South Dakota Council of Teachers of Mathematics: Working to
Improve Mathematics Education for All Students
"You do not study mathematics because it helps you build a bridge. You study mathematics because it is the poetry of the universe. Its beauty transcends mere things." --Johnathan David Farley; Orono, Me.
"Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted." — Albert Einstein
"Numbers rule the universe." Pythagoras c.550 B.C.
"The people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge." Hosea 4:6
"A teacher's day is half bureaucracy, half crisis, half
monotony and one-eighth epiphany. Never mind the arithmetic."
"Mathematics is the language with which God wrote the universe." Galileo
"The different branches of mathematics: ambition,
distraction, uglification, and derision."
"Just as music comes alive in the performance of it, the same
is true of mathematics. The symbols on the page have no more to do with mathematics than the notes on a page of music. They simply represent the experience.
"Mathematics possesses not only truth, but supreme
"Wherever there is number, there is beauty." -Proclus (410-485 A.D.)
"In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be teachers and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and highest responsibility anyone could have." ~ Lee Iacocca ~
"I think there's no way they should have to teach [math] now. We have computers. We no longer need to know why 3x = 2y/4." ~Rosie O'Donnell~
"What is best in mathematics deserves not merely to be learned as a task but to be assimilated as a part of daily thought, and brought again and again before the mind with ever-renewed encouragement." ~Bertrand Russell~
"Do what you love, love what you do, and deliver more than you promise." ~Harvey McKay~
"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer." ~Albert Einstein
"The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who
make empty prophesies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have
made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine men in the bonds
of Hell." ~St. Augustine
"The true spirit of delight, the exaltation...which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry." ~Bertrand Russell, Mysticism and Logic, 1917
"Geometry enlightens the mind and sets one's mind straight...The mind that turns regularly to geometry is unlikely to fall into error." ~The Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun, 14th Century Islamic historical work
"Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty." ~Bertrand Russell
"Mathematics is the queen of science." ~Carl Friedrich Gauss
"...it is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometrical figures..." ~Galileo, speaking of understanding the universe
"Wherever there is a number, there is beauty." ~Proclus
"Mathematics is the gate and key to science." ~Roger Bacon
"The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit." ~Alfred North Whitehead
"When we cannot use the compass of mathematics or the torch of experience...it is certain we cannot take a single step forward." ~Voltaire
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