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Martin Gardner

30 quotes

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

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Dover Math and Science Newsletter May 16, 2011

• “I can say this. I believe that the human mind, or even the mind of a cat, is more interesting in its complexity than an entire galaxy if it is devoid of life.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Martin Gardner, puzzle master extraordinaire obituary by Colm Mulcahy, BBC News Magazine, October 21, 2014

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

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) first seen 1956 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Mathematics, Magic, and Mystery (1956), p. ix

• “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. At the heart of things science finds only a mad, never-ending quadrille of Mock Turtle Waves and Gryphon Particles. For a moment the waves and particles dance in grotesque, inconceivably complex patterns capable of reflecting on their own absurdity.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Introduction to The Annotated Alice (1960) // The Annotated Alice. The Definitive Edition (1999), by Lewis Carroll (Author, Christ Church College, Oxford), John Tenniel (Illustrated by), Martin Gardner (Editor, Introduc…

• “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.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Bernard Sussman, "Exclusive Interview with Martin Gardner", Southwind (Miami-Dade Junior College), Vol. 3, No. 1 (Fall 1968)

• “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.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Mathematical Games", in Scientific American (October 1973); also quoted in Roger B. Nelson, Proofs Without Words: Exercises in Visual Thinking (1993), "Introduction", p. v

• “Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals — the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents. The men who radically altered history, the great scientists and mathematicians, are seldom mentioned, if at all.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: From a book review in The New York Times (9 May 1976), also quoted in The American Mathematical Monthly (December 1994)

• “I've never made a discovery myself, unless by accident. If you write glibly, you fool people. When I first met Asimov, I asked him if he was a professor at Boston University. He said no and … asked me where I got my Ph.D. I said I didn't have one and he looked startled. "You mean you're in the same racket I am," he said, "you just read books by the professors and rewrite them?" That's really what I do.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Quoted in Sally Helgeson, "Every Day", Bookletter, Vol. 3, No. 8 (6 December 1976), p. 8

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

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) first seen 1978 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Mathematical Magic Show (1978)

• “Ever since I was a boy, I've been fascinated by crazy science and such things as perpetual motion machines and logical paradoxes. I've always enjoyed keeping up with those ideas. I suppose I didn't get into it seriously until I wrote my first book, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. I was influenced by the Dianetics movement, now called Scientology, which was then promoted by John Campbell in Astounding Science Fiction. I was astonished at how rapidly the thing had become a cult.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Interview: Martin Gardner" by Scot Morris in Omni, Vol. 4, No. 4 (January 1982)

• “As I have often said, electrons and gerbils don't cheat. People do.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Science: Why I Am Not A Paranormalist", in The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener (1983)

• “Ideologues of all persuasions think they know how the economy will respond to the Administration's strange mixture of Lafferism and monetarism. Indeed, their self-confidence is so vast, and their ability to rationalize so crafty, that one cannot imagine a scenario for the next few years, that they would regard as falsifying their dogma. The failure of any prediction can always be blamed on quirky political decisions or unforeseen historical events.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Laffer Curve", Knotted Doughnuts and other Mathematical Entertainments (1986)

• “The greatest scandal of the century in American psychiatry … is the growing mania among thousands of inept therapists, family counselors, and social workers for arousing false memories of childhoood sexual abuse.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Notes of a Fringe-Watcher, "The Tragedies of False Memories" Skeptical Inquirer (Fall 1994)

• “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.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Annotated Snark (1962), Introduction, p. 15

• “Debunking bad science should be constant obligation of the science community, even if it takes time away from serious research or seems to be a losing battle. One takes comfort from the fact there is no Gresham's laws in science. In the long run, good science drives out bad.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Night Is Large (1996), Introduction to Part III, Pseudoscience p. 171

• “Bad science contributes to the steady dumbing down of our nation. Crude beliefs get transmitted to political leaders and the result is considerable damage to society. We see this happening now in the rapid rise of the religious right and how it has taken over large segments of the Republican Party.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: As quoted in Kendrick Frazier, A Mind at Play: An Interview with Martin Gardner, Skeptical Inquirer (Mar/Apr 1998), 22, No. 2, 37.

