Paper Quotes (7)
A good mathematical joke is better, and better mathematics, than a dozen mediocre papers.
A Mathematician's Miscellany (1953). In Béla Bollobás, Littlewood's Miscellany (1986), 24.
Deductivism in mathematical literature and inductivism in scientific papers are simply the postures we choose to be seen in when the curtain goes up and the public sees us. The theatrical illusion is shattered if we ask what goes on behind the scenes. In real life discovery and justification are almost always different processes.
Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought (1969), 26.
See also: | Ask (2) | Choice (6) | Difference (25) | Discovery (166) | Illusion (6) | Justification (4) | Literature (10) | Mathematics (221) | Process (15) | Public (3) | Publication (60) | Real Life (2)
I am trying to get the hang of this new fangled writing machine, but I am not making a shining success of it. However, this is the first attempt I have ever made & yet I perceive I shall soon & easily acquire a fine facility in its use. … The machine has several virtues. I belive it will priont faster than I can write. One may lean back in his chair & work it. It piles an awful stack of words on one page. It do't muss things or scatter ink blots around. Of course it saves paper.
Letter (1874). Quoted in B. Blivens, Jr., The Wonderful Writing Machine (1954), 61. Cited in Myron C. Tuman, Word Perfect (1992), 2.
See also: | Attempt (4) | Chair (2) | Facility (2) | Fast (3) | Ink (2) | Machine (22) | Typewriter (5) | Use (7) | Word (31) | Write (11)
I'm gradually managing to cram my mind more and more full of things. I've got this beautiful mind and it's going to die, and it'll all be gone. And then I say, not in my case. Every idea I've ever had I've written down, and it's all there on paper. And I won't be gone; it'll be there.
'Isaac Asimov Speaks' with Bill Moyers in The Humanist (Jan/Feb 1989), 49. Reprinted in Carl Howard Freedman (ed.), Conversations with Isaac Asimov (2005), 139.
Let us then suppose the Mind to be, as we say, white Paper, void of all Characters, without any Ideas; How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless Fancy of Man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of Reason and Knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from Experience: In that, all our Knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives it self. Our Observation employ'd either about external, sensible Objects; or about the internal Operations of our Minds, perceived and reflected on by our selves, is that, which supplies our Understandings with all the materials of thinking.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). Edited by Peter Nidditch (1975), Book 2, Chapter 1, Section 2, 104.
See also: | Experience (57) | Idea (83) | Knowledge (330) | Mind (116) | Object (13) | Observation (142) | Reason (69) | Thinking (56)
Mathematics is the cheapest science. Unlike physics or chemistry, it does not require any expensive equipment. All one needs for mathematics is a pencil and paper.
Quoted in 'And sometimes the mathematician wants a powerful computer', in Donald J. Albers and Gerald L. Alexanderson (eds.), Mathematical People (1985). In John De Pillis, 777 Mathematical Conversation Starters (2002), 193.
The surprising thing about this paper is that a man who could write it would.
A Mathematician's Miscellany (1953). In Béla Bollobás, Littlewood's Miscellany (1986), 59.
