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Quotations about Math & Numbers
Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer. ~Carl Sandburg, "Arithmetic"
Let us grant that the pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit, a refuge from the goading urgency of contingent happenings. ~Alfred North Whitehead
Charlie Brown: How much is three times zero?
Sally: Four thousand? Six? Eleventy twelve? Fifty-quillion? Overly-eight? Twiddely-two?
~Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts, 1967
A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems. ~Rényi Alfréd (1921–1970) [Bruce Schechter, My Brain is Open, 1998, claims this was said by was Rényi and not his compatriot & fellow mathematician Paul Erdős (1913–1996) although they were both avid coffee drinkers.
I don't agree with mathematics; the sum total of zeros is a frightening figure. ~Stanisław Jerzy Lec (1909–1966), translated by Jacek Gałązka
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
~Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012), "Possibilities," 1997, translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak
We could use up two Eternities in learning all that is to be learned about our own world and the thousands of nations that have arisen and flourished and vanished from it. Mathematics alone would occupy me eight million years. ~Mark Twain
...the Red Queen remarked: "but I daresay you 've not had many lessons in manners yet?"
"Manners are not taught in lessons," said Alice. "Lessons teach you to do sums, and things of that sort."
"Can you do Addition?" the White Queen asked. "What's one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?"
"I don't know," said Alice. "I lost count."
"She can't do Addition," the Red Queen interrupted. "Can you do Subtraction? Take nine from eight."
"Nine from eight I can't, you know," Alice replied very readily: "but—"
"She can't do Substraction," said the White Queen. "Can you do Division? Divide a loaf by a knife — what's the answer to that?"
"I suppose—" Alice was beginning, but the Red Queen answered for her. "Bread-and-butter, of course..."
Alice... couldn't help thinking to herself, "What dreadful nonsense we are talking!"
"She can't do sums a bit!" the Queens said together, with great emphasis.
~Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
Plato said that God geometrizes continually. ~Plutarch
But it would be a grievous wrong to mathematical, as indeed to any, science, to rest its importance mainly on a utilitarian basis. The great truths with which it deals, are clothed with an austere grandeur, far above all purposes of immediate convenience or profit. It is in them that our limited understandings approach nearest to the conception of that absolute and infinite, toward which in most other things they aspire in vain. In the pure mathematics we contemplate absolute truths, which existed in the divine mind before the morning stars sang together, and which will continue to exist there, when the last of their radiant host shall have fallen from heaven. They existed not merely in metaphysical possibility, but in the actual contemplation of the supreme reason. The pen of inspiration, ranging all nature and life for imagery to set forth the Creator's power and wisdom, finds them best symbolized in the skill of the surveyor. "He meted out heaven as with a span;" and an ancient sage, neither falsely nor irreverently, ventured to say, that "God is a geometer." Yes, precisely by the same calculus by which I might number the individuals on this platform, has the Omniscient mind numbered the leaves in the interminable forest, the sands on the sea-shore, the particles of light that radiate from a universe of suns, the atoms of the ethereal medium, if such there be, which fills the infinite of space. ~Edward Everett, "Academical Education," 1857
There is no prophet that preaches the superpersonal God more plainly than mathematics... ~Paul Carus
I don't give a √D²... ~Gelett Burgess [Frankly, my dear...
...we arrive at the mathematical laws of the physical world. Physics is mathematical, not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover. ~Bertrand Russell
Yet what are all such gaieties to me
Whose thoughts are full of indices and surds?
x 2 + 7 x + 53
= 11/3.
~Lewis Carroll, "A Double Acrostic," Phantasmagoria and Other Poems, 1869
The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. ~Bertrand Russell
Numbers are beautiful… I like twos the best… they're sort of gentle… threes and fives are mean, but a four is always pleasant… I like sevens and eights, too, but nines always scare me… tens are great… ~“Peppermint Patty” (Charles M. Schulz), Peanuts, 1968 [I'm the exact opposite. Odd numbers have always been calming to me, but the evens make me feel uncomfortable. Peppermint Patty appears to have ordinal personification associative synesthesia. Here are another couple of big words I learned recently: Imparnumerophobia is the fear of odd numbers, and omalonumerophobia is the fear of even numbers.
