Quotable Mathematics

"But if science may be said to be blind without philosophy, it is true also that philosophy is virtually empty without science."  ...

"The most striking characteristic of the written language of algebra and of the higher forms of the calculus is the sharpness of defini...

"Algebra reverses the relative importance of the factors in ordinary language. It is essentially a written language, and it endeavors t...

"Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood u...

"Algebra is a species of short-hand writing; a language, or system of characters or signs, invented for the purpose of facilitating the...

"Here I am at the limit which God and nature has assigned to my individuality. I am compelled to depend upon word, language and image i...

"The difficulties which so many have felt in the doctrine of Negative and Imaginary Quantities in Algebra forced themselves long ago on...

"Language accelerates learning and creation by permitting communication and coordination. A new idea can be spread quickly if someone c...

"Abstraction is itself an abstract word and has no single meaning. […] Every word in our language is abstract, because it represents so...

"Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing the 'structures' that underlie complex situations, and for discerning high from lo...

"[...] language is the medium through which new conceptual metaphors are created." (George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, "Metaphor...