Math Quotes

I love collecting profound quotes. I must give credit
to the math department at Handley High School for
collecting most of these. Please check back
occasionally as I will continue to grow this list.

1. Success in math does not depend on how many
answers you know, but by what you do when you
don't know the answer."

2. The most incomprehensible thing about the
universe is that it is comprehensible. --Einstein

3. Mathematics is the structure created and/or
discovered in the human attempt to solve problems.
Randy Maddox

4. "Mathematics is the Queen of the Sciences, and
number theory the queen of mathematics.."
-- Carl Friedrich Gauss

5. "If one puts an infinite number of monkeys in
front of typewriters, and lets them clap away, there is
a certainty that one of them will come out with an
exact version of the 'Iliad.'"
-- Nassim Nicholas Taleb

6. "We've all heard that a million monkeys banging
on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the
entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the
internet, we know this is not true."
-- Professor Robert Silensky

7. "Small minds discuss persons. Average minds
discuss events. Great minds discuss ideas. Really
great minds discuss mathematics."

8. "One machine can do the work of fifty men. No
machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."

9. "If I have seen farther than other men, it is because
I have stood on the shoulders of giants."
-- Isaac Newton

10. "When I get a little money, I buy books; and if
any is left, I buy food and clothes."
-- Erasmus

11. "Your work is to discover your work and then
with all your heart to give yourself to it."
-- Buddha

12. "A mind is a fire to be kindled, not a vessel to be
filled."
-- Plutarch

13. "The world is not given to you by your parents. It
is loaned to you by your children."
-- Kenyan proverb

14. "If a man hasn't found something he will die for,
he isn't fit to live."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

15. "In a completely rational society, the best of us
would be teachers and the rest of us would have to
settle for something less, because passing civilization
along from one generation to the next ought to be the
highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone
could have."
-- Lee Iacocca

16. "What happens to you in life is not as important
as your attitude toward it."

17. "The second most important job in the world,
second only to being a good parent, is being a good
teacher."
-- S.G. Ellis

18. "The more you know, the less sure you are."
-- Voltaire

19. "Well done is better than well said."
-- Ben Franklin

20. "Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare."
-- Descartes

21. "Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of
knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed
to us by human agency."
-- Descartes

22. "Cogito, Ergo Sum. I think, therefore I am."
-- Descartes

23. "The reading of all good books is like a
conversation with the finest people of past centuries."
-- Descartes

24. "We make a living by what we get, but we make a
life by what we give."
-- Winston Churchill

25. "Teaching high school, in addition to knowing
one's subject matter thoroughly and being able to
convey it to others, requires the grit of a
long-distance runner, the stamina of a boxer going 15
rounds, the temperament of a juggler and the street
smarts of a three-card monte dealer."
-- Professor Larry Cuban

26. "St. Augustine had good insight on the division
of labor between God and his children when he
wrote that we should work as if everything depended
on our efforts and pray as if everything depended on
the Almighty."

27. "If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist had 25 people in
his office at one time, all of whom had different
needs, and some of whom didn't want to be there and
were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer, or
dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with
professional excellence for nine months, then he
might have some conception of the classroom
teacher's job."
-- Colman McCarthy in The Washington Post

28. "Old principals never die, they just lose their
faculties."

29. "How you teach is more important than what you
teach."

30. "Life is too short for long division."

31. "I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do
and I understand."
-- Chinese Proverb.

32. "Any teacher that can be replaced by a computer
should be replaced by a computer."

33. "Old math teachers never die, they just tend to
infinity."

34. "Old teachers never die; they just lose their class."

35. "Natural numbers are better for your health."

36. "Decimals have a point."

37. "Calculus has its limits."

38. "Geometry is just plane fun."

39. "Polar coordinates aren't just arctic fashions."

40. "The only time a question should be asked is
when all other possibilities of finding the answer for
yourself have been eliminated."
-- Ben Franklin

41. "A great memory does not make a mind, any
more than a dictionary is a piece of literature."
-- John H. Newman

42. "Knowledge exists to be imparted."
-- Emerson

43. "An educational system isn't worth a great deal if
it teaches young people how to make a living and
doesn't teach them how to live."
-- Charles Snitow.

44. "Life is a ladder: Every step we take is either up
or down."
-- Brewster

45. "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

46. "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish and you will realize why some
people think golf is exciting."

47. "There is no branch of mathematics, however
abstract, which may not someday be applied to the
phenomena of the real world."
-- Nicolai Lobachevsky

48. "Logic is the anatomy of thought."
-- John Locke

49. "I tell them if they will occupy themselves with
the study of mathematics, they will find in it the best
remedy against the lusts of the flesh."
-- Thomas Mann

50. "The mathematical rules of the universe are
visible to men in the form of beauty."
-- John Michel