Maths Quotes

It wasn't like a Maths test where I have to strain to get it right. I feel very close to Luna so acting her was just natural. And if I had got too nervous I'd have done terribly. ~ Evanna Lynch

If you go to Africa and you're white, you're probably not going to get that much work either. But the fact is that there is a longer history of black integration in the U.S. I don't have any resentment about this: I did the maths, calculated it against my ambition and decided to leave England. ~ Idris Elba

My background is economics and maths. I think one of the reasons I studied humanities at all, or even went into journalism, is because, like, science and maths wasn't cool in England when I was growing up. No one ever talked to the engineering students at Oxford. ~ Nick Denton

Mathematicians deal with large numbers sometimes, but never in their income. ~ Isaac Asimov

Have you any idea what it takes to catch a ball, or raise a cup to your lips, or make immediate sense of a word, a phrase or an ambiguous sentence? We didn't, not at first. Solving maths problems is the tiniest fraction of what human intelligence does. We learned from a new angle just how wondrous a thing the brain is. A one-litre, liquid-cooled, three-dimensional computer. Unbelievable processing power, unbelievably compressed, unbelievable energy efficiency, no overheating. The whole thing running on twenty-five watts -- one dim light bulb. ~ Ian McEwan

Respecting infinite sets, for example, Intuitionism is rabidly anti-Cantor and Formalism staunchly pro-Cantor, even though both Formalism and Intuitionism are anti-Plato and Cantor is a diehard Platonist. Which, migrainous or not, means we're back to metaphysics: the modern wrangle over math's procedures is ultimately a dispute over the ontological status of math entities. ~ David Foster Wallace

All my family has very good mathematical abilities - like, so dorky. I was the dork then in school - on any maths exams I'd get 100%. I just knew how to do maths and most people would hate it, but for some reason it just came. ~ Rebel Wilson

Going through old papers I came across the transcript of a university debate on Rublyov. God, what a level. Abysmal, pathetic. But there is one remarkable contribution by a maths professor called Manin, Lenin Prize winner, who can hardly be more than thirty. I share his views. Not that one should say that about oneself. But it's exactly what I felt when I was making Andrey. And I'm grateful to Manin for that.

"Almost every speaker has asked why they have to be made to suffer all through the three hours of the film. I'll try to reply to that question.
It is because the twentieth century has seen the rise of a kind of emotional inflation. When we read in a newspaper that two million people have been butchered in Indonesia, it makes as much impression on us as an account of our hockey team winning a match. The same degree of impression! We fail to notice the monstrous discrpancy between these two events. The channels of our perception have been smoothed out to the point where we are no longer aware. However, I don't want to preach about this. It may be that without it life would be impossible. Only the point is that there are some artists who do make us feel the true measure of things. It is a burden which they carry throughout their lives, and we must be thankful to them. ~ Andrei Tarkovsky

The wonderful thing about maths is it's a totally logical subject, and a pathway has been marked out. I think a lot of these things can be crystallised in something quite essential, that people can get. If I can't explain it, I realise that's probably because I don't completely understand it myself. ~ Marcus Du Sautoy

Imagine you were asked in a maths paper at junior school, 'Which would you prefer, a shilling or two sixpences?' and you answered, 'Two sixpences,' because thinking of the two tiny silver coins jingling together in your pocket made you feel good and you loved those cute little sixpences. But when the test paper was returned you saw a big red cross through your answer, and that night your mother explained to you that it was a trick question, two sixpences and a shilling were worth the same amount – which you knew, but you'd still prefer two sixpences. It wasn't that you were stupid, you just saw things from a different angle. Sixpences had character, shillings didn't. And you felt richer with two sixpences because there were two coins, not just one. But despite all these explanations, you were still wrong and you kept getting tripped up by these trick questions over and over again, in exams, in relationships, friendships, jobs and interviews. In fact, these misreadings of situations happened so often that you started to view the world as a tricksy and untruthful place. Then you noticed that the people who saw the tricks behind the questions were popular and always at the top of the class. Baffled by life and its unseen rules, you began to doubt everything around you. You felt you had to approach all of life as a trick, just to get it right a few times. ~ Viv Albertine

