Everyone now agrees that a physics lacking all connection with mathematics ... would only be an historical amusement, fitter for entertaining the idle than for occupying the mind of a philosopher.

The ‘Muse’ is not an artistic mystery, but a mathematical equation. The gift are those ideas you think of as you drift to sleep. The giver is that one you think of when you first awake.

A mathematician is a magician who converts adjectives into nouns: continuous into continuum, infinite into infinity, infinitesimal into location, 0D into point, 1D into line, curved into geodesic...

It appeared that way, Lawrence, but this raised the question of was mathematics really true or was it just a game played with symbols? In other words—are we discovering Truth, or just wanking?

He possesses the minimum sensibility necessary for his intelligence not to be merely mathematical, the minimum a human being needs so that it can be proven with a thermometer that he's not dead.

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 five it would give me much greater pleasure.

The truth, he thought, has never been of any real value to any human being- it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. I human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

In the online math class, there was almost no meaningful student/teacher or student/student interaction. To equate this type of online learning with a real-world classroom experience is a major stretch.

I would say, if you like, that the party is like an out-moded mathematics...that is to say, the mathematics of Euclid. We need to invent a non-Euclidian mathematics with respect to political discipline.

Are you one of my students?’She laughed again. ‘No. No. GCSE maths was enough for me. I hated it.’This angered me. ‘Hated it? How can you hate mathematics? Mathematics is everything.

My first feeling was that there was no way to continue. Writing isn't like math;in math, two plus two always equals four no matter what your mood is like. With writing, the way you feel changes everything.

Surely, the gods' judgment is certain. But as for us, we must be satisfied to 'come close' to those things, for we are men, who speak according to what is likely, and whose lectures resemble fables.

Mathematics is much more than a language for dealing with the physical world. It is a source of models and abstractions which will enable us to obtain amazing new insights into the way in which nature operates.

Réduites à des théories générales, les mathématiques seraient une belle forme sans contenu.Reduced to general theories, mathematics would be a beautiful form without content.

The issue, then, is not, What is the best way to teach? but, What is mathematics really all about?... Controversies about…teaching cannot be resolved without confronting problems about the nature of mathematics.