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Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality. Erich Fromm		Tuesday Feb 24, 2026
		Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969

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Mathematics is often erroneously referred to as the science of common sense. Actually, it may transcend common sense and go beyond either imagination or intuition. It has become a very strange and perhaps frightening subject from the ordinary point of view, but anyone who penetrates into it will find a veritable fairyland, a fairyland which is strange, but makes sense, if not common sense.

Quote Author: Edward Kasner

Edward Kasner

Edward Kasner

Edward Kasner (1878 - 1955), (City College of New York 1897; Columbia University M.A., 1897; Columbia University Ph.D., 1900), who studied under Cassius Jackson Keyser, was a prominent Jewish American mathematician who was appointed Tutor on Mathematics in the Columbia University Mathematics Department. Kasner was the first Jew appointed to a faculty position in the sciences at Columbia University.

Kasner's Ph.D. dissertation was titled The Invariant Theory of the Inversion Group.

Other Edward Kasner Quotes

... we have overcome the notion that mathematical truths have an existence independent and apart from our own minds. It is even strange to us that such a notion could ever have existed.

Mathematics is man's own handiwork, subject only to the limitations imposed by the laws of thought.

Mathematics is often erroneously referred to as the science of common sense. Actually, it may transcend common sense and go beyond either imagination or intuition. It has become a very strange and perhaps frightening subject from the ordinary point of view, but anyone who penetrates into it will find a veritable fairyland, a fairyland which is strange, but makes sense, if not common sense.

Mathematics is the science which uses easy words for hard ideas.

Perhaps the greatest paradox of all is that there are paradoxes in mathematics.

The testament of science is so continually in a flux that the heresy of yesterday is the gospel of today and the fundamentalism of tomorrow.

When the mathematician says that such and such a proposition is true of one thing, it may be interesting, and it is surely safe. But when he tries to extend his proposition to everything, though it is much more interesting, it is also much more dangerous. In the transition from one to all, from the specific to the general, mathematics has made its greatest progress, and suffered its most serious setbacks, of which the logical paradoxes constitute the most important part. For, if mathematics is to advance securely and confidently, it must first set its affairs in order at home.