Algebra Quotes

“[Mathematics] is security. Certainty. Truth. Beauty. Insight. Structure. Architecture. I see mathematics, the part of human knowledge that I call mathematics, as one thing—one great, glorious thing. Whether it is differential topology, or functional analysis, or homological algebra, it is all one thing. ... They are intimately interconnected, they are all facets of the same thing. That interconnection, that architecture, is secure truth and is beauty. That's what mathematics is to me.”
― Paul R. Halmos

“Algebra is the offer made by the devil to the mathematician. The devil says: I will give you this powerful machine, it will answer any question you like. All you need to do is give me your soul: give up geometry and you will have this marvelous machine.”
― Michael Francis Atiyah

“Art is fire plus algebra.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“On Algebra - "We're a month into it, and I'm planning to start a real protest movement, one to have X and Y removed from the alphabet. Z is also suspect as far as I'm concerned...Damn it! They put a man on the moon; can't they find some way to end the scourge of Algebra?”
― Huston Piner, My Life as a Myth

“As to the need of improvement there can be no question whilst the reign of Euclid continues. My own idea of a useful course is to begin with arithmetic, and then not Euclid but algebra. Next, not Euclid, but practical geometry, solid as well as plane; not demonstration, but to make acquaintance. Then not Euclid, but elementary vectors, conjoined with algebra, and applied to geometry. Addition first; then the scalar product. Elementary calculus should go on simultaneously, and come into vector algebraic geometry after a bit. Euclid might be an extra course for learned men, like Homer...”
― Oliver Heaviside, Electromagnetic Theory

“As for methods I have sought to give them all the rigour that one requires in geometry, so as never to have recourse to the reasons drawn from the generality of algebra.”
― Augustin-Louis Cauchy, Cours d'analyse de l'École Royale Polytechnique (Cambridge Library Collection - Mathematics)

“Maths is at only one remove from magic.”
― Neel Burton

“I always thought that explained it: the romance is a reaction from the algebra. I never knew a person connected with mathematics or astronomy or statistics, or any of those exact things, who didn't have a crazy streak in 'em SOMEwhere.”
― Booth Tarkington, Beasley's Christmas Party

“The symbol is not a mere formality; it is the very essence of algebra. Without the symbol the object is a human perception and reflects all the phases under which the human senses grasp it; replaced by a symbol the object becomes a complete abstraction, a mere operand subject to certain indicated operations.”
― Tobias Dantzig, Number: The Language of Science

“What if Loves are analogous to math? First, arithmetic, then geometry and algebra, then trig and quadratics…”
― J. Earp

“Chemistry has the same quickening and suggestive influence upon the algebraist as a visit to the Royal Academy, or the old masters may be supposed to have on a Browning or a Tennyson. Indeed it seems to me that an exact homology exists between painting and poetry on the one hand and modem chemistry and modem algebra on the other. In poetry and algebra we have the pure idea elaborated and expressed through the vehicle of language, in painting and chemistry the idea enveloped in matter, depending in part on manual processes and the resources of art for its due manifestation.”
― James Joseph Sylvester

“Mathematicians call it “the arithmetic of congruences.” You can think of it as clock arithmetic. Temporarily replace the 12 on a clock face with 0. The 12 hours of the clock now read 0, 1, 2, 3, … up to 11. If the time is eight o’clock, and you add 9 hours, what do you get? Well, you get five o’clock. So in this arithmetic, 8 + 9 = 5; or, as mathematicians say, 8 + 9 ≡ 5 (mod 12), pronounced “eight plus nine is congruent to five, modulo twelve.”
― John Derbyshire, Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics

“Algebra messed up one of those divisions between things that help you make sense of the world and keep it tidy. Letters make words; figures make numbers. They had no business getting tangled up together.”
― Mal Peet, Tamar

“I can explain to you why algebra is useful. But that is not what algebra is really for.' He moved his fingers gently on my temples. 'It's to keep what is in here healthy. PE for the head. And the great thing is you can do it sitting down.”
― Mal Peet, Tamar

“Grandad taught me that the alien signs and symbols of algebraic equations were not just marks on paper. They were not flat. They were three-dimensional, and you could approach them from different directions, look at them from different ways, stand them on their heads. You could take them apart and put them back together in a variety of shapes, like Legos. I stopped being scared of them.”
― Mal Peet, Tamar

“The teacher manages to get along still with the cumbersome algebraic analysis, in spite of its difficulties and imperfections, and avoids the smooth infinitesimal calculus, although the eighteenth century shyness toward it had long lost all point.”
― Felix Klein, Elementary Mathematics from an Advanced Standpoint: Geometry

“You ready, then?” Maddie asked her friend with a meaningful look. It was hard to say exactly what she was referring to. Ready for what? School? New friends? Life? In the mood Alana was in, she felt ready for anything … except maybe algebra.”
― Poppy Inkwell, Alana Oakley: Mystery and Mayhem

“I only have one enemy in this world and she can be very complicated.
After forty one years, I still haven't figured her out as yet, but I will -trust me- I am still working on a formula for you Algebra.”
― Charmaine J. Forde

“There's something about Algebra,
I just can't figure it out
Polynomials, derivatives, quadratic equations,
I see no absolute value in them
A bunch of irrational numbers
With square roots and exponential functions
I'm still trying to see through the
horizontal and vertical blurred lines
This all reminds me
Y I left my X-”
― Charmaine J Forde

“It's only in Algebra that two negatives make a positive”
― Charmaine J Forde

“I have a new theory about algebra," I said. "I'm going to learn it by osmosis.”
― Robin McKinley, Shadows

“The letter is susceptible of operations which enables one to transform literal expressions and thus to paraphrase any statement into a number of equivalent forms. It is this power of transformation that lifts algebra above the level of a convenient shorthand.”
― Tobias Dantzig, Number: The Language of Science