Quotes: Mathematicians

Mathematicians have tried in vain to this day to discover some order in the sequence of prime numbers, and we have reason to believe that it is a mystery into which the human mind will never penetrate.

The greatest problem for mathematicians now is probably the Riemann Hypothesis.

The truth has never been of any real value to any human being – it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

Mathematicians are born, not made.

Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past, are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness.

Abel has left mathematicians enough to keep them busy for 500 years.

Many mathematicians derive part of their self-esteem by feeling themselves the proud heirs of a long tradition of rational thinking; I am afraid they idealize their cultural ancestors.

For example, the philosophers who were interested in logic were probably rather logical for mathematicians. But the ASL got us together, so we could talk to each other and publish in the same journal.

Need we add that mathematicians themselves are not infallible?

I like to move among painters, mathematicians, psychologists, people who can tell me something.