Science Math Quotes & Sayings

The elegance of a mathematical theorem is directly proportional to the number of independent ideas one can see in the theorem and inversely proportional to the effort it takes to see them. — George Polya

I think it's not particularly necessary to lead a religious life. People progress just as well in music, or art, or math or science or gardening or whatever. It all seems to work as well and the process is good. — Jim Henson

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

An eternal question about children is, how should we educate them? Politicians and educators consider more school days in a year, more science and math, the use of computers and other technology in the classroom, more exams and tests, more certification for teachers, and less money for art. All of these responses come from the place where we want to make the child into the best adult possible, not in the ancient Greek sense of virtuous and wise, but in the sense of one who is an efficient part of the machinery of society. But on all these counts, soul is neglected. — Thomas Moore

Mathematics had never had more than a secondary interest for him [her husband, George Boole]; and even logic he cared for chiefly as a means of clearing the ground of doctrines imagined to be proved, by showing that the evidence on which they were supposed to give rest had no tendency to prove them. — Mary Everest Boole

When I was a boy I was called a nerd all the time - because I didn't like sports, I loved to read, I liked math and science, I thought school was really cool - and it hurt a lot. Because it's never ok when a person makes fun of you for something you didn't choose. You know, we don't choose to be nerds. We can't help it that we like these things - and we shouldn't apologize for liking these things. — Wil Wheaton

By the time a kid goes to college, if he's taking math or science, at least he knows, or you hope he knows, some basics. But if you're teaching history in college, you have a lot of damage to undo. You basically have to start over because so much of what a kid has already learned is just wrong. — Chris Crutcher

Next you'd see a raft sliding by, away off yonder, and maybe a galoot on it chopping ... you'd see the ax flash and come down-you don't hear nothing; you see the ax go up again, and by the time it's above the man's head then you hear the k'chunk!-it had took all that time to come over the water. — Mark Twain

Let's say intelligence is your ability to compose poetry, symphonies, do art, math and science. Chimps can't do any of that, yet we share 99 percent DNA. Everything that we are, that distinguishes us from chimps, emerges from that one-percent difference. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

There have been many authorities who have asserted that the basis of science lies in counting or measuring, i.e. in the use of mathematics. Neither counting nor measuring can however be the most fundamental processes in our study of the material universe - before you can do either to any purpose you must first select what you propose to count or measure, which presupposes a classification. — Roy A. Crowson

We could use up two Eternities in learning all that is to be learned about our own world and the thousands of nations that have arisen and flourished and vanished from it. Mathematics alone would occupy me eight million years. — Mark Twain

My character, Taylor McKessie, is a little bit brighter in the math and science department than I am ... okay, a lot. — Monique Coleman

In order for America to remain a global leader in innovation and opportunity, we must give our children a solid foundation in math and science. — Kenny Marchant

Animation wasn't my love, but drawing was. I loved drawing, and when it came time to graduate from high school, I looked around and it was like, "Wow, I don't really want to study math. I don't really want to study science. I don't really want to study literature. Is there a place where I can go and draw cartoons?" — Harland Williams

As is well known the principle of virtual velocities transforms all statics into a mathematical assignment, and by D'Alembert's principle for dynamics, the latter is again reduced to statics. Although it is is very much in order that in gradual training of science and in the instruction of the individual the easier precedes the more difficult, the simple precedes the more complicated, the special precedes the general, yet the min, once it has arrived at the higher standpoint, demands the reverse process whereby all statics appears only as a very special case of mechanics. — Carl Friedrich Gauss

Business, to be successful, must be based on science, for demand and supply are matters of mathematics, not guesswork. — Elbert Hubbard

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

I'm always involved with the Aerospace Program and NASA and Goddard Space Flight Center. And if kids feel so inclined, they can log onto NASA and the Optimus Prime Spinoff Award, which we present every year to some of the brilliant young minds that are taking up into the academics of space, science, technology, math. — Peter Cullen

I see a certain order in the universe and math is one way of making it visible. — May Sarton

The more complex a behavior is, the more rigorous and complicated the science behind it. Math, chemistry, that's the easy stuff - closed models with discrete answers. To understand behavior - human or elephant - the systems are far more complex, which is why the science behind them must be that much more intricate. But — Jodi Picoult

