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As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. (Sandburg Carl)
Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff to any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends on what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat flour from peas cods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data. (Sandburg Carl)
I would advise you Sir, to study algebra, if you are not already an adept in it: your head would be less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbors about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow. (Sandburg Carl)
Nobody before the Pythagorean had thought that mathematical relations held the secret of the universe. Twenty-five centuries later, Europe is still blessed and cursed with their heritage. To non-European civilizations, the idea that numbers are the key to both wisdom and power, seems never to have occurred. (Sandburg Carl)
It is amusing to discover, in the twentieth century, that the quarrels between two lovers, two mathematicians, two nations, two economic systems, usually assumed insoluble in a finite period should exhibit one mechanism, the semantic mechanism of identification -- the discovery of which makes universal agreement possible, in mathematics and in life. (Sandburg Carl)
Stand firm in your refusal to remain conscious during algebra. In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra. (Sandburg Carl)
So-called professional mathematicians have, in their reliance on the relative incapacity of the rest of mankind, acquired for themselves a reputation for profundity very similar to the reputation for sanctity possessed by theologians. (Sandburg Carl)
Mathematics would certainly have not come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was in nature no exactly straight line, no actual circle, no absolute magnitude. (Sandburg Carl)
Mathematics, rightly viewed, posses not only truth, but supreme beauty a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture. (Sandburg Carl)
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. (Sandburg Carl)
What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors? (Sandburg Carl)
In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. (Sandburg Carl)
Mathematicians are like Frenchman: whatever you say to them they translate Into their own language, and forthwith it is something entirely different. (Sandburg Carl)
“I liked math. Counting was easy for me, which was good, because a lot of the ballets have involved difficult counts.” (Sandburg Carl)
I stayed away from mathematics not so much because I knew it would be hard work as because of the amount of time I knew it would take, hours spent in a field where I was not a natural. (Sandburg Carl)
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