at different topics ... I find the subject fascinating. I like to read about concepts and mathematicians. — Viswanathan Anand

It is impossible to study the works of the great mathematicians, or even those of the lesser, without noticing and distinguishing two opposite tendencies, or rather two entirely different kinds of minds. The one sort are above all preoccupied with logic; to read their works, one is tempted to believe they have advanced only step by step, after the manner of a Vauban who pushes on his trenches against the place besieged, leaving nothing to chance. The other sort are guided by intuition and at the first stroke make quick but sometimes precarious conquests, like bold cavalrymen of the advance guard.
[1913, p210] — Henri Poincare

Read an article about a group of mathematicians who developed a financial model to accurately compare apples and oranges. I was stunned. Never thought I'd see the day. Preliminary indications are that the model allows any two kinds of fruit to be compared, although guava still causes minor rounding errors. Further testing is ongoing.
Gomez Porter, blogspace entry — Graham Parke

Mathematicians can and do fill in gaps, correct errors, and supply more detail and more careful scholarship when they are called on or motivated to do so. Our system is quite good at producing reliable theorems that can be solidly backed up. It's just that the reliability does not primarily come from mathematicians formally checking formal arguments; it comes from mathematicians thinking carefully and critically about mathematical ideas. — William Thurston

A mathematician tells you that the wall of warped space prevents the Moon from flying out of its orbit yet can't tell you why an astronaut can go back and forth across that same space. — Bill Gaede

What the commands of mathematicians, God, and playwrights have in common seems to be this, that the mere act of speaking suffices to bring about the truth of what is said. — Alfred Mollin

All mathematicians live in two different worlds. They live in a crystalline world of perfect platonic forms. An ice palace. But they also live in the common world where things are transient, ambiguous, subject to vicissitudes. Mathematicians go backward and forward from one world to another. They're adults in the crystalline world, infants in the real one. — Sylvain Cappell

The physicists say that I am a mathematician, and the mathematicians say that I am a physicist. I am a completely isolated man and though everybody knows me, there are very few people who really know me. — Albert Einstein

Douady and Hubbard used a brilliant chain of new mathematics to prove that every floating molecule does indeed hang on a filigree that binds it to all the rest, a delicate web springing from tiny outcroppings on the main set, a "devil's polymer," in Mandelbrot's phrase. The mathematicians proved that any segment-no matter where, and no matter how small-would, when blown up by the computer microscope, reveal new molecules, each resembling the main set and yet not quite the same. Every new molecule would be surrounded by its own spirals and flame-like projections, and those, inevitably, would reveal molecules tinier still, always similar, never identical, fulfilling some mandate of infinite variety, a miracle of miniaturization in which every new detail was sure to be a universe of its own, diverse and entire. — James Gleick

It was love, she thought, love that never clutch its object; but, like the love which mathematicians bear their symbols, or poets their phrases, was meant to be spread over the world and become part of human gain. The world by all means should have shared it, could Mr Bankes have said why that woman pleased him so; why the sight of her reading a fairy tale to her boy had upon him precisely the same effect as the solution of a scientific problem. — Virginia Woolf

Obviously, the final goal of scientists and mathematicians is not simply the accumulation of facts and lists of formulas, but rather they seek to understand the patterns, organizing principles, and relationships between these facts to form theorems and entirely new branches of human thought. For me, mathematics cultivates a perpetual state of wonder about the nature of mind, the limits of thoughts, and our place in this vast cosmos. — Clifford A. Pickover

To the average mathematician who merely wants to know his work is securely based, the most appealing choice is to avoid difficulties by means of Hilbert's program. Here one regards mathematics as a formal game and one is only concerned with the question of consistency ... The Realist position is probably the one which most mathematicians would prefer to take. It is not until he becomes aware of some of the difficulties in set theory that he would even begin to question it. If these difficulties particularly upset him, he will rush to the shelter of Formalism, while his normal position will be somewhere between the two, trying to enjoy the best of two worlds. — Paul Cohen

Mathematics is fun if you don't let mathematicians push you around when you are doing it. — Jack Edmonds

Whenever I want to represent or depict the official version, I will refer to them as 'mathematicians' or 'mathematical physicists' or idiots or something like that. There are no physicists in mainstream 'Physics.' From Newton to Einstein to Hawking, they are all just mathematicians as far as Science and Physics are concerned. — Bill Gaede

So long as mathematicians can impose up-and-down semantics upon students while trafficking personally in the non-up-and-down advantages of their concise statements, they can impose upon the
ignorance of man a monopoly of access to accurate processing of information and can fool even themselves by thought habits governing the becoming behavior of professional specialists, by
disclaiming the necessity of, or responsibility for, comprehensive adjustment of the a priori thought to total reality of universal principles. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Mathematicians do not deal in objects, but in relations between objects; thus, they are free to replace some objects by others so lone as the relations remain unchanged. Content to them is irrelevant; they are interested in form only. — Henri Poincare

Mathematicians also make terrible salesmen. Physicists can discover the same thing as a mathematician and say 'We've discovered a great new law of nature. Give us a billion dollars.' And if it doesn't change the world, then they say, 'There's an even deeper thing. Give us another billion dollars.' — Gian-Carlo Rota

Everyone in the sciences secretly believes that mathematicians are smarter than they are. I think mathematicians also believe this. At — Paul Graham

They ask how the universe is arranged, philosophers, mathematicians, and they draw pretty pictures, impossibilities on the page. They save phenomena by telling one ugly lie after another, epicycles upon epicycles, and the fools care not. It is not enough, I tell you, to ask how the cosmos is designed. We must ask why. — Robin Wasserman

The mathematical fraternity is a little like a self-perpetuating priesthood. The mathematicians of today teach the mathematicians of tomorrow and, in effect, decide whom to admit to the priesthood. — Paul Halmos

The discovery in 1846 of the planet Neptune was a dramatic and spectacular achievement of mathematical astronomy. The very existence of this new member of the solar system, and its exact location, were demonstrated with pencil and paper; there was left to observers only the routine task of pointing their telescopes at the spot the mathematicians had marked. — James R Newman

[John Wheeler] rejuvenated general relativity; he made it an experimental subject and took it away from the mathematicians — Freeman Dyson

Thirty-five craters on the moon are named for Jesuit scientists and mathematicians. — Thomas E. Woods Jr.

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