
The principal aim of mathematical education is to develop certain faculties of the mind, and among these intuition is not the least precious. It is through it that the mathematical world remains in touch with the real world, and even if pure mathematics could do without it, we should still have to have recourse to it to fill up the gulf that separates the symbol from reality.
quote by Henri Poincare

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Pure mathematics is on the whole distinctly more useful than applied. For what is useful above all is technique, and mathematical technique is taught mainly through pure mathematics.
quote by G.H. Hardy

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Equations
The mathematical reminder of a doing
Pleases the mind with the faculties arguing.
poem by Naveed Akram

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There exists, if I am not mistaken, an entire world which is the totality of mathematical truths, to which we have access only with our mind, just as a world of physical reality exists, the one like the other independent of ourselves, both of divine creation.
quote by Charles Hermite

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Tulips
An age being mathematical, these flowers
Of linear stalks and spheroid blooms were prized
By men with wakened, speculative minds,
And when with mathematics they explored
The Macrocosm, and came at last to
The Vital Spirit of the World, and named it
Invisible Pure Fire, or, say, the Light,
The Tulips were the Light's receptacles.
The gold, the bronze, the red, the bright-swart Tulips!
No emblems they for us who no more dream
Of mathematics burgeoning to light
With Newton's prism and Spinoza's lens,
Or berkeley's ultimate, Invisible Pure Fire.
In colored state and carven brilliancy
We see them now, or, more illumined,
In sudden fieriness, as flowers fit
To go with vestments red on Pentecost.
poem by Padraic Colum

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Tried To Be True
From baby to best with no second test
These little storms destroy you
Here is the fame they promised to give you
Taking the place of my hand now
Well did you try to be true
What separates me from you now
What separates me from you
Did you borrow the soul
The soul that you sell now
What does your conscience tell you
Where are the demons
Of your desires
Why does my love destroy you
I said I tried to be true
What separates me from you now
(what separates me from you now)
I said I tried, tried to be true
What separates me from you now
(what separates me from you now)
What separates me from you
(what separates me from you now)
I think its you now
Tell me where is the fame
Where is the fortune
Where is the world that denies you
Who is to blame
When my heart finally forfeits
To a road that will only misguide you
Well did we try to be true
What separates me from you now
(what separates me from you now)
Oh did we try, try to be true
(what separates me from you now)
(what separates me from you now)
It separates me from you now
(what separates me from you now)
It separates me from you
(what separates me from you now)
Its you
Baby
Yeah I bought my love a hunger
(I tried, tried to be true)
More precious than a stone
(I tried, tried to be true)
(where is the world that denies you)
All these fatal flowers
(I tried, tried to be true)
(where is the world that denies you)
Did I misguide you?
(tried to be true)
song performed by by Indigo Girls

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Gulf
A Gulf of silence separates us from each other.
I stand at one side of the gulf, you at the other.
I cannot see you or hear you, yet know that you are there.
Often I call you by your childish name
And pretend that the echo to my crying is your voice.
How can we bridge the gulf? Never by speech or touch.
Once I thought we might fill it quite up with tears.
Now I want to shatter it with our laughter.
poem by Katherine Mansfield

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The traditional mathematician recognizes and appreciates mathematical elegance when he sees it. I propose to go one step further, and to consider elegance an essential ingredient of mathematics: if it is clumsy, it is not mathematics.
quote by Edsger Dijkstra

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Mathematical calculation
Mathematical calculation failed
Life succeeded with full swim
With formula of love and affection
It is correct mathematical calculation.
poem by Gajanan Mishra

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All what is correct thinking is either mathematics or feasible to be transposed in a mathematical model.
quote by Grigore Moisil (2006)

Submitted by Marin Vlada
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Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity.
quote by Alan Turing

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.
quote by Johann Von Neumann

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.
quote by John Von Neumann

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The definition of a good mathematical problem is the mathematics it generates rather than the problem itself.
quote by Andrew Wiles

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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If Mathematics were not, "nothing would have been" neither zero (Digits 0-9 was invented by Indians, no Arabs) nor Physics, Chemistry or Architecture, no wheel and no Computer, no Printing and no Phone, no Informatics or Cybernetics. But to all these material entities invented by man, mathematical helps man to think about life, create and imagine, to love nature and his fellows to be emotional and courageous, be consistent and orderly to dream and be happy.
Marin Vlada in ICVL Project - News Technologies in Education and Research (2015)

Submitted by Marin Vlada
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The informatics/computer science re-establishes not only the unity between the pure and the applied mathematical sciences, the concrete technique and the concrete mathematics, but also that between the natural sciences, the human being and the society. It restores the concepts of the abstract and the formal and makes peace between arts and science not only in the scientist' conscience, but in their philosophy as well.
quote by Grigore Moisil (1970)

Submitted by Marin Vlada
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Every attempt to employ mathematical methods in the study of chemical questions must be considered profoundly irrational and contrary to the spirit of chemistry... If mathematical analysis should ever had prominent place in chemistry - an aberration, which is happily almost impossible - it would be a rapid and widespread degeneration of that science.
Auguste Comte in Philosophie Positive (1832)

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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All science requires mathematics. The knowledge of mathematical things is almost innate in us. This is the easiest of sciences, a fact which is obvious in that no one's brain rejects it; for laymen and people who are utterly illiterate know how to count and reckon.
quote by Roger Bacon

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Real Fiction
There are two kinds of fiction to find…
One in the world and the other in the mind.
When unpleasant things happen for real
With which the real mind is unable to deal,
It creates a world of fiction so it can survive
In order to justify that its unreal beliefs are alive.
These unreal beliefs have a real world all alone
As they deny real facts with data of their own.
Their fiction continues as world events transpire
With interpretation to support beliefs they require.
The world of fiction will collide with the world of real
As its members seek reality, it will lose its appeal.
Unless it dispenses with its delusions of the facts,
It will disappear as it's devoured by the reality it lacks.
poem by Gregory Huyette

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My intention here is to make it clear that not a single cell of my composition, here in regard to The Raven, is found by chance or intuition, that the composition moved towards perfection with the precision and inevitability of a mathematical equation.
quote by Maurice Ravel

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The mathematical probability of a common cat doing exactly as it pleases is the one scientific absolute in the world.
quote by Lynn M. Osband

Submitted by Micheleflowerbomb
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