In the judgment of the most competent living mathematicians, Fraulein Noether was the most significant mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began. — Albert Einstein

I was always good at math and science, and I never realized that that was unusual or somehow undesirable. — Marissa Mayer

I then began to study arithmetical questions without any great apparent result, and without suspecting that they could have the least connexion with my previous researches. Disgusted at my want of success, I went away to spend a few days at the seaside, and thought of entirely different things. One day, as I was walking on the cliff, the idea came to me, again with the same characteristics of conciseness, suddenness, and immediate certainty, that arithmetical transformations of indefinite ternary quadratic forms are identical with those of non-Euclidian geometry. — Henri Poincare

The idea here, of course, is, you know, mathematics is the language of science, it's the way that we understand the natural world. And there's definitely been a push to sort of study advanced math and kind of reawaken the love of advanced math. — Anya Kamenetz

How can we accept a situation in which there are no longer orchestras, choruses, libraries or art classes to nourish our children? We need more support for the arts, not less
particularly to make this rich world available to young people whose vision is choked by a stark reality. How many children, who have no other outlet in their lives for their grief, have found solace in an instrument to play or a canvas to paint on? When you take into consideration the development of the human heart, soul and imagination, don't the arts take on just as much importance as math or science? — Barbra Streisand

For scholars and laymen alike it is not philosophy but active experience in mathematics itself that can alone answer the question: What is mathematics? — Richard Courant

We may discover resources on the moon or Mars that will boggle the imagination, that will test our limits to dream. And the fascination generated by further exploration will inspire our young people to study math, and science, and engineering and create a new generation of innovators and pioneers. — George W. Bush

Space is for everybody. It's not just for a few people in science or math, or for a select group of astronauts. That's our new frontier out there, and it's everybody's business to know about space. — Christa McAuliffe

The teacher manages to get along still with the cumbersome algebraic analysis, in spite of its difficulties and imperfections, and avoids the smooth infinitesimal calculus, although the eighteenth century shyness toward it had long lost all point. — Felix Klein

Before the work of Georg Cantor in the nineteenth century, the study of the infinite was as much theology as science; now, we understand Cantor's theory of multiple infinities, each one infinitely larger than the last, well enough to teach it to first-year math majors. (To be fair, it does kind of blow their minds.) — Jordan Ellenberg

Fact: Cells are constantly dying and new ones are taking their place
Fact: After seven years have gone by, every cell in my body has died and a new one has taken its place.
Do the math. That means that every seven years, I'm a totally new me. not one of the old cells remains. Twice, I've had a total makeover — Jill Wolfson

Why should there be the method of science? There is not just one way to build a house, or even to grow tomatoes. We should not expect something as motley as the growth of knowledge to be strapped to one methodology. — Ian Hacking

When my kids were growing up, I wanted their teachers to teach them science, reading, math and history. I also wanted them to care about my kids. But I did not want my children's public school teachers teaching them religion. That was my job as a parent and the job of our church, Sunday school, and youth group. — Adam Hamilton

Mathematics is the cheapest science. Unlike physics or chemistry, it does not require any expensive equipment. All one needs for mathematics is a pencil and paper. — George Polya

In addition to giving our children the science and math skills they need to compete in the new global context, we should also encourage the ability to think creatively that comes from a meaningful arts education. — Barack Obama

Mathematics is as much an aspect of culture as it is a collection of algorithms. — Carl Benjamin Boyer

A Nonstandard Graph, Elements and Operations, a Card Game Dialect A combination of the Mold dialects and Sandwich graphs, backed by axiomatic math, creates a unique space of science and fantasy. — J.M.K. Walkow

Mathematics is the study of analogies between analogies. All science is. Scientists want to show that things that don't look alike are really the same. That is one of their innermost Freudian motivations. In fact, that is what we mean by understanding. — Gian-Carlo Rota

My initial thoughts of becoming a lawyer changed in high school as I became more attracted to math and science and began talking about being an engineer. — Oliver E. Williamson

My background is in math and science, and I thrive on complexity, and I think lots of people do. People love puzzles; it's human nature to want to solve puzzles. — Michael Loceff

