top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by Mathematician
"The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues."
50
"The possessors of wealth can scarcely be indifferent to processes which, nearly or remotely have been the fertile source of their possessions."
49
"If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants."
49
"Just because we can't find a solution it doesn't mean that there isn't one."
49
"The early study of Euclid made me a hater of geometry."
49
"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."
49
"Mathematicians do not study objects, but relations between objects."
49
"It has adopted the geometry most advantageous to the species or, in other words, the most convenient."
49
"It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."
48
"It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression."
48
"A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed."
48
"A small error in the former will produce an enormous error in the latter."
48
"The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering of a credulous character in others, and consequent support of false beliefs."
48
"To know all about anything is to know how to deal with it under all circumstances."
48
"To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."
48
"Ideas won't keep; something must be done about them."
48
"I grew up in Cambridge in England, and my love of mathematics dates from those early childhood days."
48
"There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays to the devil."
48
"Well, as you know, there are 24 hours in every day. And if that's not enough, you've always got the nights!"
Day,
48
"Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders."
47
"In 1858 I received the degree of D. S. from the Lawrence Scientific School, and thereafter remained on the rolls of the university as a resident graduate."
47
"I have always hated machinery, and the only machine I ever understood was a wheelbarrow, and that but imperfectly."
47
"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."
47
"It is the weight, not numbers of experiments that is to be regarded."
47
"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."
47
"It is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover."
47
"Why should I be worried about dying? It's not going to happen in my lifetime!"
47
"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."
47
"I tried to fit it in with some previous broad conceptual understanding of some part of mathematics that would clarify the particular problem I was thinking about."
47
"It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment."
47
"A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human."
47
"A tool is usually more simple than a machine; it is generally used with the hand, whilst a machine is frequently moved by animal or steam power."
47
"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."
47
"The result was that, if it happened to clear off after a cloudy evening, I frequently arose from my bed at any hour of the night or morning and walked two miles to the observatory to make some observation included in the programme."
47
"Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power."
47
"I mean the word proof not in the sense of the lawyers, who set two half proofs equal to a whole one, but in the sense of a mathematician, where half proof = 0, and it is demanded for proof that every doubt becomes impossible."
47
"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."
47
"Astronomers are greatly disappointed when, having traveled halfway around the world to see an eclipse, clouds prevent a sight of it; and yet a sense of relief accompanies the disappointment."
46
"Facetiousness is allowable when it is the most proper instrument of exposing things apparently base and vile to due contempt."
46
"To praise it would amount to praising myself. For the entire content of the work... coincides almost exactly with my own meditations which have occupied my mind for the past thirty or thirty-five years."
46
"The rule which should guide us in such cases is simple and obvious enough: that the aggregate testimony of our neighbours is subject to the same conditions as the testimony of any one of them."
46
"Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race."
46
"My father followed, during most of his life, the precarious occupation of a country school teacher."
46
"I believe sanity and realism can be restored to the teaching of Mathematical Statistics most easily and directly by entrusting such teaching largely to men and women who have had personal experience of research in the Natural Sciences."
46
"The public character of every public servant is legitimate subject of discussion, and his fitness or unfitness for office may be fairly canvassed by any person."
46
"Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books."
46
"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."
46
bottom of page