Quotable Mathematics

"The belief that mathematics, because it is abstract, because it is static and cold and gray, is detached from life, is a mistaken beli...

"We know the laws of trial and error, of large numbers and probabilities. We know that these laws are part of the mathematical and mech...

"The one lesson that comes out of all our theorizing and experimenting is that there is only one really scientific progressive method; ...

"Measurement, we have seen, always has an element of error in it. The most exact description or prediction that a scientist can make is...

"Knowledge being to be had only of visible and certain truth, error is not a fault of our knowledge, but a mistake of our judgment, giv...

"By Science is understood a Knowledge acquired by, or founded on clear and self evident Principles, whence it follows that the Mathemat...

"It has been a fortunate fact in the modern history of physical science that the scientist constructing a new theoretical system has ne...

"[...] scientific method is simply the attempt to acquire knowledge of general laws directly or indirectly by experience, by the use of...

"Science gains from it [the pendulum] more than one can expect. With its huge dimensions, the apparatus presents qualities that one wou...

"All of us are sensitive to nature's beauty. It is not unreasonable that some aspects of this beauty are shared by the natural scie...

"The man who discovers a new scientific truth has previously had to smash to atoms almost everything he had learnt, and arrives at the ...

"The foundations of chemical philosophy are observation, experiment, and analogy. By observation, facts are distinctly and minutely imp...

"[...] scientific method is simply the attempt to acquire knowledge of general laws directly or indirectly by experience, by the use of...

"Facts per se can neither prove nor refute anything. Everything is decided by the interpretation and explanation of the facts, by the i...

"The value of mathematical instruction as a preparation for those more difficult investigations, consists in the applicability not of i...

"In science, reason is the guide; in poetry, taste. The object of the one is truth, which is uniform and indivisible; the object of the...

"The more science enters into our lives, the more it must be 'humanized', and there is no better way to humanize it than to...