We spend more per pupil than any other country, but among industrialized nations, American students rank near the bottom in science and math. Only 13 percent of high school seniors know what high school seniors should know about American history. — Glenn Beck

For large values of 1, 1 approaches 2, for small values of 2. — Keith Caserta

The integrals which we have obtained are not only general expressions which satisfy the differential equation, they represent in the most distinct manner the natural effect which is the object of the phenomenon ... when this condition is fulfilled, the integral is, properly speaking, the equation of the phenomenon; it expresses clearly the character and progress of it, in the same manner as the finite equation of a line or curved surface makes known all the properties of those forms. — Joseph Fourier

I thought I was going to be a veterinarian. I was good in science and in math, and I loved animals. — Terry J. Lundgren

Srinivasa Ramanujan was the strangest man in all of mathematics, probably in the entire history of science. He has been compared to a bursting supernova, illuminating the darkest, most profound corners of mathematics, before being tragically struck down by tuberculosis at the age of 33 ... Working in total isolation from the main currents of his field, he was able to rederive 100 years' worth of Western mathematics on his own. The tragedy of his life is that much of his work was wasted rediscovering known mathematics. — Michio Kaku

Music, to me, is not math or science. It is a language. — Russell Malone

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

[All phenomena] are equally susceptible of being calculated, and all that is necessary, to reduce the whole of nature to laws similar to those which Newton discovered with the aid of the calculus, is to have a sufficient number of observations and a mathematics that is complex enough. — Marquis De Condorcet

Philosophers and psychiatrists should explain why it is that we mathematicians are in the habit of systematically erasing our footsteps. Scientists have always looked askance at this strange habit of mathematicians, which has changed little from Pythagoras to our day. — Gian-Carlo Rota

I'm sick of you all acting like I'm this English freak raining on your little math-science parade. Sung seems to think my contribution to this team is a little less than everyone else's."
"Anyone can memorize book titles!" Sung shouted. "Oh, please.Like I care what you think? You don't even know the difference between Keats and Byron. — Holly Black

He is like the fox, who effaces his tracks in the sand with his tail.

{Describing the writing style of famous mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss} — Niels Henrik Abel

Grades can matter, especially for those students and parents who live for the next round of applications to graduate or professional schools. But there's a problem with the grade emphasis. Math or science graduates earn more than students majoring in the humanities. — Amity Shlaes

Mathematics is much more than a language for dealing with the physical world. It is a source of models and abstractions which will enable us to obtain amazing new insights into the way in which nature operates. — Melvin Schwartz

Calculus was not math. It was a fucking science experiment gone wrong. — Abbi Glines

I am no friend of probability theory, I have hated it from the first moment when our dear friend Max Born gave it birth. For it could be seen how easy and simple it made everything, in principle, everything ironed and the true problems concealed. Everybody must jump on the bandwagon [Ausweg]. And actually not a year passed before it became an official credo, and it still is. — Erwin Schrodinger

There was yet another disadvantage attaching to the whole of Newton's physical inquiries, ... the want of an appropriate notation for expressing the conditions of a dynamical problem, and the general principles by which its solution must be obtained. By the labours of LaGrange, the motions of a disturbed planet are reduced with all their complication and variety to a purely mathematical question. It then ceases to be a physical problem; the disturbed and disturbing planet are alike vanished: the ideas of time and force are at an end; the very elements of the orbit have disappeared, or only exist as arbitrary characters in a mathematical formula. — George Boole

Nature seems to take advantage of the simple mathematical representations of the symmetry laws. When one pauses to consider the elegance and the beautiful perfection of the mathematical reasoning involved and contrast it with the complex and far-reaching physical consequences, a deep sense of respect for the power of the symmetry laws never fails to develop. — Chen-Ning Yang

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

Geometry is the science of correct reasoning on incorrect figures. — George Polya

Science, math and engineering can give you the exhilarating power to become not mere spectators or consumers, but the active explorers, makers and doers who will help invent the future. — Susan Hockfield

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

This skipping is another important point. It should be done whenever a proof seems too hard or whenever a theorem or a whole paragraph does not appeal to the reader. In most cases he will be able to go on and later he may return to the parts which he skipped. — Emil Artin