This is the story of a family who didn't fit in. A little girl who was a bit geeky and liked maths more than makeup. And a boy who liked makeup and didn't fit into any tribes. ~ Jojo Moyes

One minute I was playing chess and doing maths all the time, the next I had been rerouted into more 'normal' girls' activities: reading, writing stories and worrying about my clothes. ~ Scarlett Thomas

people have managed to marry without arithmetic ~ Geoffrey Chaucer

I'm not into politics but I am committed to a cause: ensuring design technology and engineering stays on the U.K. curriculum, alongside science and maths - grounding abstract theory, merging the practical with the academic. ~ James Dyson

If there is one thing in mathematics that fascinates me more than anything else (and doubtless always has), it is neither 'number' nor 'size,' but always form. ~ Alexander Grothendieck

As an undergraduate, I did maths and physics. That doesn't make me a scientist. So I try to read and understand and talk to scientists. ~ Nicholas Stern

We're not doing maths again?' Harriet lamented.
Lord Winstead looked at Anne with unconcealed curiosity. 'Mathematics? On Rotten Row?'
'We have been studying measurement,' she informed him. 'They have already measured the average length of their strides. Now they will count their steps and compute the length of the path.'
'Very nice,' he said approvingly. 'And it keeps them busy and quiet as they count.'
'You have not heard them count,' Anne told him. ~ Julia Quinn

If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is. ~ John Von Neumann

Math is "maths," an elevator is a "lift," a truck is a "lorry," a flashlight is a "torch," and "crisps" are what they call potato chips, while "chips" over here means French fries. Just as riding the double-decker buses thrills me, I get a thrill out of hearing people talk. ~ Heather Vogel Frederick

Man had been given a brain that could think in numbers, and it could not be coincidence that the world was unlocked by that very tool. To understand any aspect of the cosmos was to look on the face of God: not directly, but by a species of triangulation, because to think mathematically was to feel the action of God in oneself. ~ Kate Grenville

I was fine with everything except Maths. I was terrible at Maths. ~ Charlie Simpson

The importance of C.F. Gauss for the development of modern physical theory and especially for the mathematical fundament of the theory of relativity is overwhelming indeed; also his achievement of the system of absolute measurement in the field of electromagnetism. In my opinion it is impossible to achieve a coherent objective picture of the world on the basis of concepts which are taken more or less from inner psychological experience. ~ Albert Einstein

The arts, sciences, humanities, physical education, languages and maths all have equal and central contributions to make to a student's education. ~ Ken Robinson

The Prussian Academy of Sciences is a fast-track academic institute that requires a proactive, hands-on-type individual to overthrow the Newtonian conception of the universe. The successful candidate will have an excellent command of mass, energy, space, time and some maths. Bonus paid upon completion of proofs ~ Albert Einstein

I didn't fit the typical profile of a trader. I was an English major working on a novel at night. Most everyone else was a maths or economics major; most everyone else had relatives or family in banking. ~ Philipp Meyer

Then, when I've got a degree in maths, or physics, or maths and physics, I will be able to get a job and earn lots of money and I will be able to pay someone who can look after me and cook my meals and wash my clothes, or I will get a lady to marry me and be my wife and she can look after me so I can have company and not be on my own. ~ Mark Haddon

I have two tutors - a maths tutor and another tutor who does all the other subjects. It is part of the deal with myself; I really want to finish school. I like learning and education, and I think it is really important. ~ Olivia DeJonge

Nothing bothers me more than when people criticize my criticism of school by telling me that schools are not just places to learn maths and spelling, they are places where children learn a vaguely defined thing called socialization. I know. I think schools generally do an effective and terribly damaging job of teaching children to be infantile, dependent, intellectually dishonest, passive and disrespectful to their own developmental capacities. ~ Seymour Papert

If you're not thinking about numbers, you're probably not thinking. ~ John Derbyshire

