quotes

Here is an assortment of quotes that I like. It seems like many good math books have introductory quotes, which (somewhat) implies the existence of personal stashes of quotes. This is mine.

What is Mathematics? You seem to have three choices. Mathematics is the Humanity that hymns eternal logic. It is the Science that studies the phenomenon called logic. It is the art that fashions structures of ethereal beauty out of the raw material called logic. It is all of these and more. Much more, I can assure you, for Mathematics is Fun.

—William Tutte

To suppose that mathematics is the art of calculation is like supposing that architecture is the art of bricklaying, or that literature is the art of typing. Calculation in mathematics is necessary, but it is an almost mechanical procedure which can be automated by machines. The mathematician does much more than a computerised mathematics package. The mathematician formulates problems, reduces them to a form which a computer can handle, checks that the results correspond to the original problem, and interprets and applies the answers. Therefore the mathematician must not be too concerned with mere computation. That is the task of the robot. The task of the human is to understand mathematics.

—Alan U. Kennington, Differential geometry reconstructed: A unified systematic framework