Top 40 Math Quotes (2023 Update)

1. “Math is the only place where truth and beauty mean the same thing.”

— Danica McKellar

2. “Math is the language of the universe. So the more equations you know, the more you can converse with the cosmos.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

3. “The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics.”

— Galileo Galilei

4. “The only way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics.”

— Paul Halmos

5. “A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.”

— Leo Tolstoy

6. “Number rules the universe.”

— Pythagoras

Also featured in: Quotes About Numbers

7. “To not know math is a severe limitation to understanding the world.”

— Richard P. Feynman

Also featured in: Understanding Quotes

8. “Mathematics is a more powerful instrument of knowledge than any other that has been bequeathed to us by human agency.”

— René Descartes

9. “Mathematics expresses values that reflect the cosmos, including orderliness, balance, harmony, logic, and abstract beauty.”

— Deepak Chopra

Also featured in: Quotes About Balance

10. “Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.”

— Bertrand Russell

11. “To ask the right question is harder than to answer it.”

— Georg Cantor

12. “Young man, in mathematics you don’t understand things. You just get used to them.”

— John von Neumann

13. “Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.”

— Bertrand Russell

14. “Mathematics is for lazy people.”

— Peter Hilton

15. “The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.”

— Richard Hamming

Also featured in: Quotes About Purpose, Quotes About Numbers

16. “Man discovers truth by reason only, not by faith.”

— Leo Tolstoy

17. “To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.”

— Marcus Aurelius

Also featured in: Philosophical Quotes, Wise Quotes

18. “I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics.”

— Bertrand Russell

19. “I would not dare to say that there is a direct relation between mathematics and madness, but there is no doubt that great mathematicians suffer from maniacal characteristics, delirium and symptoms of schizophrenia.”

— John Forbes Nash

20. “God created everything by number, weight and measure.”

— Isaac Newton

21. “Logic is the anatomy of thought.”

— John Locke

22. “Geometry existed before creation.”

— Plato

23. “The electron is a theory we use; it is so useful in understanding the way nature works that we can almost call it real.”

— Richard P. Feynman

Also featured in: Understanding Quotes

24. “Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.”

— Blaise Pascal

25. “If a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.”

— Francis Bacon

26. “The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.”

— Henri Poincaré

27. “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.”

— Mark Twain

28. “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

— Arthur Conan Doyle

29. “Every new body of discovery is mathematical in form, because there is no other guidance we can have.”

— Charles Darwin

30. “The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.”

— William James

31. “The most important thing we can do is inspire young minds and to advance the kind of science, math and technology education that will help youngsters take us to the next phase of space travel.”

— John Glenn

Also featured in: Travel Quotes, Technology Quotes

32. “You have to run as fast as you can just to stay where you are. If you want to get anywhere, you’ll have to run much faster.”

— Lewis Carroll

33. “Order is heaven’s first law.”

— Alexander Pope

34. “I loved logic, math, computer programming. I loved systems and logic approaches. And so I just figured architecture is this perfect combination.”

— Maya Lin

35. “Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.”

— Bertrand Russell

Also featured in: Science Quotes

36. “Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.”

— William S. Burroughs

37. “I continued to study Math and Physics on my own, but one and a half years later I realized that I did want to be a composer, and after that I never changed my mind.”

— György Ligeti

38. “Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.”

— Bertrand Russell

39. “Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.”

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

40. “Hal Incandenza has an almost obsessive dislike for deLint, whom he tells Mario he sometimes cannot quite believe is even real, and tries to get to the side of, to see whether deLint has a true z coordinate or is just a cutout or projection.”

— David Foster Wallace

Also featured in: Real Quotes