I remember a huge tiredness coming over me, a kind of lethargy in the face of the tangled mess before me. It was like being given a maths problem when your brain's exhausted, and you know there's some far-off solution, but you can't work up the energy even to give it a go. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

Reading was my way of not thinking about maths. More than that (or do I mean less?), it was my way of not thinking. ~ Ian McEwan

Australian schools have cool uniforms. I wish I had to wear a woven straw hat for maths. ~ Harry Styles

Things were changing; I was changing. All swelling limbs and sweating brain, suddenly I had more body than I knew what to do with. Arms and legs became the prey of low desktops and narrow corridors, were ambushed by sharp corners. Mr Baxter ignored my plight. Bodies were inimical to mathematics, or so we were led to believe. Bad hair, acrid breath, lumpy skin, all vanished for an hour every Tuesday and Thursday. Young minds in the buff soared into the sphere of pure reason. Pages turned to parallelograms; cities, circumferences; recipes, ratios. Shorn of our bearings, we groped our way around in this rarefied air. ~ Daniel Tammet

If I'd loved my chemistry teacher and my maths teacher, goodness knows what direction my life might have gone in. I remember there was a primary school teacher who really woke me up to the joys of school for about one year when I was ten. He made me interested in things I would otherwise not have been interested in - because he was a brilliant teacher. He was instrumental in making me think learning was quite exciting. ~ Colin Firth

Maths should be more practical and more conceptual, but less mechanical. ~ Conrad Wolfram

If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of staying straight and fitting together. But underneath the words, at the center, like the center of the Square, it all came out even. Everything could change, yet nothing would be lost. If you saw the numbers you could see that, the balance, the pattern. You saw the foundations of the world. And they were solid. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Autistic people are individuals. We are not all maths geniuses, we don't all like trains. I am hopeless with technology and much prefer painting. There is no 'typical Autistic.' But I think we probably all like being respected and validated ~ Jeanette Purkis

Maths is fundamentally a different process in education than it is in the real world. There is an insistence that we do maths by hand when most of it is done by computers. The idea that you have to do everything by hand before you can operate a computer is nonsense. ~ Conrad Wolfram

Like works of literature, mathematical ideas help expand our circle of empathy, liberating us from the tyranny of a single, parochial point of view. ~ Daniel Tammet Thinking In Numbers How Maths Illuminates Our Lives

We could, of course, use any notation we want; do not laugh at notations; invent them, they are powerful. In fact,mathematics is, to a large extent, invention of better notations. ~ Richard P. Feynman

Robert Heinlein says in Have Spacesuit, Will Travel that the only things worth studying are history, languages, and science. Actually, he adds maths, but honestly they left out the mathematical part of my brain. ~ Jo Walton

Higher degree of equations in maths and life have no real solutions. ~ Sipendr

I liked maths because it meant solving problems, and these problems were difficult and interesting but there was always a straightforward answer at the end ~ Mark Haddon

There was a steady drizzle when they left for the tower. Moist drove the cart, with the others sitting on the load behind him and bickering over trigonometry. Moist tried not to listen; he got lost when maths started to get silly. ~ Terry Pratchett

It was like being given a maths problem when your brain's exhausted, and you know there's some far-off solution, but you can't work up the energy even to give it a go. Something in me just gave up. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

The digital clock that sat on the empty bookcase blinked insistently in the dim room. It was an hour and thirty-five minutes off, but Archie had never bothered to reset it, he just did the maths to calculate the time. ~ Chelsea Cain

One particular aspect of Siddhartha's revelation of the outside world has always struck me. Quite possibly he lived his first thirty years without any knowledge of number. How must he have felt, then, to see crowds of people mingling in the streets? Before that day he would not have believed that so many people existed in all the world. And what wonder it must have been to discover flocks of birds, and piles of stones, leaves on trees and blades of grass! To suddenly realise that, his whole life long, he had been kept at arm's length from multiplicity. ~ Daniel Tammet

