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Quotes by Mathematician
"The reports of the eclipse parties not only described the scientific observations in great detail, but also the travels and experiences, and were sometimes marked by a piquancy not common in official documents."
20
"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."
20
"The only way I could relax was when I was with my children."
20
"But mathematics is the sister, as well as the servant, of the arts and is touched by the same madness and genius."
20
"Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition."
19
"The infinite! No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man."
19
"He who seeks for methods without having a definite problem in mind seeks in the most part in vain."
Mind,
19
"I grew up in Cambridge in England, and my love of mathematics dates from those early childhood days."
19
"We think in generalities, but we live in detail."
18
"You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing."
18
"A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding."
18
"God exists since mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exists since we cannot prove it."
18
"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."
18
"The greatest mathematicians, as Archimedes, Newton, and Gauss, always united theory and applications in equal measure."
18
"Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them."
18
"Mathematics are the result of mysterious powers which no one understands, and which the unconscious recognition of beauty must play an important part. Out of an infinity of designs a mathematician chooses one pattern for beauty's sake and pulls it down to earth."
18
"We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done."
18
"It is far better to foresee even without certainty than not to foresee at all."
18
"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."
17
"It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover."
17
"Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains."
17
"A deliberate choice on my part was for the player to continue to find new possibilities in the early Attic rooms far into the game. I think this builds atmosphere, though it means there's no neat division of the prologue from the middle game."
17
"Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has."
17
"Many who have had an opportunity of knowing any more about mathematics confuse it with arithmetic, and consider it an arid science. In reality, however, it is a science which requires a great amount of imagination."
17
"In a few years, all great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will be left to men of science will be to carry these measurements to another place of decimals."
17
"As years passed away I have formed the habit of looking back upon that former self as upon another person, the remembrance of whose emotions has been a solace in adversity and added zest to the enjoyment of prosperity."
16
"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."
16
"Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything."
16
"To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."
16
"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."
16
"The definition of a good mathematical problem is the mathematics it generates rather than the problem itself."
16
"It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."
15
"To live effectively is to live with adequate information."
15
"What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their experiments lead."
15
"In general, the Internet was not designed to accommodate deliberate failures to communicate."
15
"A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems."
15
"The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervor, live for it, and if need be, die for it."
15
"Out of nothing I have created a strange new universe."
15
"Without adventure civilization is in full decay."
15
"We have the duty of formulating, of summarizing, and of communicating our conclusions, in intelligible form, in recognition of the right of other free minds to utilize them in making their own decisions."
15
"If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants."
14
"It is not of the essence of mathematics to be conversant with the ideas of number and quantity."
14
"We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy."
14
"I am interested in mathematics only as a creative art."
14
"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."
14
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