Bertrand Russell Math Quotations

The fact that all Mathematics is Symbolic Logic is one of the greatest discoveries of our age; and when this fact has been established, the remainder of the principles of mathematics consists of the analysis of Symbolic Logic itself.

Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.

The method of "postulating" what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.

All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.

Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little; it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.

Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.

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.

Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.

Mathematics is only the art of saying the same thing in different words.

I am allowed to use plain English because everybody knows that I could use mathematical logic if I chose.

The rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture.

Bacon not only despised the syllogism, but undervalued mathematics, presumably as insufficiently experimental. He was virulently hostile to Aristotle , but he thought very highly of Democritus , Although he did not deny that the course of nature exemplifies a Divine purpose, he objected to any admixture of teleological explanation in the actual investigation of phenomena; everything, he held, should be explained as following necessarily from efficient causes .

BERTRAND RUSSELL, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism We've associated that word philosophy with academic study that in its own way has gotten so far beyond the layman that if you read contemporary philosophy you've no clue, because it's almost become math. And it's odd that if you don't do that and you call yourself a philosopher that you always get 'homespun' attached to it.

Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is based on the idea of approximation. If a man tells you he knows a thing exactly, then you can be safe in inferring that you are speaking to an inexact man.

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

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.

The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.

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

Mathematics, rightly viewed, posses not only truth, but supreme beauty a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.

Mathematics possesses not only truth, but also supreme beauty

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.

To think I have spent my life on absolute muck.

The true spirit of delight...is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty-a beauty cold and austere ... yet sublimely pure and capable of stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show.

At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as my tutor. This was one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love. I had not imagined there was anything so delicious in the world. From that moment until I was thirty-eight, mathematics was my chief interest and my chief source of happiness.

Ordinary language is totally unsuited for expressing what physics really asserts, since the words of everyday life are not sufficiently abstract. Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.

The desire for excitement is very deep-seated in human beings, eI was a solitary, shy, priggish youth. I had no experience of the social pleasures of boyhood and did not miss them. But I liked mathematics, and mathematics was suspect because it has n