He thought about explaining math's beauty to her, the elegance of an equation, the simplicity within the complexity. The thrill of touching truth and knowing it as ancient and unassailable, as permanent and profound. ~ Katie Kennedy

Working is bad enough in the winter, but in the summer it can become completely intolerable. Stuck in airless offices, every fibre of our being seems to cry out for freedom. We're reminded of being stuck in double maths while the birds sing outside. ~ Tom Hodgkinson

Students shy away from Maths, but in reality Maths is the best friend of man. ~ Shakuntala Devi

I was always behind in class. There was people in my class who was amazing at art, amazing at maths, amazing at English, but I wasn't clever with anything, even though I tried my hardest. ~ Amy Childs

I was quite into biology and chemistry at school, and I did well in my maths, so I quite fancied a career in forensics or something like that. But I bet if you put a maths exam paper in front of me now I wouldn't have a clue. ~ Nikki Sanderson

Teaching Ramanujan was like writing on a blackboard covered with excerpts from a more interesting lecture. ~ Lawrence Young

Mathematics is one of the major modern mysteries. Perhaps it is the leading one, occupying a place in our society similar to the religious mysteries of another age. If we want to know something about what our age is all about, we should have some understanding of what mathematics is, and of how the mathematician operates and thinks. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

I was excellent at English and Drama. Maths and Science I was terrible at. I didn't have any interest in them. I was happiest at lunchtime, playing with my friends. But I love science now, that's the funny thing. And I'd be so good at geography, as I've been fortunate enough to travel the world. ~ Peter Andre

The man ignorant of mathematics will be increasingly limited in his grasp of the main forces of civilization. ~ John G. Kemeny

And what he meant was that maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward answers in the end ~ Mark Haddon

Who wants to get really granular with sabermetrics when you're going to see a two-and-a-half-hour Brad Pitt movie? You don't go to the cinema for a maths lesson. ~ Billy Beane

frustration has flared up over the Common Core initiative, involving the implementation of national reading and maths standards for primary and secondary school children. The Gates Foundation played a central role in bringing the standards to fruition. Spending over $233 million to back the standards, the foundation dispersed money liberally to both conservative and progressive interest groups. The two major teachers' unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, each received large donations, as did the US Chamber of Commerce. Gates himself suggested that a benefit of the standards is that they open avenues towards increasing digital learning. In 2014, Microsoft announced it was partnering with Pearson to load Pearson's Common Core classroom material onto Microsoft's Surface tablet. Previously, the iPad was the classroom frontrunner; the Pearson partnership helps to make Microsoft more competitive. ~ Linsey McGoey

I did maths for a year at university. I don't think I was very good at it. And some people would say it shows. ~ Gordon Brown

I was very slow in maths, geometry I actually enjoyed. ~ Liam Neeson

I'm just like any other regular mum; cooking, cleaning, wiping butts, picking up after kids, being a wife and helping the kids with their homework. Mind you, I'm terrible at maths. I can't even do my six-year-old's maths homework with her. ~ Gwyneth Paltrow

Do you mean to tell me', he growled a the Dursleys, 'that this boy- this boy! - knows nothin' abou' - about ANYTHING?'
Harry thought this was going a bit far. He had been to school, after all, and his marks were'nt bad.
'I know some things,' he said. ' I can, you know, do maths and stuff.'
But Hagrid simply waved his hand and said, 'About our world, I mean. Your world. My world. Yer' parents world.'
'What world?'
Hagrid looked at though he was about to explode.
'DURSLEY!' he boomed.
Uncle Vernon, who had gone very pale, whispered something that sounded like 'Mimblewimble'.
Hagrid stared wildly at Harry.
'But yeh must know about yer mum and dad', he said. 'I mean, they're famous. You're famous.
'What? My - my mum and dad weren't famous, were they?'
'Yeh don' know... yeh don' know...' Hagrid ran his fingers through his hair, fixing Harry with a bewildered stare.
'Yeh don' know what yeh are?' he said finally.
Uncle Vernon suddenly found his voice.
'Stop!' he commanded, 'stop right there, sir! I forbid you to tell the boy anything!'
A braver man than Vernon dudley would have quailed under the furious look Hagrid now gave him; when Hagrid spoke, his every syllable trembled with rage.
'You never told him? Never told him what was in the latter Dumbledore left fer him? I was there! I saw Dumbledore leave it, Dursley! An' you kept it from him all these years?'
'Kept what from me?' said Harry eagerl ~ J.K. Rowling

I took 2682, halved it to get 1341 and then multiplied it by 10.'
Blaise thought about it for a second and realised that her method was indeed the easiest way to solve the problem. ~ Dima Zales

I was OK in school, but I always missed a lot because I was playing so much. But if I'd stuck at it, I imagine that I'd be doing something financial or economical. Finance always attracted me, even though maths was always a bit of a love-hate relationship. I would have tried playing football, but I don't think I'd have made it. ~ Matteo Manassero

I've been thinking about what you told me Friday night, about having a broken brain, not a broken spirit. And I've been thinking about what it means to be broken, and how we call things broken that aren't - fractured. It made me think about fractals. Do you know what a Mandelbrot Set is? [...] So, a Mandelbrot Set is one kind of fractal. All fractals are self similar, which means they have a pattern that repeats at different levels of magnification. Fractals are infinitely recursive and orderly, but they appear to be chaotic. [...] Mathematicians use fractals to model things that appear to be chaotic but are really accumulations of complex patterns. Fractured things - not broken, because broken implies that there is a normal, when mathematically there isn't. Normal would simply mean easily predictable, like a salt crystal. Fractured things like snowflakes and mountain ranges are more geometrically interesting and require more complex modeling. [...] You are a fractured snowflake, a pattern, repeated in infinite detail in a world full of salt crystals. You're not broken, you're perfect. ~ Laura Creedle

People will always try to steal
your power. When you do well, they'll say it's only because you're rich and your parents are big shots. People who care about you will try to steal
your power, too, but they'll go about it differently. When you fail at something, they'll try to make you feel better by saying that nobody's good at
everything, and you shouldn't be so hard on yourself. They might tell you not to feel bad about screwing up a math test because math's hard for girls.
Or they'll say you shouldn't worry so much about injustice in the world because you're only one person. And even though they mean well, they'll be
making you less than what you can be. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

School taught me how to do language, maths and science; it failed to teach me the very basics of how to keep my home healthy. ~ Steven Magee

I always knew that I was tremendously creative. I recited love poems, I wrote stories and I got excellent grades in every subject, except for maths. ~ Shakira

My prolonged study of these photographs led me to appreciate the importance of preserving certain moments for prosperity, and as time moved forwards I also came to see what a powerful influence these framed scenes exerted over us as we went about our daily lives.
To watch my uncle pose my brother a maths problem, and at the same time to see him in a picture taken thirty-two years earlier; to watch my father scanning the newspaper and trying, with a half-smile, to catch the tail of a joke rippling across the crowded room, and at that very same moment to see a picture of him to me that my grandmother had framed and frozen these memories so that we could weave them into the present.When, in the tones ordinarily preserved for discussing the founding of a nation, my grandmother spoke of my grandfather who had died so young, and pointed at the frames on the tables and the walls, it seemed that she, like me, was pulled in two direction , wanting to get on with life but also longing to capture the moment of perfection, savouring the ordinary life but still honouring the ideal. But even as I pondered these dilemmas-if you plucked a special moment from life and framed it, were you defying death, decay and the passage of time, or were you submitting to them? - I grew very bored with them. ~ Orhan Pamuk

Economics ought to be a magpie discipline, taking in philosophy, history and politics. But heterodox approaches have long since been banished from most faculties, claims Tony Lawson. In the 1970s, when he started teaching at Cambridge, the economics faculty still boasted legends such as Nicky Kaldor and Joan Robinson. "There were big debates, and students would study politics, the history of economic thought." And now? "Nothing. No debates, no politics or history of economic thought and the courses are nearly all maths."
How do elites remain in charge? If the tale of the economists is any guide, by clearing out the opposition and then blocking their ears to reality. The result is the one we're all paying for. ~ Aditya Chakrabortty

Math is a product of human minds but not bendable to human will ~ Ian Stewart

I was never strong at maths, but I eventually got onto a university physics/astronomy course, and that led on to my Ph.D. and eventual employment. ~ Alastair Reynolds

What have I ever had to do in my life that really
needed to be done? I always had a choice, and I always took the easy way
out - we always took the easy way out. At our age the burden of double
maths on a Monday morning and finding a spot the size of Pluto on my nose
was as complicated as it ever got for me.
This time round I'm having a baby. A baby. And that baby will be
around on the Monday, on the Tuesday, on the Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I have no weekends off. No three-month holidays.
I can't take a day off, call in sick, or get Mum to write a note. I am
going to be the mum now. I wish I could write myself a note.
I'm scared, Alex.
Rosie ~ Cecelia Ahern

Yes, but you need to learn your maths."
"I don't need to, really. I already know how to count to a hundred. And I'm sure I'll never need ore than a hundred of anything. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Revenge may be exacted a hundred times over in one sleepless night. The impulse, the dreaming intention, is human, normal, and we should forgive ourselves. But the raised hand, the actual violent enactment, is cursed. The maths says so. There'll be no reversion to the status quo ante, no balm, no sweet relief, or none that lasts. Only a second crime. Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves, Confucius said. Revenge unstitches a civilisation. It's a reversion to constant, visceral fear. ~ Ian McEwan

I wasn't an academic. I hated maths and science at school. I couldn't concentrate. ~ Michelle Dockery

I had one class in the morning, the mysteriously named "Further Maths". It was two hours long and so deeply frightening that I think I went into a trance. ~ Maureen Johnson

MR JEAVONS SAID THAT I liked maths because it was safe. He said I liked maths because it meant solving problems, and these problems were difficult and interesting, but there was always a straightforward answer at the end. And what he meant was that maths wasn't like life because in life there are no straightforward answers at the end. I know he meant this because this is what he said. This is because Mr Jeavons doesn't understand numbers. Here ~ Mark Haddon

The point is with good maths skills you have just wonderful opportunities and if you don't have good maths skills, there are just so many things that you won't be able to do. ~ Marcus Du Sautoy

Karma Police

Karma police
arrest this man,
he talks in maths,
he buzzes like a fridge,
he's like a detuned radio.

Karma police
arrest this girl,
her Hitler hairdo
is making me feel ill
and we have crashed her party.

This is what you get,
this is what you get,
this is what you get,
when you mess with us.

Karma police
I've given all I can,
it's not enough,
I've given all I can
but we're still on the payroll.

This is what you get,
this is what you get,
this is what you get,
when you mess with us.

For a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself.
Phew, for a minute there,
I lost myself, I lost myself.

For a minute there
I lost myself, I lost myself.
Phew, for a minute there,
I lost myself, I lost myself. ~ Radiohead

He taught only one class: 'Unlikely Maths'. But since the time was listed as "now" and the place, "everywhere," this was hardly helpful in tracking him down. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

Changing from biochemistry to law was easy because I was rubbish in the laboratory. I could never decide how much to put in a test tube because I'm not very good at maths. ~ Michelle Paver

Most people ... are put off science because maths is the gateway and they can't handle it. What we should be teaching is operational maths because, in general, the maths we need to carry out science is pretty straightforward. ~ Edward De Bono

Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer. ~ Carl Sandburg

Gradually, at various points in our childhoods, we discover different forms of conviction. There's the rock-hard certainty of personal experience ("I put my finger in the fire and it hurt,"), which is probably the earliest kind we learn. Then there's the logically convincing, which we probably come to first through maths, in the context of Pythagoras's theorem or something similar, and which, if we first encounter it at exactly the right moment, bursts on our minds like sunrise with the whole universe playing a great chord of C Major. ~ Philip Pullman

