It is not so much whether a theorem is useful that matters, but how elegant it is. — Stanislaw Ulam Copy Share Image
God has the Big Book, the beautiful proofs of mathematical theorems are listed here. — Paul Erdos Copy Share Image
What philosophy worthy of the name has truly been able to avoid the link between poem and theorem? — Michel Serres Copy Share Image
Economists often like startling theorems, results which seem to run counter to conventional wisdom. — Joseph Stiglitz Copy Share Image
We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem. — Alan Perlis Copy Share Image
The axiom of conditioned repetition, like the binomial theorem, is nothing but a piece of insolence. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
All I remember about the examination is that there was a question on Sturm's theorem about equations, which I could not do… — Louis J. Mordell Copy Share Image
The story does what no theorem can quite do. It may not be "like real life" in the superficial sense: but it… — C. S. Lewis Copy Share Image
I confess that Fermat's Theorem as an isolated proposition has very little interest for me, because I could easily lay down a… — Carl Friedrich Gauss Copy Share Image
A theorem is a proposition which is a strict logical consequence of certain definitions and other propositions. — Anatol Rapoport Copy Share Image
The world is anxious to admire that apex and culmination of modern mathematics: a theorem so perfectly general that no particular application… — George Polya Copy Share Image
Before beginning [to try to prove Fermat's Last Theorem] I should have to put in three years of intensive study, and I… — David Hilbert Copy Share Image
We often hear that mathematics consists mainly of "proving theorems." Is a writer's job mainly that of "writing sentences?" — Gian-Carlo Rota Copy Share Image
Theorems are fun especially when you are the prover, but then the pleasure fades. What keeps us going are the unsolved problems. — Carl Pomerance Copy Share Image
What we do may be small, but it has a certain character of permanence; and to have produced anything of the slightest… — G. H. Hardy Copy Share Image
Fourier's theorem is not only one of the most beautiful results of modern analysis, but it may be said to furnish an… — Lord Kelvin Copy Share Image
The theory of numbers, more than any other branch of mathematics, began by being an experimental science. Its most famous theorems have… — G. H. Hardy Copy Share Image
Mystery is an inescapable ingredient of mathematics. Mathematics is full of unanswered questions, which far outnumber known theorems and results. It's the… — Ivars Peterson Copy Share Image
I think it is said that Gauss had ten different proofs for the law of quadratic reciprocity. Any good theorem should have… — Michael Atiyah Copy Share Image
What exactly is mathematics? Many have tried but nobody has really succeeded in defining mathematics; it is always something else. Roughly speaking,… — Stanislaw Ulam Copy Share Image
The pursuit of pretty formulas and neat theorems can no doubt quickly degenerate into a silly vice, but so can the quest… — Anonymous Copy Share Image
In the "commentatio" (note presented to the Russian Academy) in which his theorem on polyhedra (on the number of faces, edges and… — George Polya Copy Share Image
Can the difficulty of an exam be measured by how many bits of information a student would need to pass it? This… — Alfred Renyi Copy Share Image
I approached the bulk of my schoolwork as a chore rather than an intellectual adventure. The tedium was relieved by a few… — Steven Chu Copy Share Image
We live in a society where we're not taught how to deal with our weaknesses and frailties as human beings. We're not… — Iyanla Vanzant Copy Share Image
Did chemistry theorems exist? No: therefore you had to go further, not be satisfied with the quia, go back to the origins,… — Primo Levi Copy Share Image
...contemporary physicists come in two varieties. Type 1 physicists are bothered by EPR and Bell's Theorem. Type 2 (the majority) are not,… — David Mermin Copy Share Image
The scientist has to take 95 per cent of his subject on trust. He has to because he can't possibly do all… — Christopher Zeeman Copy Share Image
The theory that gravitational attraction is inversely proportional to the square of the distance leads by remorseless logic to the conclusion that… — Anthony Standen Copy Share Image
In 1975, ... [speaking with Shiing Shen Chern], I told him I had finally learned ... the beauty of fiber-bundle theory and… — Chen-Ning Yang Copy Share Image
That's the problem with false proofs of true theorems; it's not easy to produce a counterexample. — Jeffrey Shallit Copy Share Image
Heaven is angered by my arrogance; my proof [of the four-color theorem] is also defective. — Hermann Minkowski Copy Share Image
Theorems are not to mathematics what successful courses are to a meal. — Gian-Carlo Rota Copy Share Image
The principle is so perfectly general that no particular application of it is possible. — George Polya Copy Share Image
Without computers we will be stuck only proving theorems that have short proofs. — Kenneth Appel Copy Share Image
There's no answer for my offense, just like the polythagorean theorem. — Shaquille O'Neal Copy Share Image
![“Before beginning [to try to prove Fermat's Last Theorem] I should have to put in three years of intensive study, and I haven't that much time to squander on a probable failure.” quote by David Hilbert](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/b4f/david-hilbert-12585_education_before-beginning-to-try-to-prove-fermat_2395986.jpg)
![“In 1975, ... [speaking with Shiing Shen Chern], I told him I had finally learned ... the beauty of fiber-bundle theory and the profound Chern-Weil theorem. I said I found it amazing that gauge fields are exactly connections on fiber bundles, which the mathematicians developed without reference to…” quote by Chen-Ning Yang](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/106/chen-ning-yang-73190_beautiful_in-1975-speaking-with-shiing-shen-chern_129052.png)
![“Heaven is angered by my arrogance; my proof [of the four-color theorem] is also defective.” quote by Hermann Minkowski](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/a2c/hermann-minkowski-55458_arrogance_heaven-is-angered-by-my-arrogance-my-pro_3201815.png)