Fashion is not just about what we wear, but ... fashion is also a business. It is an art, it's a career that involves science, engineering, accounting and so much more. People can learn about the math behind Charles James' designs, and think, 'Maybe I should pay closer attention to geometry this semester' — Michelle Obama

The community certainly included black English professors, like my mother, as well as black doctors and dentists, black mechanics, janitors, and contractors, black cobblers, wedding planners, real estate agents, and undertakers, several black lawyers, and a handful of black Mary Kay salespeople. As a child, however, I knew so many African Americans working in science, math, and engineering that I thought that's just what black folks did. — Margot Lee Shetterly

Symmetry, as wide or as narrow as you may define its meaning, is one idea by which man through the ages has tried to comprehend and create order, beauty and perfection. — Hermann Weyl

Research and development needs permanent tax credits to build the technology that spurs our growth. But no government programs alone can get America's students to study more science and math; parents must push and help their children to meet this goal. — Ernest Istook

My basic philosophy of teaching was straightforward and deeply personal. I wanted to teach the way I wished that I myself had been taught. Which is to say, I hoped to convey the sheer joy of learning, the thrill of understanding things about the universe. I wanted to pass along to students not only the logic but the beauty of math and science. Furthermore, I wanted to do this in a way that would be equally helpful to kids studying a subject for the first time and for adults who wanted to refresh their knowledge; for students grappling with homework and for older people hoping to keep their minds active and supple. — Salman Khan

Characteristically, Samuelson intimidated those who questioned his techniques with the statement "Those who can, do science, others do methodology." If you knew math, you could "do science." This is reminiscent of psychoanalysts who silence their critics by accusing them of having trouble with their fathers. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The algebraic sum of all the transformations occurring in a cyclical process can only be positive, or, as an extreme case, equal to nothing.
[Statement of the second law of thermodynamics, 1862] — Rudolf Clausius

I had decent but not great grades in high school because I was highly motivated in some subjects, like the arts, drama, English, and history, but in math and science I was a screw-up. Wooster saw something in me, and I really flourished there. I got into theatre, took photography and painting classes. — J. C. Chandor

It seems to me that the poet has only to perceive that which others do not perceive, to look deeper than others look. And the mathematician must do the same thing. — Sofia Kovalevskaya

My knowledge of science came from being with Carl, not from formal academic training. Carl gave me a thrilling tutorial in science and math that lasted the 20 years we were together. — Ann Druyan

On education, in order to ensure that America remains a world leader, we must create an educated, skilled workforce in the vital areas of science, math, engineering and information technology. At the same time, we must give every student access to a college degree. — John F. Tierney

The mathematical giant [Gauss], who from his lofty heights embraces in one view the stars and the abysses ... — Farkas Bolyai

They look at what's more important, like subjects to help with the SAT's, etc. They miss that music is vital. It offers a break from a stressful day of science and math and it's different. — Justin Guarini

I was never as focused in math, science, computer science, etcetera, as the people who were best at it. I wanted to create amazing screensavers that did beautiful visualizations of music. It's like, "Oh, I have to learn computer science to do that." — Kevin Systrom

Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician's finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess play: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game. — G.H. Hardy

Today, over half of China's undergraduate degrees are in math, science technology and engineering, yet only 16 percent of America's undergraduates pursue these schools. — Cathy McMorris Rodgers

Textbook science is beautiful! Textbook science is comprehensible, unlike mere fascinating words that can never be truly beautiful. Elementary science textbooks describe simple theories, and simplicity is the core of scientific beauty. Fascinating words have no power, nor yet any meaning, without the math. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

My high school career was undistinguished except for math and science. However, having barely been admitted to Rice University, I found that I enjoyed the courses and the elation of success and graduated with honors in physics. I did a senior thesis with C.F. Squire, building a regulator for a magnet for use in low-temperature physics. — Robert Woodrow Wilson

There remain a few people in NASA who are there to accomplish great things; but most of NASA now consists of the people who accomplished the extraordinary feat of making mankind's greatest achievements look dull, then making it impossible to repeat them.Yet what man has done man can aspire to. About light I am in the dark. — Benjamin Franklin

I was good at math and science, and I got lots of degrees in lots of things, but in a parallel universe, I probably became a chef. — Nathan Myhrvold

