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Quotes by Mathematician
"There is a good principle which created order, light, and man, and an evil principle which created chaos, darkness, and woman."
54
"Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all."
47
"It could be that the methods needed to take the next step may simply be beyond present day mathematics. Perhaps the methods I needed to complete the proof would not be invented for a hundred years."
40
"Information is the resolution of uncertainty."
39
"Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper."
39
"Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe."
37
"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."
36
"Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions."
32
"It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul."
31
"Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality."
31
"I hope that posterity will judge me kindly, not only as to the things which I have explained, but also to those which I have intentionally omitted so as to leave to others the pleasure of discovery."
30
"I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."
28
"The oldest, shortest words - "yes" and "no" - are those which require the most thought."
26
"Machines take me by surprise with great frequency."
25
"It may be true, that men, who are mere mathematicians, have certain specific shortcomings, but that is not the fault of mathematics, for it is equally true of every other exclusive occupation."
24
"Well, some mathematics problems look simple, and you try them for a year or so, and then you try them for a hundred years, and it turns out that they're extremely hard to solve."
24
"Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can correctly be labeled 'wrong'."
23
"Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have."
23
"To consult the statistician after an experiment is finished is often merely to ask him to conduct a post mortem examination. He can perhaps say what the experiment died of."
22
"I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I'm rooting for the machines."
21
"Mathematics knows no races or geographic boundaries; for mathematics, the cultural world is one country."
20
"No one shall expel us from the paradise that Cantor has created for us."
18
"Mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things."
18
"I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."
18
"I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists. However, this is not entirely a matter of joy as if someone returned from physical disability to good physical health."
18
"I am indeed amazed when I consider how weak my mind is and how prone to error."
17
"A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas."
17
"A mathematician is a person who can find analogies between theorems; a better mathematician is one who can see analogies between proofs and the best mathematician can notice analogies between theories."
16
"No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man; no other idea has so fruitfully stimulated his intellect; yet no other concept stands in greater need of clarification than that of the infinite."
16
"It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years."
15
"Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible."
15
"Galileo was no idiot. Only an idiot could believe that science requires martyrdom - that may be necessary in religion, but in time a scientific result will establish itself."
15
"Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it."
14
"Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition."
13
"That the state of knowledge in any country will exert a directive influence on the general system of instruction adopted in it, is a principle too obvious to require investigation."
13
"To unfold the secret laws and relations of those high faculties of thought by which all beyond the merely perceptive knowledge of the world and of ourselves is attained or matured, is a object which does not stand in need of commendation to a rational mind."
13
"Out of nothing I have created a strange new universe."
13
"Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them."
13
"I grew up in Cambridge in England, and my love of mathematics dates from those early childhood days."
13
"The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it."
12
"Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains."
12
"Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has."
12
"The infinite! No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man."
12
"To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."
12
"The definition of a good mathematical problem is the mathematics it generates rather than the problem itself."
12
"The only way I could relax was when I was with my children."
12
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