Mathematical Thinking Quotes

I still remember the realization in college at Flinders University in Australia that mathematics was not just an abstract game of symbols but could be used as a tool to analyze and understand the modern world.

Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity. The activity of the intuition consists in making spontaneous judgements which are not the result of conscious trains of reasoning. The exercise of ingenuity in mathematics consists in aiding the intuition through suitable arrangements of propositions, and perhaps geometrical figures or drawings.

I'm precise. I think in proportions. I play games with numbers, and I proportionalise.

Algebras deal not with laws of number, but with such laws of the human thinking machinery as have been discovered in the course of investigations on numbers. Plane geometry deals with such laws of thought as were discovered by men intent on finding out how to measure surface; and solid geometry with such additional laws of thought as were discovered when men began to extend geometry into three dimensions.

There is an astonishing imagination, even in the science of mathematics.

In mathematics, the art of asking questions is more valuable than solving problems.

If I'm flying to China, I can sit and think about a problem. Other scientists have to go to the lab. I'm always thinking about maths, even when I'm doing other things. A lot of the time you're going up blind alleys and it's very frustrating, but then you have a sudden rush of ideas. You can live off that for quite some time.

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

With me, everything turns into mathematics.

Dull minds are never either intuitive or mathematical.

One factor that has remained constant through all the twists and turns of the history of physical science is the decisive importance of the mathematical imagination.

There is coming an era for people with a mathematical state of mind

The mathematics is not there till we put it there.

One of the pleasures of looking at the world through mathematical eyes is that you can see certain patterns that would otherwise be hidden.

Some of you may have met mathematicians and wondered how they got that way.

It took 24 years for me to harness my autistic traits into something useful, and I have grown to regard them as a kind of superpower. Cooking, to me, is akin to algebra, and my mind a pocket calculator.

No scientist thinks in formulae.

It's strange how few of the world's great problems are solved by people who remember their algebra.

I think math is exciting, you know.

The mathematician who after seeing Phedre asked: 'Qu'est que ca prouve?' was not such a fool as he has been generally made out. No one has ever been able to explain why the Doric temple of Paestum is more beautiful than a glass of cold beer except by bringing in considerations that have nothing to do with beauty.

What interests me is the connection between maths and the real world.

The concept of number is the obvious distinction between the beast and man.

Mathematics ... is indispensable as an intellectual technique. In many subjects, to think at all is to think like a mathematician.

By keenly confronting the enigmas that surround us, and by considering and analyzing the observations that I had made, I ended up in the domain of mathematics. Although I am absolutely without training in the exact sciences, I often seem to have more in common with mathematicians than with my fellow artists.