Mathematics reveals its secrets only to those who approach it with pure love, for its own beauty.
— Archimedes
Breathtaking Mathematical Beauty quotations
To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature ... If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in.

No matter how correct a mathematical theorem may appear to be, one ought never to be satisfied that there was not something imperfect about it until it also gives the impression of being beautiful.


Geometry is the archetype of the beauty of the world.
Why are numbers beautiful? It’s like asking why is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony beautiful. If you don’t see why, someone can’t tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren’t beautiful, nothing is.
All the effects of Nature are only the mathematical consequences of a small number of immutable laws.

A theory with mathematical beauty is more likely to be correct than an ugly one that fits some experimental data.
God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world.
The harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty.

The mathematical sciences particularly exhibit order symmetry and limitations;
and these are the greatest forms of the beautiful.
What makes the theory of relativity so acceptable to physicists in spite of its going against the principle of simplicity is its great mathematical beauty. This is a quality which cannot be defined, any more than beauty in art can be defined, but which people who study mathematics usually have no difficulty in appreciating.
It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment.

Beauty in mathematics is seeing the truth without effort.
As for everything else, so for a mathematical theory: beauty can be perceived but not explained.
All mathematicians share... a sense of amazement over the infinite depth and the mysterious beauty and usefulness of mathematics.

A physical law must possess mathematical beauty.
The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.
Math is the beautiful, rich, joyful, playful, surprising, frustrating, humbling and creative art that speaks to something transcendental. It is worthy of much exploration and examination because it is intrinsically beautiful, nothing more to say. Why play the violin? Because it is beautiful! Why engage in math? Because it too is beautiful!

One of the endlessly alluring aspects of mathematics is that its thorniest paradoxes have a way of blooming into beautiful theories.
Mathematics expresses values that reflect the cosmos, including orderliness, balance, harmony, logic, and abstract beauty.
I like to think of mathematicians as forming a nation of our own without distinctions of geographical origin, race, creed, sex, age or even time... all dedicated to the most beautiful of the arts and sciences.

I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren't beautiful, nothing is.
Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.
God has the Big Book, the beautiful proofs of mathematical theorems are listed here.

Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.
Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.
A circle may be small, yet it may be as mathematically beautiful and perfect as a large one.

The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful.
Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.
... [By seeking] logical beauty spiritual formulas are discovered necessary for the deeper penetration into the laws of nature.
The perfection of mathematical beauty is such.
..that whatsoever is most beautiful and regular is also found to be most useful and excellent.

The tree is made by nature, mathematics by people.
And combining the two is creating this beautiful alliance between humanity and nature. That's why my forests are mathematical expansion systems, all of them.
A surprising proportion of mathematicians are accomplished musicians.
Is it because music and mathematics share patterns that are beautiful?
I certainly do care about measuring educational results.
But what is an 'educational result?' The twinkling eyes of my students, together with their heartfelt and beautifully expressed mathematical arguments are all the results I need.
...the feeling of mathematical beauty, of the harmony of numbers and of forms, of geometric elegance. It is a genuinely aesthetic feeling, which all mathematicians know
Math is the only place where truth and beauty mean the same thing.