Rene Descartes Quotes

I am not a mathematician, but I was aware that for centuries, mathematics was considered the queen of the sciences because it claimed certainty. It was grounded on some fundamental certainties - axioms - that led to others.

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.

If indeed, as Hilbert asserted, mathematics is a meaningless game played with meaningless marks on paper, the only mathematical experience to which we can refer is the making of marks on paper.

Mathematics is the queen of the sciences.

For hundreds of pages the closely-reasoned arguments unroll, axioms and theorems interlock. And what remains with us in the end? A general sense that the world can be expressed in closely-reasoned arguments, in interlocking axioms and theorems.

I didn't know what kinds of questions to ask in mathematics. In physics, I could see there were things that were known and things that weren't.

This book is about physics and its about physics and its relationship with mathematics and how they seem to be intimately related and to what extent can you explore this relationship and trust it.

It is not of the essence of mathematics to be conversant with the ideas of number and quantity.

I have found a very great number of exceedingly beautiful theorems.

… mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

I like - I love calculus. I love linear algebra, probability and statistics, that kind of stuff. I just really like that.

Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines.

I have deeply regretted that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great leading principles of mathematics, for men thus endowed seem to have an extra sense.

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.

Mathematical proofs, like diamonds, are hard and clear, and will be touched with nothing but strict reasoning.

There are things which seem incredible to most men who have not studied Mathematics.

Euclid alone Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they Who, though once only and then but far away, Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

But in spite of the obvious effectiveness of mathematics in physics, I have never heard of a good a prioriargument that the world must be organised to mathematical principles.

A book on the new physics, if not purely descriptive of experimental work, must essentially be mathematical.

The so-called Pythagoreans, who were the first to take up mathematics, not only advanced this subject, but saturated with it, they fancied that the principles of mathematics were the principles of all things.

What science can there be more noble, more excellent, more useful for men, more admirably high and demonstrative, than this of mathematics?

All the mathematical sciences are founded on relations between physical laws and laws of numbers.

Mathematics without natural history is sterile, but natural history without mathematics is muddled.

We had principles in mathematics that were granted to be absolute in mathematics for over 800 years, but new science has gotten rid of those absolutism, gotten forward other different logics of looking at mathematics, and sort of turned the way we look at it as a science altogether after 800 years.

Math is like water. It has a lot of difficult theories, of course, but its basic logic is very simple. Just as water flows from high to low over the shortest possible distance, figures can only flow in one direction. You just have to keep your eye on them for the route to reveal itself. That’s all it takes. You don’t have to do a thing. Just concentrate your attention and keep your eyes open, and the figures make everything clear to you. In this whole, wide world, the only thing that treats me so kindly is math.