Steven Strogatz Quotes

When I was about thirteen, the library was going to get 'Calculus for the Practical Man.' By this time I knew, from reading the encyclopedia, that calculus was an important and interesting subject, and I ought to learn it.

In my free time I do differential and integral calculus.

The method of Fluxions is the general key by help whereof the modern mathematicians unlock the secrets of Geometry, and consequently of Nature.

Calculus required continuity, and continuity was supposed to require the infinitely little; but nobody could discover what the infinitely little might be.

I love only extreme novelty or the things of the past.

Mitt Romney has undergone an extreme makeover, and it ain’t pretty.

RADICALISM, n. The conservatism of to-morrow injected into the affairs of to-day.

Optimization hinders evolution.

I turn away with fright and horror from the lamentable evil of functions which do not have derivatives.

Momentum solves 80% of your problems.

Nothing takes place in the world whose meaning is not that of some maximum or minimum.

Perhaps...the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

In turbulent times, in times of great change, people head for the two extremes: fundamentalism and personal, spiritual experience.

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.

Hysterical fundamentalism is not the way into the future; it is the last gasp of the past.

Math was my big interest when I was in prep school. I was considering taking math in college, and majoring in it.

Things do change. The only question is that since things are deteriorating so quickly, will society and man's habits change quickly enough?

Mathematics is an obscure field, an abstruse science, complicated and exact; yet so many have attained perfection in it that we might conclude almost anyone who seriously applied himself would achieve a measure of success.

Abnormally good or abnormally bad conditions do not last forever.

Mathematical Analysis is... the true rational basis of the whole system of our positive knowledge.

So sometimes things are ahead and sometimes they are behind; Sometimes breathing is hard, sometimes it comes easily; Sometimes there is strength and sometimes weakness; Sometimes one is up and sometimes down. Therefore the sage avoids extremes, excesses, and complacency.

If you assume continuity, you can open the well-stocked mathematical toolkit of continuous functions and differential equations, the saws and hammers of engineering and physics for the past two centuries (and the foreseeable future).

If you think of standardization as the best that you know today, but which is to be improved tomorrow; you get somewhere.

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.

We are reorganizing in order to eliminate duplication and redundancy.