Steven Strogatz Quotes

Beauty can't amuse you, but brainwork - reading, writing, thinking - can.

Mathematics are the result of mysterious powers which no one understands, and which the unconscious recognition of beauty must play an important part. Out of an infinity of designs a mathematician chooses one pattern for beauty's sake and pulls it down to earth.

Without troublesome work, no one can have any concrete, full idea of what pure mathematical research is like or of the profusion of insights that can be obtained from it.

To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them.

My books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine - everybody drinks water.

Besides numerous science courses, I had the opportunity to study philosophy, the history of architecture, economics, and Russian history in courses taught by extraordinarily knowledgeable professors.

I have never read for entertainment, but rather for understanding and to satisfy my eager curiosity.

I like to figure things out and solve problems.

Imagination is a poor matter when it has to part company with understanding.

It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul.

But mathematics is the sister, as well as the servant, of the arts and is touched by the same madness and genius.

A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

Intellectuals are good at seeing the big picture. But they are not so good at process.

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.

It's fine to work on any problem, so long as it generates interesting mathematics along the way - even if you don't solve it at the end of the day.

We've lost something that's been with us for so long, and something that drew a lot of us into mathematics. But perhaps that's always the way with math problems, and we just have to find new ones to capture our attention.

I don't want your vote. I want something more important. I want your commitment to think. Because once you start thinking, I'll get your vote.

Ere we can forecast the future we must understand the present and bring a just sense of proportion to our review of the history of the past.

Culture is to know the best that has been said and thought in the world

Germany is made to travel in, Italy to sojourn in,… and France to live in, [but England was made] to think in.

But there is no nation under heaven abounding with more variety of learning--where the sciences may be more fitly woo'd, or more surely won, than here--where Nature (take her altogether) has so little to answer for--and, to close all, where there is more wit and variety of character to feed the mind with--

What I'm looking for in my interaction is critical thinking on the part of the person pitching to me.

Solving wits and puzzles, in a way, helps to develop wit and ingenuity.

I don't have any magical ability. I look at a problem, play with it, work out a strategy.