Round numbers are always false. ~Johnsoniana: Life, Opinions, and Table-Talk of Samuel Johnson, arranged and collected by R. W. Montagu, 1884
God delights in odd numbers. ~Virgil
The odd number is held to be immortal, because it cannot well be divided. ~Virgil
I hope good luck lies in odd numbers.... They say there is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death. ~William Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, c.1600 [V, 1, Falstaff]
There's something nice about an odd number. ~The Great, "The Beaver's Nose," 2020, written by Tony McNamara, Vanessa Alexander, and Gretel Vella, based on the 2008 play by Tony McNamara
Man develops complex superstitions about perfect numbers and imperfect numbers, about threes and sevens and the like... How large a part numerical and geometrical magic, numerical and geometrical philosophy has played in the history of the mind. ~H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia, 1905
If a spider wants to walk from the top corner of a room to the bottom corner farthest away, will he follow the angular diameter of the floor, or will his path be an obese tabloid? ~Stephen Leacock, "Intelligence Test for Bank Managers," The Garden of Folly, 1924
Believe me then, my friend, that that is a miserable arithmetic which would estimate friendship at nothing, or at less than nothing. ~Thomas Jefferson, 1786
LOGIC, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basis of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion — thus:
Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.
Minor Premise: One man can dig a post-hole in sixty seconds; therefore—
Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a post-hole in one second.
This may be called the syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed. ~Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Word Book, 1906
We know that mathematicians care no more for logic than logicians for mathematics. The two eyes of exact science are mathematics and logic: the mathematical sect puts out the logical eye, the logical sect puts out the mathematical eye; each believing that it sees better with one eye than with two. The consequences are ludicrous. ~The Athenæum, 1868
Gee whiz, if that's what you call diplomacy, I like arithmetic better, and that isn't saying much. ~Percy Keese Fitzhugh, Roy Blakeley: Lost, Strayed or Stolen, 1921
Everybody who knew anything about ciphering was called in to consider it. A young man from a high school near here, who made a specialty of mathematics and pimples, and who could readily tell how long a shadow a nine-pound ground-hog would cast at 2 o'clock and 37 minutes P.M., on ground-hog day, if sunny, at the town of Fungus, Dak., provided latitude and longitude and an irregular mass of red chalk be given to him, was secured to jerk a few logarithms in the interests of trade. He came and tried it for a few days, covered the interior of the Exposition Building with figures and then went away. ~Bill Nye, "Seeking to be Identified," Nye and Riley's Railway Guide by Edgar W. Nye and James Whitcomb Riley, 1888
...Science and mathematics
Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
They never touch it: consider what an explosion
Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world
If any mind should for a moment touch truth.
~Robinson Jeffers
"I only took the regular course."
"What was that?" inquired Alice.
"Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with," the Mock Turtle replied: "and then the different branches of Arithmetic — Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision."
~Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Ninety-Nine is a famous number
for at the market the seller knows
he is so very much more popular
than his bigger brother The Dollar!
~Terri Guillemets, "99¢," 2001
I agree with you quite upon mathematics too, and must be content to admire them at an incomprehensible distance, always adding them to the catalogue of my regrets. I know that two and two make four, and should be glad to prove it too, if I could, — though, I must say, if by any sort of process I could convert 2 and 2 into 5, it would give me much greater pleasure. The only part I remember which gave me much delight were those theorems (is that the word), in which, after ringing the changes upon
Professor Gayley, you're a great man, sure!
They say that you can almost fly! — can spell
And parse, but cannot figure well
(For mathematics is not literature)
And hold — with rancor — that twice two are fewer
Than they're cracked up to be...
~Ambrose Bierce, "The Troubadour"
THE TRUE SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE: Do you know where triangles come from, Ted?
TED: I don't know. God dropped a square on the floor and it broke in half longways or something?
~Ted Lasso, "Sunflowers," 2023, written by Brendan Hunt, Sasha Garron, Keeley Hazell, and Dylan Marron
Fill paper as you please with triangles and squares... ~Thomas Jefferson, 1786
The Happy Way Bus leaves at 4:42
On the banks of the beautiful River Wah-Hoo
Where they never have troubles. At least, very few...
~Dr. Seuss, I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew, 1965 [It appears that Geisel knew the magical number before D. Adams did. And did you know that ASCII code 42 is for an asterisk, which is a wildcard for everything?
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