Top 1002 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Mathematicians

No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.

If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.

Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression. No man is free who cannot control himself.

A state is better governed which has few laws, and those laws strictly observed.

Science is built up of facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.

There is a saying that every nice piece of work needs the right person in the right place at the right time.

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

On two occasions I have been asked, 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

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

That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal, as time will show.

The future doesn't just happen. We are building it, and we are building it all the time.

It is better to solve one problem five different ways, than to solve five problems one way.

The nervous system and the automatic machine are fundamentally alike in that they are devices, which make decisions on the basis of decisions they made in the past.

The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge.

Mathematics knows no races or geographic boundaries; for mathematics, the cultural world is one country.

He who loveth a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counsellor, a cheerful companion, or an effectual comforter.

I was never very good at school with... humanities... anything which was more a matter of opinion.

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.

The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

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

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.

Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.

Just because we can't find a solution it doesn't mean that there isn't one.

All the effects of Nature are only the mathematical consequences of a small number of immutable laws.

I don't care about movies. I tend to play badminton once a week.

It is still an unending source of surprise for me how a few scribbles on a blackboard or on a piece of paper can change the course of human affairs.

Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin.

The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.

The only way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics.

The belief that there is only one truth, and that oneself is in possession of it, is the root of all evil in the world.

Mathematics is the study of analogies between analogies. All science is. Scientists want to show that things that don't look alike are really the same. That is one of their innermost Freudian motivations. In fact, that is what we mean by understanding.

People are always selling the idea that people with mental illness are suffering. I think madness can be an escape. If things are not so good, you maybe want to imagine something better.

Like a Shakespearean sonnet that captures the very essence of love, or a painting that brings out the beauty of the human form that is far more than just skin deep, Euler's Equation reaches down into the very depths of existence.

A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.

My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful, but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.

A set is a Many that allows itself to be thought of as a One.

I did not hear what you said, but I absolutely disagree with you.

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.

Either human intelligence ultimately owes its origin to mindless matter; or there is a Creator. It is strange that some people claim that it is their intelligence that leads them to prefer the first to the second.

In 2017, there was a sudden recognition of several adverse societal consequences of information technology, from job losses due to automation to manipulation of public opinion, with significant political consequences.

Before creation, God did just pure mathematics. Then He thought it would be a pleasant change to do some applied.

Mathematics has beauty and romance. It's not a boring place to be, the mathematical world. It's an extraordinary place; it's worth spending time there.

Like what you do, and then you will do your best.

The beauty of mathematics only shows itself to more patient followers.

Mathematics is the music of reason.

Obvious is the most dangerous word in mathematics.

No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions.

There are only two kinds of certain knowledge: Awareness of our own existence and the truths of mathematics.

When I got to Princeton I made a point of attending the Philosophy Club and listening to the lectures, but I didn't get involved in any discussions in those clubs. I guess after the first year, I dropped that.

Madam, I have come from a country where people are hanged if they talk.

Statistics is the grammar of science.

There are challenges in terms of the measurement of VAR for what are known as nonlinear derivatives, where things like gamma and vega are important dimensions of the risk.

If you're setting a game during the Cuban Missile Crisis, look through a library. find out what people were wearing, what other issues were in the news, how houses were furnished, what cars were being driven. Especially include things which now seem foreign.

I do not believe anything very certainly, but everything very probably.

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.

Every good mathematician is at least half a philosopher, and every good philosopher is at least half a mathematician.

Juggling is sometimes called the art of controlling patterns, controlling patterns in time and space.

Why should I be worried about dying? It's not going to happen in my lifetime!

In the broad light of day mathematicians check their equations and their proofs, leaving no stone unturned in their search for rigour. But, at night, under the full moon, they dream, they float among the stars and wonder at the miracle of the heavens. They are inspired. Without dreams there is no art, no mathematics, no life.