Mathematician Quotes

Your Highness, I have no need of this hypothesis.

What standards are upheld by the scientific community affect the community internally, and also affect its relations with society at large, including Congress.

To address questions of scientific responsibility does not necessarily imply that one needs technical competence in a particular field (e.g. biology) to evaluate certain technical matters.

They cannot count on the press and they cannot count on Congressional committees to bring the problems of the scientific community to their own attention, or to police the scientific community.

There exist thousands of Americans who have AIDS-defining diseases but are HIV negative.

Roughly speaking, this hypothesis asks whether drug use causes some of the diseases officially associated with AIDS, such as immunodeficiency and Kaposi's sarcoma.

Questions have also arisen about AIDS being transmitted to hemophiliacs via blood transfusions.

Originally, in the early eighties, the drug hypothesis was among the first which occurred to scientists.

Of course, there are diseases of which people die.

Of course, screening for HIV did essentially eliminate the transmission of this virus by transfusions.

If Baltimore's view, that scientists who do not take the words of authorities are far removed from the ordinary behavior of scientists, prevails in the scientific community, then something fundamental, very serious, and very disturbing is happening to the scientific community.

I object to a legal approach when settling questions of science or scientific behavior.

I am not here concerned with intent, but with scientific standards, especially the ability to tell the difference between a fact, an opinion, a hypothesis, and a hole in the ground.

Aside from all that, we recall that antibodies to malaria and other diseases prevalent in Africa show up as HIV-positive on tests.

Questions have arisen about the policing of science. Who is responsible for the policing? My answer is: all of us.

The first object of my endeavours was the means to become perfect and happy.

I understood that the will could not be improved before the mind had been enlightened.

I bought some books in order to learn the first principles of philosophy.

I am undecided whether or not the Milky Way is but one of countless others all of which form an entire system. Perhaps the light from these infinitely distant galaxies is so faint that we cannot see them.

I wrote a great deal... but very little of any importance; there are not more than four of five papers which I can still remember with some satisfaction.

I was at my best at a little past forty, when I was a professor at Oxford.

Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.

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.

There is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.

I am interested in mathematics only as a creative art.

Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not.

Pure mathematics is on the whole distinctly more useful than applied. For what is useful above all is technique, and mathematical technique is taught mainly through pure mathematics.

Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books.

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.

It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.