Picture a thirteen-year-old boy sitting in the living room of his family home doing his math assignment while wearing his Walkman headphones or watching MTV. He enjoys the liberties hard won over centuries by the alliance of philosophic genius and political heroism, consecrated by the blood of martyrs; he is provided with comfort and leisure by the most productive economy ever known to mankind; science has penetrated the secrets of nature in order to provide him with the marvelous, lifelike electronic sound and image reproduction he is enjoying. And in what does progress culminate? A pubescent child whose body throbs with orgasmic rhythms; whose feelings are made articulate in hymns to the joys of onanism or the killing of parents; whose ambition is to win fame and wealth in imitating the drag-queen who makes the music. In short, life is made into a nonstop, commercially prepackaged masturbational fantasy. — Allan Bloom

If you want to understand science, you have to understand math. In business, if you're enumerate, you're going to be a klutz. The good thing about business is that you don't have to know any higher math ... — Charlie Munger

I was a normal human being, but I did like that. I read a lot. I also liked math and science. — Jamie Dimon

The most important thing we can do is inspire young minds and to advance the kind of science, math and technology education that will help youngsters take us to the next phase of space travel. — John Glenn

Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend. — Francis Bacon

Math and science were my favorite subjects besides theater. — Jason Earles

I do not think the division of the subject into two parts - into applied mathematics and experimental physics a good one, for natural philosophy without experiment is merely mathematical exercise, while experiment without mathematics will neither sufficiently discipline the mind or sufficiently extend our knowledge in a subject like physics. — Balfour Stewart

The laws of Nature are written in the language of mathematics. Math is a way to describe reality and figure out how the world works, a universal language that has become the gold standard of truth. In our world, increasingly driven by science and technology, mathematics is becoming, ever more, the source of power, wealth, and progress. Hence those who are fluent in this new language will be on the cutting edge of progress. — Edward Frenkel

When I got to college, I planned to be a math major, and, in addition to signing up for some math courses, I decided to take some philosophy. Quite by chance, I took a philosophy of science course in which the entire semester was devoted to reading Locke's Essay. I was hooked. For the next few semesters, I took nothing but philosophy and math courses, and it wasn't long before I realised that it was the philosophy that really moved me. — Hilary Kornblith

There is something very pleasing about the principles of science and the rules of math, because they are so inevitable and so harmonious - in the abstract, anyway. — Lydia Davis

Education happens to be something that all people, all cultures, need to embrace. Math, science, the words of the world. To be able to speak and be able to have clarity and to be able to think. Those are the greatest of gifts. — Bill Cosby

Especially girls, but any kids exposed to music programs and arts programs do much better on their tests. They have a better chance of going to college. They can focus better. You know, we're not just automatons learning how to work machines and do engineering and math and science. All of that's great, but you've got to build a whole person. — Bonnie Raitt

All the truths of mathematics are linked to each other, and all means of discovering them are equally admissible. — Adrien-Marie Legendre

I think a strong claim can be made that the process of scientific discovery may be regarded as a form of art. This is best seen in the theoretical aspects of Physical Science. The mathematical theorist builds up on certain assumptions and according to well understood logical rules, step by step, a stately edifice, while his imaginative power brings out clearly the hidden relations between its parts. A well constructed theory is in some respects undoubtedly an artistic production. A fine example is the famous Kinetic Theory of Maxwell ... The theory of relativity by Einstein, quite apart from any question of its validity, cannot but be regarded as a magnificent work of art. — Ernest Rutherford

Will America lead ... and reap the rewards? Or will we surrender that advantage to other countries with clearer vision? — Susan Hockfield

Math is the only place where truth and beauty mean the same thing. — Danica McKellar

It was while I was studying philosophy that I came to understand ... that it is no sign of moral or spiritual strength to believe that for which one has no evidence, neither a priori evidence as in math, nor a posteriori evidence as in science ... It's a violation almost immoral in its transgressiveness to shirk the responsibilities of rationality. — Rebecca Goldstein

Music is a mixed mathematical science that concerns the origens, attributes, and distinctions of sound, out of which a cultivated and lovely melody and harmony are made, so that God is honored and praised but mankind is moved to devotion, virtue, joy, and sorrow. — Christoph Wolff