Mathematicians Quotes

Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders.

Many mathematicians derive part of their self-esteem by feeling themselves the proud heirs of a long tradition of rational thinking; I am afraid they idealize their cultural ancestors.

As I say, there was this movement to try to bring philosophers and mathematicians together into an organization where they would talk to each other. An organization wasn't effective unless you had a journal. That's about all I know.

The truth has never been of any real value to any human being - it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

It would be better for the true physics if there were no mathematicians on earth.

First rate mathematicians choose first rate people, but second rate mathematicians choose third rate people.

Most were beginning to feel they had learned enough to last for the rest of their lives. They remained mathematicians, but largely went their own way.

Mathematicians are born, not made.

Need we add that mathematicians themselves are not infallible?

Abel has left mathematicians enough to keep them busy for 500 years.

Therefore I would not have it unknown to Your Holiness, the the only thing which induced me to look for another way of reckoning the movements of the heavenly bodies was that I knew that mathematicians by no means agree in their investigation thereof.

Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.

Mathematics is written for mathematicians.

As far as I know, only a small minority of mathematicians, even of those with Platonist views, accept the idea that there may be mathematical facts which are true but unknowable.

For example, the philosophers who were interested in logic were probably rather logical for mathematicians. But the ASL got us together, so we could talk to each other and publish in the same journal.

I like to move among painters, mathematicians, psychologists, people who can tell me something.

Mathematicians aren't satisfied because they know there are no solutions up to four million or four billion, they really want to know that there are no solutions up to infinity.

Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express.

The greatest mathematicians, as Archimedes, Newton, and Gauss, always united theory and applications in equal measure.

Mathematicians do not study objects, but relations between objects.

Mathematicians have tried in vain to this day to discover some order in the sequence of prime numbers, and we have reason to believe that it is a mystery into which the human mind will never penetrate.

The greatest problem for mathematicians now is probably the Riemann Hypothesis.

Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past, are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness.

Mathematicians are like managers - they want improvement without change.

All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians.

The way in which mathematicians and physicists and historians talk is quite different, and what a physicist means by physical intuition and what a mathematician means by beauty or elegance are things worth thinking about.

Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules... Mathematicians are more like classical composers.

The only thing that might have annoyed some mathematicians was the presumption of assuming that maybe the axiom of choice could fail, and that we should look into contrary assumptions.

Pure mathematicians just love to try unsolved problems - they love a challenge.

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.