Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I firmly believe that mathematics does not exist outside of humans. It is something we, as a species, invent.
At a time when so many scholars in the world are calculating, is it not desirable that some, who can, dream ?
War has been with us ever since the dawn of civilization. Nothing has been more constant in history than war.
I am always amazed how much a certain facility with a special and apparently narrow technique can accomplish.
Science repudiates philosophy. In other words, it has never cared to justify its truth or explain its meaning.
Life is complex in its expression, involving more than percipience, namely desire, emotion, will, and feeling.
I really believed that I was on the right track, but that did not mean that I would necessarily reach my goal.
Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.
Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.
Those who are clever in imagination are far more pleased with themselves than prudent men could reasonably be.
How vain is painting, which is admired for reproducing the likeness of things whose originals are not admired.
At each increase of knowledge, as well as on the contrivance of every new tool, human labour becomes abridged.
Whenever the work is itself light, it becomes necessary, in order to economize time, to increase the velocity.
No evidence or proof of the existence of a God has been found in the phenomena of nature, based on experience.
The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality.
We do not master a scientific theory until we have shelled and completely prised free its mathematical kernel.
The longer mathematics lives the more abstract - and therefore, possibly also the more practical - it becomes.
In [great mathematics] there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy.
It may happen that small differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenomena.
Let us consider that swearing is a sin of all others peculiarly clamorous, and provocative of Divine judgment.
To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them.
Satire is not a social dynamite. But it is a social indicator: it shows that new men are knocking at the door.
Astronomy would not provide me with bread if men did not entertain hopes of reading the future in the heavens.
Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin.
All great people glorify their history and look back upon their early attainments with a spiritualized vision.
The massive bulk of the earth does indeed shrink to insignificance in comparison with the size of the heavens.
True greatness is when your name is like ampere, watt, and fourier-when it's spelled with a lower case letter.
A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human.
The worship of God is not a rule of safety - it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable.
The absolute pacifist is a bad citizen; times come when force must be used to uphold right, justice and ideals.
Religion increasingly is tending to degenerate into a decent formula wherewith to embellish a comfortable life.
Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries. Yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.
The serene, silent beauty of a holy life is the most powerful influence in the world, next to the night of God.
How vain painting is, exciting admiration by its resemblance to things of which we do not admire the originals.
Through space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought I comprehend the world.
Wherever groups disclosed themselves, or could be introduced, simplicity crystallized out of comparative chaos.
Archimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not.
The present is big with the future, the future might be read in the past, the distant is expressed in the near.
It is not people who break ethical standards who are regarded as aliens. It is people like me who are isolated.
The whole apparatus of the calculus takes on an entirely different form when developed for the complex numbers.
A proof is that which convinces a reasonable man; a rigorous proof is that which convinces an unreasonable man.
To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.
The rare scholars who are nomads-by-choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the settled disciplines.
I rather live as if God exists to find out that He doesn't than live as if he doesn't exist to find out He does.
Beauty is a harmonious relation between something in our nature and the quality of the object which delights us.
The Church limits her sacramental services to the faithful. Christ gave Himself upon the cross a ransom for all.
Men seek rest in a struggle against difficulties; and when they have conquered these, rest becomes insufferable.
We never live, but we hope to live; and as we are always arranging to be happy, it must be that we never are so.
Most striking at first is the appearance of sudden illumination, a manifest sign of long unconscious prior work.
I would like to make a confession which may seem immoral: I do not believe absolutely in Hilbert space any more.