Mathematician Quotes

Who would not rather have the fame of Archimedes than that of his conqueror Marcellus?

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.

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.

We must admit with humility that, while number is purely a product of our minds, space has a reality outside our minds, so that we cannot completely prescribe its properties a priori.

To such idle talk it might further be added: that whenever a certain exclusive occupation is coupled with specific shortcomings, it is likewise almost certainly divorced from certain other shortcomings.

The enchanting charms of this sublime science reveal only to those who have the courage to go deeply into it.

Further, the dignity of the science itself seems to require that every possible means be explored for the solution of a problem so elegant and so celebrated.

When I have clarified and exhausted a subject, then I turn away from it, in order to go into darkness again.

When a philosopher says something that is true then it is trivial. When he says something that is not trivial then it is false.

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.

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.

God does arithmetic.

You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length.

Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders.

I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.

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.

It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.

Life stands before me like an eternal spring with new and brilliant clothes.

There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.

If God creates a world of particles and waves, dancing in obedience to mathematical and physical laws, who are we to say that he cannot make use of those laws to cover the surface of a small planet with living creatures?

A god whose creation is so imperfect that he must be continually adjusting it to make it work properly seems to me a god of relatively low order, hardly worthy of any worship.

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.

The tendency of modern scientific teaching is to neglect the great books, to lay far too much stress upon relatively unimportant modern work, and to present masses of detail of doubtful truth and questionable weight in such a way as to obscure principles.

The analysis of variance is not a mathematical theorem, but rather a convenient method of arranging the arithmetic.

Natural selection is not evolution.

Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high degree of improbability.

In scientific subjects, the natural remedy for dogmatism has been found in research.

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.

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.

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.