Mathematician Quotes

402 quotes by 247 authors

...the feeling of mathematical beauty, of the harmony of numbers and of forms, of geometric elegance. It is a genuinely aesthetic feeling, which all mathematicians… — Henri Poincare
A typical mathematician does not actively try to be useful. Individual mathematicians are motivated primarily by a subtle mixture of ambition and intellectual curiosity, and… — Timothy Gowers
The product of mathematics is clarity and understanding. Not theorems, by themselves. ... In short, mathematics only exists in a living community of mathematicians that… — William Thurston
Mathematicians can and do fill in gaps, correct errors, and supply more detail and more careful scholarship when they are called on or motivated to… — William Thurston
A mathematician who can only generalise is like a monkey who can only climb up a tree, and a mathematician who can only specialise is… — George Polya
The question you raise, 'How can such a formulation lead to computations?' doesn't bother me in the least! Throughout my whole life as a mathematician,… — Alexander Grothendieck
There is a famous formula, perhaps the most compact and famous of all formulas - developed by Euler from a discovery of de Moivre: e^(i… — Edward Kasner
I never got a pass mark in math ... Just imagine - mathematicians now use my prints to illustrate their books. — M.C. Escher
I would not dare to say that there is a direct relation between mathematics and madness, but there is no doubt that great mathematicians suffer… — John Forbes Nash
One of the chief duties of the mathematician in acting as an advisor ... is to discourage ... from expecting too much from mathematics. — Norbert Wiener
I am exclusively occupied with the problem of gravitation and hope with the help of a local mathematician friend [Marcel Grossman] to overcome all the… — Albert Einstein
In my experience most mathematicians are intellectually lazy. — Francis Crick
The mathematician is entirely free, within the limits of the imagination, to construct what worlds he pleases. — J. W. N. Sullivan
The mathematician knows some things, no doubt, but not those things one usually wants to get from him. — Albert Einstein
It is amusing to discover, in the twentieth century, that the quarrels between two lovers, two mathematicians, two nations, two economic systems, usually assumed insoluble… — Alfred Korzybski
A mathematician is only perfect insofar as he is a perfect man, sensitive to the beauty of truth. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Puzzles are made of the things that the mathematician, no less than the child, plays with, and dreams and wonders about, for they are made… — Edward Kasner
I never got a pass mark in math... Just imagine - mathematicians now use my prints to illustrate their books. Funny me consorting with all… — M.C. Escher
Thus the good christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make false prophecies, however much they may in fact speak the truth; lest,… — Saint Augustine
Mathematicians are a bit like the laconic Vermonter who, when asked if he's lived in the state his whole life, replies, "Not yet." — John Allen Paulos

Who Wrote These Mathematician Quotes

247 authors contributed a total of 402 Mathematician Quotes, led by these top contributors: