Prime Numbers Quotes

Although the prime numbers are rigidly determined, they somehow feel like experimental data. ~ Timothy Gowers

God may not play dice with the universe, but something strange is going on with the prime numbers. ~ Paul Erdos

Why add prime numbers? Prime numbers are made to be multiplied, not added. ~ Lev Landau

I, Galileo, son of the late Vicenzo Galilei, swear that I never said that the prime numbers are useless. What I said was that you cannot count lunar craters by counting 2, 3, 5, 7 ... ~ Galileo Galilei

3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime. According to some ancient manuscripts 9 is not a prime number, but beyond the distant horizon of the oceans, in the New World that I am going to discover, there are surely lots of them. ~ Christopher Columbus

Mathematicians have tried in vain to this day to discover some order in the sequence of prime numbers, and we have reason to believe that it is a mystery into which the human mind will never penetrate. ~ Leonhard Euler

Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. ~ Mark Haddon

Q5. Have not I merely shown that it is possible to outdo just a particular algorithmic procedure, A, by defeating it with the computation Cq(n)? Why does this show that I can do better than any A whatsoever?

The argument certainly does show that we can do better than any algorithm. This is the whole point of a reductio ad absurdum argument of this kind that I have used here. I think that an analogy might be helpful here. Some readers will know of Euclid's argument that there is no largest prime number. This, also, is a reductio ad absurdum. Euclid's argument is as follows. Suppose, on the contrary, that there is a largest prime; call it p. Now consider the product N of all the primes up to p and add 1:

N=2*3*5*...*p+1.

N is certainly larger than p, but it cannot be divisible by any of the prime numbers 2,3,5...,p (since it leaves the remainder 1 on division); so either N is the required prime itself or it is composite-in which case it is divisible by a prime larger than p. Either way, there would have to be a prime larger than p, which contradicts the initial assumption that p is the largest prime. Hence there is no largest prime. The argument, being a reductio ad absurdum, does not merely show that a particular prime p can be defeated by finding a larger one; it shows that there cannot be any largest prime at all. Likewise, the Godel-Turing argument above does not merely show that a particular algorithm A can be defeated, it shows that there ~ Roger Penrose

If all sentient beings in the universe disappeared, there would remain a sense in which mathematical objects and theorems would continue to exist even though there would be no one around to write or talk about them. Huge prime numbers would continue to be prime, even if no one had proved them prime. ~ Martin Gardner

Quadratic reciprocity is the song of love in the land of prime numbers. ~ Kato

A prime number is one (which is) measured by a unit alone. ~ Euclid

The brain is the only kind of object capable of understanding that the cosmos is even there, or why there are infinitely many prime numbers, or that apples fall because of the curvature of space-time, or that obeying its own inborn instincts can be morally wrong, or that it itself exists. ~ David Deutsch

I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them ~ Mark Haddon

Prime numbers is what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. ~ Mark Haddon

When one made love to zero
spheres embraced their arches
and prime numbers caught their breath ... ~ Raymond Queneau

3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, and 7 is a prime. Why bother with non-prime numbers when the primes can do everything? ~ William Of Ockham

You'll get used to it. In the end you won't even notice it anymore," he said.
"How is that possible? It will always be there, right before my eyes."
"Exactly," said Mattia. "Which is precisely why you won't see it anymore. ~ Paolo Giordano

Prime numbers are divisible only by 1 and by themselves. They hold their place in the infinite series of natural numbers, squashed, like all numbers, between two others, but one step further than the rest. They are suspicious, solitary numbers, which is why Mattia thought they were wonderful. Sometimes he thought that they had ended up in that sequence by mistake, that they'd been trapped, like pearls strung on a necklace. Other times he suspected that they too would have preferred to be like all others, just ordinary numbers, but for some reason they couldn't do it. This second thought struck him mostly at night, in the chaotic interweaving of images that comes before sleep, when the mind is too weak to tell itself lies. ~ Paolo Giordano

He treated Root exactly as he treated prime numbers. For him, primes were the base on which all other natural numbers relied; and children were the foundation of everything worthwhile in the adult world ~ Yoko Ogawa

The prime ideal is a princess of the world of ideals. Her father is the prince 'Point' in the world of geometry. Her mother is the princess 'Prime Numbers' in the world of numbers. She inherits the purity from her parents. ~ Kato

The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers. ~ Bill Gates

Maybe people like you and me are just prime numbers. We don't neatly divide into a world that demands order. And they keep trying to find out why, and what makes us the way we are, but they can't. ~ Holly Bourne

I've got a few ideas," (Amy) admitted. "But I don't know where we're going in the long term. I mean - have you ever thought about what this ultimate treasure could be?"
"Something cool." (Dan)
"Oh, that's real helpful. I mean, what could make somebody the most powerful Cahill in history? And why thirty-nine clues?"
Dan shrugged. "Thirty-nine is a sweet number. It's thirteen times three. It's also the sum of five prime numbers in a row - 3,5,7,11,13. And if you add the first three powers of three, 3 to the first, 3 to the second, and s to the third, you get thirty-nine."
Amy stared at him. "How did you know that?"
"What do you mean? It's obvious. ~ Rick Riordan

Twin primes: pairs of prime numbers that are close to each other, almost neighbors, but between them there is always an even number that prevents them from truly touching. If you have the patience to go on counting, you discover that these pairs gradually become rarer. You encounter increasingly isolated primes, lost in that silent, measured space made only of ciphers, and you develop a distressing presentiment that the pairs encountered up until that point were accidental, that solitude is the true destiny. Then, just when you're about to surrender, when you no longer have the desire to go on counting, you come across another pair of twins, clutching each other tightly. ~ Paolo Giordano

Mathematicians call them twin primes: pairs of prime numbers that are close to each other, almost neighbors, but between them there is always an even number that prevents them from truly touching. Numbers like 11 and 13, like 17 and 19, 41 and 43. If you have the patience to go on counting, you discover that these pairs gradually become rarer. You encounter increasingly isolated primes, lost in that silent, measured space made only of ciphers, and you develop a distressing presentiment that the pairs encountered up until that point were accidental, that solitude is the true destiny. Then, just when you're about to surrender, when you no longer have the desire to go on counting, you come across another pair of twins, clutching each other tightly. There is a common conviction among mathematicians that however far you go, there will always be another two, even if no one can say where exactly, until they are discovered.

Mattia thought that he and Alice were like that, twin primes, alone and lost, close but not close enough to really touch each other. He had never told her that. When he imagined confessing these things to her, the thin layer of sweat on his hands evaporated completely and for a good ten minutes he was no longer capable of touching anything. ~ Paolo Giordano

My main mission when I became Prime Minister, was to keep Singapore going and Singapore has been kept going. So, I'm happy with what I've done for Singapore. ~ Goh Chok Tong

This book is an essay in what is derogatorily called "literary economics," as opposed to mathematical economics, econometrics, or (embracing them both) the "new economic history." A man does what he can, and in the more elegant - one is tempted to say "fancier" - techniques I am, as one who received his formation in the 1930s, untutored. A colleague has offered to provide a mathematical model to decorate the work. It might be useful to some readers, but not to me. Catastrophe mathematics, dealing with such events as falling off a height, is a new branch of the discipline, I am told, which has yet to demonstrate its rigor or usefulness. I had better wait. Econometricians among my friends tell me that rare events such as panics cannot be dealt with by the normal techniques of regression, but have to be introduced exogenously as "dummy variables." The real choice open to me was whether to follow relatively simple statistical procedures, with an abundance of charts and tables, or not. In the event, I decided against it. For those who yearn for numbers, standard series on bank reserves, foreign trade, commodity prices, money supply, security prices, rate of interest, and the like are fairly readily available in the historical statistics. ~ Charles P. Kindleberger

Everyone is just a set of numbers that the government has access to. Humanity lies in the interpretation of those numbers. ~ Peter Tieryas

Only number 1 is unique, rest is just numbers,fight to be no.1 ~ Mohammed Sekouty

The objective of nuclear-weapons policy should not be solely to decrease the number of weapons in the world, but to make the world safer - which is not necessarily the same thing. ~ Herman Kahn

The number of the hours in a day is fixed, but the quantity and quality of energy available to us is not. It is our most precious resource. The more we take responsibility for the energy we bring to the world, the more empowered and productive we become. The more we blame others or external circumstances, the more negative and compromised our energy is likely to be. ~ Jim Loehr

My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time ... Go home and get a nice quiet sleep. ~ Neville Chamberlain

My personality made me easy to get along with – unless you were looking at my guy like he was a big, juicy slab of prime rib with a side of mint chocolate chiop ice cream. ~ Jus Accardo

We who go a-fishing are a peculiar people. Like other men and women in many respects, we are like one another, and like no others, in other respects. We understand each other's thoughts by an intuition of which we know nothing. We cast our flies on many waters, where memories and fancies and facts rise, and we take them and show them to each other, and small or large, we are content with our catch. ~ William Cowper Prime

Mathematical knowledge ... is, in fact, merely verbal knowledge. "3" means "2+1", and "4" means "3+1". Hence it follows (though the proof is long) that "4" means the same as "2+2". Thus mathematical knowledge ceases to be mysterious. ~ Bertrand Russell

Bush, and Blair, and the prime minister of Japan, and Berlusconi, these people are criminals, and they are responsible for mass murder in the world, for the war, and for the occupation, through their support for Israel, and through their support for a globalized capitalist economic system, which is the biggest killer the world has ever known. ~ George Galloway

I want to bring back the human encounter into places where material things have a prime status. In a museum, you're supposed to look at things and not talk to other people. ~ Tino Sehgal

The 'Degrassi' producers were very supportive. They sent me flowers when I got 'The Vampire Diaries,' and then as soon as it premiered and got the great numbers that it did, I got another large bouquet of flowers from them. ~ Nina Dobrev

There are an endless number of things to discover about robotics. A lot of it is just too fantastic for people to believe. ~ Daniel H. Wilson

Winter-related accidents and illnesses account for a large number of all senior health-related insurance claims during the winter months. But that doesn't mean that seniors have to sit this season out. By taking a few precautions, seniors can enjoy winter safely and securely. ~ Scott Perry

She had tried to imagine him as a young Gladiator in the arena. Back then he must have been as dangerous as a lean, half-starved alley cat. Now, the alley cat had long since vanished. What stood in his stead was a scarred and even more deadly lion who carried the weight of having lived for many years in his prime. ~ Thea Harrison

"Patents make our product defensible." The optimal number of times to use the P word in a presentation is one. Just once, say, "We have filed patents for what we are doing." Done. The second time you say it, venture capitalists begin to suspect that you are depending too much on patents for defensibility. The third time you say it, you are holding a sign above your head that says, "I am clueless." ~ Guy Kawasaki

Lee Kuan Yew ruled Singapore from 1959 until 1990, making him, we believe, the longest serving prime minister anywhere. His party, the People's Action Party (PAP), dominated elections and that dominance was reinforced by the allocation of public housing, upon which most people in Singapore rely. Neighborhoods that fail to deliver PAP votes come election time found the provision and maintenance of housing cut off.18 In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe went one step further. In an operation called Murambatsvina (Operation Drive Out the Rubbish), he used bulldozers to demolish the houses and markets in neighborhoods that failed to support him in the 2005 election. ~ Bruce Bueno De Mesquita

That is why with enormous regret I have tendered my resignation to the prime minister today. ~ David Blunkett

And then you take a look at Spaces, there is this great innovation that came out of nowhere. We have the number one blogging site in the world because of the innovation that's there. ~ Steve Ballmer

The real issue, as far as Democrats are concerned, is the number of people receiving something from the government. This is exactly what Franklin Delano Roosevelt had in mind when he created this monster. And Clinton is planning to expand it beyond Roosevelt's wildest dreams. ~ Rush Limbaugh

I believe in music. I guess music is for me what numbers are for you. There's power in music. There's healing in it. God is there in it too, if you let him be. Growing up, in Grassley, everybody was so poor, Jesus was the only thing we had left . . . so I believe in him too. And God and music, once they are truly yours, are the two things people can't take away from you. ~ Amy Harmon

The more facts you tell, the more you sell. An advertisement's chance for success invariably increases as the number of pertinent merchandise facts included in the advertisement increases. ~ Charles Edwards

Fake tiaras and fashion handbooks play into the collective fantasy that one day, if you are beautiful and good enough, you too can marry the inbred great-great-grandchild of some bloodless aristocrat whose distant relations were better at murdering huge numbers of peasants than some other bloodless aristocrat. ~ Laurie Penny

Even the elders can give a number of helpful hints. ~ George Ade

When I was a young boy, I can remember in the community that I grew up in, seeing people in the community who had numbers that were on their arms. ~ Bernie Sanders

Blue always preferred numbers to words. Words have power. Words hold painful truths and delicious lies. Just one word can stir up a hundred memories and a thousand feelings so that you can be hurt by a word or killed by a sentence. ~ Laura M. Hughes

Allow me, whom Fortune always desires to bury, lay down my life in these final trivialities. Many have freely died in longlasting loves, among whose number may the earth cover me as well. ~ Propertius

The linden, in the fervors of July,
Hums with a louder concert. When the wind
Sweeps the broad forest in its summer prime,
As when some master-hand exulting sweeps
The keys of some great organ, ye give forth
The music of the woodland depths, a hymn
Of gladness and of thanks. ~ William C. Bryant

In the novelist's profession, as far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as winning or losing. Maybe numbers of copies sold, awards won, and critics' praise serve as outward standards for accomplishment in literature, but none of them really matter. What's crucial is whether your writing attains the standards you've set for yourself. Failure to reach that bar is not something you can easily explain away. When it comes to other people, you can always come up with a reasonable explanation, but you can't fool yourself. In this sense, writing novels and running full marathons are very much alike. ~ Haruki Murakami

Darwin based his theory on generalizations that were strictly empirical. You can go out and see that organisms do vary, that variations are inherited, and that every organism is capable of increasing its numbers in sufficiently favorable circumstances. ~ George C. Williams

Only small minds are impressed by large numbers. ~ Arthur C. Clarke