Quotes from Martin Gardner

A surprising proportion of mathematicians are accomplished musicians. Is it because music and mathematics share patterns that are beautiful?

Although Lewis Carroll thought of The Hunting of the Snark as a nonsense ballad for children, it is hard to imagine - in fact one shudders to imagine - a child of today reading and enjoying it.

If God creates a world of particles and waves, dancing in obedience to mathematical and physical laws, who are we to say that he cannot make use of those laws to cover the surface of a small planet with living creatures?

The sudden hunch, the creative leap of mind that "sees" in a flash how to solve a problem in a simple way, is something quite different from general intelligence.

A god whose creation is so imperfect that he must be continually adjusting it to make it work properly seems to me a god of relatively low order, hardly worthy of any worship.

Modern science should indeed arouse in all of us a humility before the immensity of the unexplored and a tolerance for crazy hypotheses.

The last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician.

There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.

Most mathematics deals with static objects such as circles and triangles and numbers. But the great universe out there, not made by us, is in a constant state of what Newton called flux. At every microsecond it changes magically into something different. Calculus is the mathematics of change.

7] The Shadows Code In the 1930's a mysterious crime-fighter called the Shadow was the hero of a popular pulp magazine and an even more popular radio show. Dressed all in black, the Shadow could glide unseen through the darkness to battle the forces of evil. Stories about the Shadow, written by Maxwell Grant (pseudonym for the Shadow's creator, Walter B. Gibson), often contained curious codes. This cipher, from a novelette called The Chain of Death, is one of the best.

In many cases a dull proof can be supplemented by a geometric analogue so simple and beautiful that the truth of a theorem is almost seen at a glance.

Wouldn't the sentence "I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-and-Chips sign" have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?

All mathematicians share... a sense of amazement over the infinite depth and the mysterious beauty and usefulness of mathematics.

Mathemagical mathematics combines the beauty of mathematical structure with the entertainment value of a trick.

The computers are not replacing mathematicians; they are breeding them.

In no other branch of mathematics is it so easy for experts to blunder as in probability theory.

There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.

If you ask me to tell you anything about the nature of what lies beyond the phaneron… my answer is "How should I know?"… I am not dismayed by ultimate mysteries… I can no more grasp what is behind such questions as my cat can understand what is behind the clatter I make while I type this paragraph.

There are, and always have been, destructive pseudo-scientific notions linked to race and religion; these are the most widespread and damaging. Hopefully, educated people can succeed in shedding light into these areas of prejudice and ignorance, for as Voltaire once said: ' Men will commit atrocities as long as they believe absurdities .

Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?

The last level of metaphor in the Alice books is this: that life, viewed rationally and without illusion, appears to be a nonsense tale told by an idiot mathematician.

It is part of the pholosophic dullness of our time that there are millions of rational monsters walking about on their hind legs, observing the world through pairs of flexible little lenses, periodically supplying themselves with energy by pushing organic substances through holes in their faces, who see nothing fabulous whatever about themselves.

The rub is that any work of nonsense abounds with so many inviting symbols that you can start with any assumption you please about the author and easily build up an impressive case for it. Consider, for example, the scene in which Alice seizes the end of the White King's pencil and begins scribbling for him. In five minutes one can invent six different interpretations.

Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.