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Quotes by Mathematician
"I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning, or destroyed it altogether."
"Every philosophy is tinged with the coloring of some secret imaginative background, which never emerges explicitly into its train of reasoning."
"Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself."
"Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced."
"An enormous part of our mature experience cannot not be expressed in words."
"Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self."
"Art flourishes where there is a sense of adventure."
"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."
Work,
"You can not apply mathematics as long as words still becloud reality."
"Rigour is to the mathematician what morality is to men."
"Intuition makes much of it; I mean by this the faculty of seeing a connection between things that in appearance are completely different; it does not fail to lead us astray quite often."
"God exists since mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exists since we cannot prove it."
"First rate mathematicians choose first rate people, but second rate mathematicians choose third rate people."
"We are not interested in the fact that the brain has the consistency of cold porridge."
"Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition."
"No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company."
"Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity."
"Machines take me by surprise with great frequency."
"A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human."
"We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done."
"I believe that at the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted."
"Mathematics is the music of reason."
"May not music be described as the mathematics of the sense, mathematics as music of the reason? The musician feels mathematics, the mathematician thinks music: music the dream, mathematics the working life."
"The early study of Euclid made me a hater of geometry."
"The object of pure physics is the unfolding of the laws of the intelligible world; the object of pure mathematics that of unfolding the laws of human intelligence."
"Some people are always critical of vague statements. I tend rather to be critical of precise statements; they are the only ones which can correctly be labeled 'wrong'."
"Why should I be worried about dying? It's not going to happen in my lifetime!"
"Information is the resolution of uncertainty."
"Information: the negative reciprocal value of probability."
"I visualize a time when we will be to robots what dogs are to humans, and I'm rooting for the machines."
"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."
"The Committee supports the idea that there should be, within the University of California, a campus which puts particular emphasis on the education of undergraduates within the framework of a College system."
"We conclude that, simultaneously with the organization of the colleges, there should be at Santa Cruz an organization by disciplines, whose units would have a voice in appointments and promotions, in course of programs, and in the allocation of funds for research."
"Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression. No man is free who cannot control himself."
"Above the cloud with its shadow is the star with its light. Above all things reverence thyself."
"As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other."
"As soon as laws are necessary for men, they are no longer fit for freedom."
"Choose rather to be strong of soul than strong of body."
"Rest satisfied with doing well, and leave others to talk of you as they will."
"Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in a few."
"Friends are as companions on a journey, who ought to aid each other to persevere in the road to a happier life."
"There is a good principle which created order, light, and man, and an evil principle which created chaos, darkness, and woman."
7
"Begin thus from the first act, and proceed; and, in conclusion, at the ill which thou hast done, be troubled, and rejoice for the good."
"In this theater of man's life, it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers-on."
"The oldest, shortest words - "yes" and "no" - are those which require the most thought."
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