Mark Haddon Quotes

Math is sometimes called the science of patterns.

We're dealing with the chaos of life, and we're rubbing it down. The deeper you rub, the more patterns you can see until you realize that it's really an organized chaos. There isn't really ever any chance to understand it all, but we're here to keep rubbing.

Mathematics is written for mathematicians.

God may not play dice with the universe, but something strange is going on with the prime numbers.

Nature hates calculators.

Nature never uses prime numbers. But mathematicians do.

I like science and mathematics. When I say mathematics, I don't mean algebra or math in that sense, but the mathematics of things.

Mathematics is a logical method. . . . Mathematical propositions express no thoughts. In life it is never a mathematical proposition which we need, but we use mathematical propositions only in order to infer from propositions which do not belong to mathematics to others which equally do not belong to mathematics.

What we call chaos is just patterns we haven’t recognized. What we call random is just patterns we can't decipher.

As time goes on, it becomes increasingly evident that the rules which the mathematician finds interesting are the same as those which Nature has chosen.

317 is a prime, not because we think so, or because our minds are shaped in one way rather than another, but because it is so, because mathematical reality is built that way.

We have no future because our present is too volatile. We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment's scenarios. Pattern recognition.

No matter what I do, no matter how predictable I try to make my life, it will not be any more predictable than the rest of the world. Which is chaotic.

Only Numbers. Pure math. You have to accustom yourself to thinking that way.

For once, you're going to hear something that doesn't fit into your neat, compartmentalized world of order and logic and reason.

You get pseudo-order when you seek order; you only get a measure of order and control when you embrace randomness.

You know, the process, I think, is the story. And it goes back, again, to what I said about chance and about radical contingency, the idea that all of this is this well-oiled machine that's been reared up and, like, really articulated and thought about.

Reality had no gears, and you never knew what surprises would come spinning out of its chaos.

Life seemed even more of a guessing game than usual.

Look somewhere else for someone who can follow you in your researches about numbers. For my part, I confess that they are far beyond me, and I am competent only to admire them.

Life [had] replaced logic.

The higher arithmetic presents us with an inexhaustible store of interesting truths - of truths, too, which are not isolated, but stand in a close internal connection, and between which, as our knowledge increases, we are continually discovering new and sometimes wholly unexpected ties.

I can show you that the art of calculation has to do with odd and even numbers in their numerical relations to themselves and to each other.

As a child it was clear to me that in some sense math was in the world around us. I became fascinated by what this means. When you look at the shape of the sun and the moon, they're circles, so every time you see a circular thing, there's pi embedded in it.

Life is like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope - a slight change, and all patterns alter.