Mathematician Quotes

Every man who is not a monster, a mathematician, or a mad philosopher, is the slave of some woman or other. (George Eliot)
A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems. View quote
Paul Erdős
Proof is an idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself. View quote
Arthur Eddington
A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas. View quote
G. H. Hardy
The mathematician has reached the highest rung on the ladder of human thought. View quote
Havelock Ellis
... it is true that a mathematician who is not somewhat of a poet, will never be a perfect mathematician. View quote
Karl Weierstrass
Every good mathematician is at least half a philosopher, and every good philosopher is at least half a mathematician. View quote
Gottlob Frege
I mean the word proof not in the sense of the lawyers, who set two half proofs equal to a whole one, but in the sense of a mathematician, where half proof = 0, and it is demanded for proof that every doubt becomes impossible. View quote
Carl Friedrich Gauss
The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal. View quote
William James
However great a man's fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance -- so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamor to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature. View quote
Graham Greene
Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not. "Immortality" may be a silly word, but probably a mathematician has the best chance of whatever it may mean. (G. H. Hardy)
An accomplished mathematician, i.e. a most wretched orator. View quote
Isaac Barrow
From the intrinsic evidence of his creation, the Great Architect of the Universe now begins to appear as a pure mathematician. View quote
James Jeans
A scientist worthy of his name, about all a mathematician, experiences in his work the same impression as an artist; his pleasure is as great and of the same nature. View quote
Henri Poincaré
The idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet-laureat. View quote
Thomas Paine
You don't have to be a mathematician to have a feel for numbers. View quote
John Forbes Nash
Statistically, it would seem improbable that any mathematician or scientist, at the age of 66, would be able through continued research efforts, to add much to his or her previous achievements. However I am still making the effort and it is conceivable that with the gap period of about 25 years of partially deluded thinking providing a sort of vacation my situation may be atypical. Thus I have hopes of being able to achieve something of value through my current studies or with any new ideas that come in the future. View quote
John Forbes Nash
A mathematician may say anything he pleases, but a physicist must be at least partially sane. View quote
Josiah Willard Gibbs
The calculus of probabilities, when confined within just limits, ought to interest, in an equal degree, the mathematician, the experimentalist, and the statesman. View quote
François Arago
...the mathematician uses an indirect definition of congruence, making use of the fact that the axiom of parallels together with an additional condition can replace the definition of congruence. View quote
Hans Reichenbach
Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician's finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess play: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game. (G. H. Hardy)
A pair of statements may be taken conjunctively or disjunctively; for example, "It lightens and it thunders," is conjunctive, "It lightens or it thunders" is disjunctive. Each such individual act of connecting a pair of statements is a new monad for the mathematician . View quote
Charles Sanders Peirce
In many cases, mathematics is an escape from reality. The mathematician finds his own monastic niche and happiness in pursuits that are disconnected from external affairs. Some practice it as if using a drug. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
As a mathematician, von Neumann was quick, brilliant, efficient, and enormously broad in scientific interests beyond mathematics itself. He knew his technical abilities; his virtuosity in following complicated reasoning and his insights were supreme; yet he lacked absolute self confidence. View quote
Stanislaw Ulam
A mathematician is only perfect insofar as he is a perfect man, sensitive to the beauty of truth. View quote
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe