David Hilbert Quotes

38 quotes in 537 categories

• Wir mussen wissen. Wir werden wissen. We must know. We will know. Inscribed on his tomb in Gilttingen.
• If one were to bring ten of the wisest men in the world together and ask them what was the most stupid thing in existence,…
• Sometimes it happens that a man's circle of horizon becomes smaller and smaller, and as the radius approaches zero it concentrates on one point. And…
• I do not want to presuppose anything as known. I see in my explanation in section 1 the definition of the concepts point, straight line…
• The infinite! No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man.
• One must be able to say at all times--instead of points, straight lines, and planes--tables, chairs, and beer mugs
• Physics is becoming too difficult for the physicists.
• The further a mathematical theory is developed, the more harmoniously and uniformly does its construction proceed, and unsuspected relations are disclosed between hitherto separated branches…
• No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man; no other idea has so fruitfully stimulated his intellect; yet no other concept…
• The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality
• One can measure the importance of a scientific work by the number of earlier publications rendered superfluous by it
• Galileo was no idiot. Only an idiot could believe that science requires martyrdom - that may be necessary in religion, but in time a scientific…
• Besides it is an error to believe that rigour is the enemy of simplicity. On the contrary we find it confirmed by numerous examples that…
• 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…
• Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper.
• Mathematical science is in my opinion an indivisible whole, an organism whose vitality is conditioned upon the connection of its parts.
• I do not see that the sex of the candidate is an argument against her admission as a Privatdozent. After all, the Senate is not…
• Indignant reply to the blatent sex discrimination expressed in a colleague's opposition when Hilbert proposed appointing Emmy Noether as the first woman professor at their…
• Some people have got a mental horizon of radius zero and call it their point of view.
• We must know. We will know.

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