• “Let the Bible be the Bible! It’s not about science. It’s not accurate history. It is a grab bag of religious fantasies written by many authors. Some of its myths, like the Star of Bethlehem, are very beautiful. Others are dull and ugly. Some express lofty ideals, such as the parables of Jesus. Others are morally disgusting.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The King James Bible is a literary masterpiece best left unaltered. It is a classic to put on a shelf alongside the great fantasies of Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, and yes, even the Koran.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “For reasons that reflect popular ignorance of science, combined with a love of miracles, the notion that fresh eggs balance more easily on the first day of spring caught fire in the United States.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Public infatuation with alternative medicines of all varieties shows no sign of abating. Acupuncture, homeopathy, aromatherapy, herbal remedies, chelation, iridology, therapeutic touch, magnet therapy, psychic healing, and so on are gaining new converts every day. The tragedies occur, of course, when gullible sufferers rely solely on such remedies and avoid seeking mainstream help. It would be good if we had some statistical evidence about the frequency of deaths following reliance on pseudomedicines.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “My attack on Freud brought a raft of angry letters from dedicated Freudians. One reader assured me that Freudianism is “alive and well.” True, but alive and well only among a dwindling remnant of Freud acolytes, not among the majority of today’s psychiatrists or intellectuals.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “This confusion of the certainty of mathematics within a formal system and the uncertainty of its applications to the world is a common mistake often made by ignorant sociologists.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “But that science moves inexorably closer to finding objective truth can only be denied by peculiar philosophers, naive literary critics, and misguided social scientists. The fantastic success of science in explaining and predicting, above all in making incredible advances in technology, is proof that scientists are steadily learning more and more about how the universe behaves.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The curious notion that “truth” does not mean “correspondence with reality,” but nothing more than the successful passing of tests for truth, was dealt a death blow by Alfred Tarski’s famous semantic definition of truth: “snow is white” is true if and only if snow is white. The definition goes back to Aristotle. Most philosophers of the past, all scientists, and all ordinary people accept this definition of what they mean when they say some thing is true. It is denied only by a small minority of pragmatists who still buy John Dewey’s obsolete epistemology.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Carlos Castaneda died in Westwood, California, in 1998. “His only real sorcery,” writes Kathryn Lindskoog in her entertaining book Fakes, Frauds, and Other Malarkey (1993), “was turning the University of California into an ass.” The next time you come close to a crow, try calling out “Hello Carlos!” If you are high enough on peyote, you might hear the bird answer.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Although Jacobs has had no training in psychology, psychiatry, or hypnotherapy, he uses hypnotism to induce his patients (now more than seven hundred) to develop strong memories of horrendous abductions even though many patients had no such memories until hypnotized. Jacobs is convinced that five million Americans have been kidnapped at least once by aliens. One female patient, who worked in retail sales, had, according to Jacobs, one hundred abductions in one year, an average of one every three days!”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “To support his conviction that the Old Testament is accurate history, Newton worked out an elaborate chronology of earth’s history, drawing on astronomical data such as eclipses and star motions and legends such as that of Jason and the Argonauts, which he took to be genuine events. With incredible ingenuity he tried to harmonize biblical history with secular histories of the ancient world. It is sad to envision the discoveries in mathematics and physics Newton might have made if his great intellect had not been diverted by such bizarre speculations.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We know from polls how ignorant the general public is about science. Almost half of all adults in the United States now believe in astrology and in angels and demons, and that we are being observed by aliens and UFOs who frequently abduct humans. More than half believe that evolution is an unverified a theory. Science education in our nation, especially in lower grades, is getting worse, not better. Several states are constantly doing their best to force public schools to teach creationism. Greedy publishers, interested only in profit, turn out book after book on astrology, ufology, the occult, dangerous programs to lose weight without exercising or cutting calories, and every known variety of dubious medicine. The electronic media are equal offenders. Every year I hope the tide is about to turn, and that contributors to television, radio, and the Internet will become so appalled by the flood of fake science they keep flinging at the public that they will at least try to tone it down. Alas, every year the flood gets worse.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Suppose, however, there is not enough time for measures to be taken to prevent a collision, and earth is shattered by a giant NEO that will hurt us all into oblivion. What are the philosophical implications of such an event? This obviously is not a problem for atheists, agnostics, or pantheists because they are resigned to the fact that nature does not care a rap about preserving a species. What about theists? I’m inclined to think that even to them a certain extinction of humanity would be acceptable. The Biblical Jehovah, remember, is said to have drowned every man, woman, baby, and their pets, except for Noah and his family. If God can allow an earthquake to kill thousands, or the Black Death to wipe out half of Europe, surely she would have no scruples about allowing an asteroid to bring human history to a flaming end.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The deeper question that lies behind the above banalities is whether the rules of baseball are similar to or radically different from the rules of science. Clearly they are radically different. Like the rules of chess and bridge, the rules of baseball are made by humans. But the rules of science are not. They are discovered by observation, reasoning, and experiment. Newton didn’t invent his laws of gravity except in the obvious sense that he thought of them and wrote them down. Biologists didn’t “construct” the DNA helix; they observed it. The orbit of Mars is not a social construction. Einstein did not make up E=mc2 the way game rules are made up. To see rules of science as similar to baseball rules, traffic rules, or fashions in dress is to make a false analogy that leads nowhere.”

  Martin Gardner (1914–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source