Why do we believe that in all matters the odd numbers are more powerful? – Pliny the Elder, Natural History

To all of us who hold the Christian belief that God is truth, anything that is true is a fact about God, and mathematics is a branch of theology. – Hilda Phoebe Hudson

Mathematics is as much an aspect of culture as it is a collection of algorithms. – Carl Boyer, 1949, calculus textbook

Let us grant that the pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit, a refuge from the goading urgency of contingent happenings. – Alfred North Whitehead