Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past, are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness.
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Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.
quote by Edsger Dijkstra
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A drunkard in the gutter is just where he ought to be, according to the fitness and tendency of things. Nature has set upon him the process of decline and dissolution by which she removes things which have survived their usefulness.
quote by William Graham Sumner
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The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality.
quote by David Hilbert
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Mathematics is written for mathematicians.
quote by Nicolaus Copernicus
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Maybe altruism is our most primitive attribute out of reach, beyond our control. Or perhaps it is immediately at hand, waiting to be released, disguised now, in our kind of civilization as affection or friendship or attachment. I can’t see why it should be unreasonable for all human beings to have strands of DNA coiled up in chromosomes, coding out instincts for usefulness and helpfulness. Usefulness may turn out to be the hardest test of fitness for survival, more important than aggression, more effective, in the long run, than grabbiness.
quote by Lewis Thomas
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May not music be described as the mathematics of the sense, mathematics as music of the reason? The musician feels mathematics, the mathematician thinks music: music the dream, mathematics the working life.
quote by James Joseph Sylvester
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Am Inspired, Are You?
inspiration is not desired
to be inspired
it is discovered
and authored
it is rewarded
and guarded
by the power to live
the hour to give
an inspired
soul a sense to express,
so, i am inspired
now,
are you?
if so,
spread your wings
and fly
within you,
reach out your hands
and touch the sky
(and beyond)
stay motivated
and inspired...
if not, ask why not yourself?
why not you inspired from yours' sense?
poem by Onalethuso Petruss Ntema
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The Ultimate Sin
Overkill enough is enough
Theres nothing left of me to devour
Youve had your fill Im all I have left
What can stop your hunger for power
cos you took advantage of things that I said
Now the feeling is dead
And thats the ultimate sin
And thats the ultimate sin
Anyway I look at it now
The doors are closed and cannot be opened
Bury your anger and bury your dead
Or youll be left with nothing and no one
Theres no point in screaming cos you wont be heard
Now that tables have turned
It was the ultimate sin
It was the ultimate sin
It was the ultimate sin
I warned you then and Im warning you now
If you mess with me youre playing with fire
Winds of change that are fanning the flames
Will carry you to your funeral pyre
Its pulling you down
Its your final descent
Its too late to repent
When its the ultimate sin
When its the ultimate sin
When its the ultimate sin
When its the ultimate sin
song performed by by Ozzy Osbourne
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Simplicity is not an objective in art, but one achieves simplicity despite one's self by entering into the real sense of things.
quote by Constantin Brancusi
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Mathematics as an expression of the human mind reflects the active will, the contemplative reason, and the desire for aesthetic perfection. Its basic elements are logic and intuition, analysis and construction, generality and individuality.
quote by Richard Courant
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Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle.
quote by Edward Witten
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It may be true, that men, who are mere mathematicians, have certain specific shortcomings, but that is not the fault of mathematics, for it is equally true of every other exclusive occupation.
quote by Carl Friedrich Gauss
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By keenly confronting the enigmas that surround us, and by considering and analysing the observations that I have made, I ended up in the domain of mathematics, Although I am absolutely without training in the exact sciences, I often seem to have more in common with mathematicians than with my fellow artists.
quote by M.C. Escher
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By keenly confronting the enigmas that surround us, and by considering and analysing the observations that I have made, I ended up in the domain of mathematics, Although I am absolutely without training in the exact sciences, I often seem to have more in common with mathematicians than with my fellow artists.
quote by M.C. Escher
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We must try to advance the cause of humanity by developing in ourselves, as well as in others, a higher type of manhood and womanhood than the past has known. To aid in the evolution of a new conscience, to inject living streams of moral force into the dry veins of materialistic communities is our aim. We seek to come into touch with the ultimate power in things, the ultimate peace in things, which yet, in any literal sense, we know well that we cannot know. We seek to become morally certain — that is, certain for moral purposes — of what is beyond the reach of demonstration. But our moral optimism must include the darkest facts that pessimism can point to, include them and transcend them.
quote by Felix Adler
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I hope that seeing the excitement of solving this problem will make young mathematicians realize that there are lots and lots of other problems in mathematics which are going to be just as challenging in the future.
quote by Andrew Wiles
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If there were a clear prospect that such evils were part of a barbarian past, then at least we might find a small crumb of comfort. No such prospect exists: no scientific analysis can even remotely answer or account for past and present horrors of human behaviour.
quote by Simon Conway Morris
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Borders
Past the borders that divides us
of seeing, feeling, hearing and tasting
past thoughts, sensations of you and me
the ways how
we experience each other, the reality,
I want to go deeper to you
so that somewhere there
my inner eyes, my thoughts penetrate
to that which is the essence of our humanity
and in simplicity I do not want to wait longer
past the empty and vain game with a deeper meaning
not heeding the shallow things of the world
so that we can be aware of that which is holy,
more splendid and base love on eternal light.
[Reference: Borders by N.P. van Wyk Louw.]
poem by Gert Strydom
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Life is good for only two things, discovering mathematics and teaching mathematics.
quote by Simeon Poisson
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I am interested in mathematics only as a creative art.
quote by G.H. Hardy
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