I never really get to go to school because I am always on tour or with my father. There is a tutor most of the time, but usually I am working so I never get to do the lessons. The worst thing about maths is all the kids are ahead of me because they go to school. ~ Willow Smith

Well I was about to be expelled from school, I had been arrested and a teacher said: "Why don't you try acting, instead of distracting the class? Why don't you use your comic talent for something more productive?" My maths teacher suggested I do comedy and I decided to have a go. I pursued it after that. I was about 17. ~ John Leguizamo

I was very good in all the maths and sciences. ~ Tamara Tunie

Maths was "the one true thing," according to Nancy.
"Not love?" Teddy said.
"Oh, love, of course," Nancy said, in an offhanded way. "Love is crucial, but it's an abstract and numbers are absolute. Numbers can't be manipulated." An unsatisfactory answer, surely, Teddy thought. It seemed to him that love should be the absolute, trumping everything. Did it? For him? ~ Kate Atkinson

In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra. ~ Fran Lebowitz

He'd always felt he had a right to exist as a wizard in the same way that you couldn't do proper maths without the number 0, which wasn't a number at all but, if it went away, would leave a lot of larger numbers looking bloody stupid. ~ Terry Pratchett

The human mind is an incredible thing. It can conceive of the magnificence of the heavens and the intricacies of the basic components of matter. Yet for each mind to achieve its full potential, it needs a spark. The spark of enquiry and wonder.
Often that spark comes from a teacher. Allow me to explain. I wasn't the easiest person to teach, I was slow to learn to read and my handwriting was untidy. But when I was fourteen my teacher at my school in St Albans, Dikran Tahta, showed me how to harness my energy and encouraged me to think creatively about mathematics. He opened my eyes to maths as the blueprint of the universe itself. If you look behind every exceptional person there is an exceptional teacher. When each of us thinks about what we can do in life, chances are we can do it because of a teacher.
[...] The basis for the future of education must lie in schools and inspiring teachers. But schools can only offer an elementary framework where sometimes rote-learning, equations and examinations can alienate children from science. Most people respond to a qualitative, rather than a quantitative, understanding, without the need for complicated equations. Popular science books and articles can also put across ideas about the way we live. However, only a small percentage of the population read even the most successful books. Science documentaries and films reach a mass audience, but it is only one-way communication. ~ Stephen Hawking

It baffled me how people could resist math's gorgeousness, but people did, and people do. The fine of its purity drives them away, the purity of the fine, unmixed with the heaviness of unnecessitated being. ~ Rebecca Goldstein

When I was a child, I wanted to be a jockey. I love horses, but it's not practical to have one in London. I also wanted to be an accountant, which isn't glamorous at all, but my dad was one, and I quite liked maths. ~ Lydia Leonard

In pure mathematics the mind deal only with its own creations and imaginations. The concepts of number and form have not been derived from any source other than the world of reality. The ten fingers on which men learned to count, that is, to carry out the first arithmetical operation, may be anything else, but they are certainly not only objects that can be counted, but also the ability to exclude all properties of the objects considered other than their number-and this ability is the product of a long historical evolution based on experience. Like the idea of number, so the idea of form is derived exclusively from the external world, and does not arise in the mind as a product of pure thought. ~ Friedrich Engels

Julian Assange is self-consciously an individual. He thinks in his own way, primarily as a physicist, having studied pure maths and physics at university in Australia where he grew up. ~ Nick Davies

Once you absorb the maths, it's all perfectly clear. ~ Elizabeth Bear

I was performing at a New Jersey high school, and I asked a class of 2,000 students, 'How many of you love mathematics?' and only one hand went up. And that was the hand of the maths teacher! ~ Shakuntala Devi

Doing some mental maths, Kat realised she wasn't even ovulating, the time of month when hormones and instinct reminded her that she was at the end of a very long, evolutionary line of successful couplings on the savannah. At that time, even newsreaders could suddenly morph into enticing reproductive candidates. ~ Susan Lattwein