Quotable Mathematics

"Given that annihilation of nature in its entirety is impossible, and that death and dissolution are not appropriate to the whole mass ...

" The power of differential calculus is that it linearizes all problems by going back to the 'infinitesimally small', but this ...

"All forms of complex causation, and especially nonlinear transformations, admittedly stack the deck against prediction. Linear describ...

"Compound errors can begin with any of the standard sorts of bad statistics - a guess, a poor sample, an inadvertent transformation, pe...

  "Every branch of geometry can be defined as the study of properties that are unaltered when a specified figure is given specified sym...

"The notion of an abstract group arises by consideration of the formal properties of one-to-one transformations of a set onto itself. S...

"Things are called continuous when the touching limits of each become one and the same and are contained in each other. Continuity is i...

"The young mathematical disciple 'topology' might be of some help in making psychology a real science." (Kurt Lewin, Princ...

"I believe that we need another analysis properly geometric or linear, which treats PLACE directly the way that algebra treats MAGNITUD...

"Whoever thinks algebra is a trick in obtaining unknowns has thought it in vain. No attention should be paid to the fact that algebra a...

“Symmetry may have its appeal but it is inherently stale. Some kind of imbalance is behind every transformation.” (Marcelo Gleiser, “ A Tear...

“To a mathematician, an object possesses symmetry if it retains its form after some transformation. A circle, for example, looks the same af...

“Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference, and based also on the face of man; whenc...