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Quotes by Mathematician
"First rate mathematicians choose first rate people, but second rate mathematicians choose third rate people."
52
"God exists since mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exists since we cannot prove it."
52
"Seek simplicity but distrust it."
52
"I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."
51
"Life stands before me like an eternal spring with new and brilliant clothes."
51
"There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres."
51
"Invention consists in avoiding the constructing of useless contraptions and in constructing the useful combinations which are in infinite minority."
51
"Smiling always with a never fading serenity of countenance, and flourishing in an immortal youth."
50
"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."
50
"What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their experiments lead."
49
"The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, seek simplicity and distrust it."
49
"The enchanting charms of this sublime science reveal only to those who have the courage to go deeply into it."
49
"The techniques I developed for studying turbulence, like weather, also apply to the stock market."
48
"The greatest mathematicians, as Archimedes, Newton, and Gauss, always united theory and applications in equal measure."
48
"But mathematics is the sister, as well as the servant, of the arts and is touched by the same madness and genius."
48
"We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy."
47
"It takes an extraordinary intelligence to contemplate the obvious."
47
"A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas."
47
"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'."
47
"To those who ask what the infinitely small quantity in mathematics is, we answer that it is actually zero. Hence there are not so many mysteries hidden in this concept as they are usually believed to be."
47
"I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses."
45
"I am coming more and more to the conviction that the necessity of our geometry cannot be demonstrated, at least neither by, nor for, the human intellect."
45
"You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing."
44
"He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart."
44
"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."
44
"Without adventure civilization is in full decay."
44
"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."
44
"We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done."
44
"To call in the statistician after the experiment is done may be no more than asking him to perform a post-mortem examination: he may be able to say what the experiment died of."
43
"To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."
43
"Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them."
43
"I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted."
43
"To live effectively is to live with adequate information."
42
"Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders."
42
"Just because we can't find a solution it doesn't mean that there isn't one."
42
"The problem of distinguishing prime numbers from composite numbers and of resolving the latter into their prime factors is known to be one of the most important and useful in arithmetic."
42
"If pushed, though, I'd say that the next stage will be reached when it it's no longer true that about 75% of the best games were written in 1980's on the way to that."
42
"It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover."
42
"It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment."
42
"Mathematicians do not study objects, but relations between objects."
42
"Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. A awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live."
42
"He who seeks for methods without having a definite problem in mind seeks in the most part in vain."
Mind,
42
"My first undertaking in the way of scientific experiment was in the field of economics and psychology."
42
"Then in my early teens, when the home computer bubble was blowing, I had one of the first, an Acorn Atom, and used to write primitive adventures on that."
42
"The possessors of wealth can scarcely be indifferent to processes which, nearly or remotely have been the fertile source of their possessions."
41
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