Eric Temple Bell Quotes

• Obvious is the most dangerous word in mathematics.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Knowledge, Math, Science

  Eric Temple Bell (1938). “The queen of the sciences”

  47 Copy quote

• Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Math, Intelligence, Taught

  Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 23-24, (p. 161), 1949.

  50 Copy quote

• The mistakes and unresolved difficulties of the past in mathematics have always been the opportunities of its future...

  Eric Temple Bell

  Mistake, Past, Opportunity

  "The Development of Mathematics" by Eric Temple Bell, (p. 283), 1940.

  14 Copy quote

• Nevertheless, the consuming hunger of the uncritical mind for what it imagines to be certainty or finality impels it to feast upon shadows in the prevailing famine of substance.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Imagination, Mind, Shadow

  Eric Temple Bell (1930). “Debunking Science”

  52 Copy quote

• In his wretched life of less than twenty-seven years Abel accomplished so much of the highest order that one of the leading mathematicians of the Nineteenth Century could say without exaggeration, "Abel has left mathematicians enough to keep them busy for five hundred years." Asked how he had done all this in the six or seven years of his working life, Abel replied, "By studying the masters, not the pupils."

  Eric Temple Bell

  Seven Years, Order, Abel

  Eric Temple Bell (1938). “The queen of the sciences”

  16 Copy quote

• Time makes fools of us all. Our only comfort is that greater shall come after us.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Comfort, Fool, Greater

  Eric Temple Bell (1945). “Men of Mathematics”

  7 Copy quote

• If indeed, as Hilbert asserted, mathematics is a meaningless game played with meaningless marks on paper, the only mathematical experience to which we can refer is the making of marks on paper.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Games, Paper, Mathematics

  Eric Temple Bell (1988). “Mathematics, queen and servant of science”, Tempus Books

  7 Copy quote

• The very basis of creative work is irreverence! The very basis of creative work is bold experimentation. There has never been a creator of lasting importance who has not also been an innovator.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Creative, Irreverence, Importance

  8 Copy quote

• The longer mathematics lives the more abstract - and therefore, possibly also the more practical - it becomes.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Life, Individualism, Mathematics

  Eric Temple Bell (1945). “Men of Mathematics”

  8 Copy quote

• If a lunatic scribbles a jumble of mathematical symbols it does not follow that the writing means anything merely because to the inexpert eye it is indistinguishable from higher mathematics.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Writing, Mean, Eye

  Eric Temple Bell (1945). “Men of Mathematics”

  7 Copy quote

• Even stranger things have happened; and perhaps the strangest of all is the marvel that mathematics should be possible to a race akin to the apes.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Math, Race, Apes

  9 Copy quote

• I have always hated machinery, and the only machine I ever understood was a wheelbarrow, and that but imperfectly.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Math, Understanding, Machines

  Eric Temple Bell (1988). “Mathematics, queen and servant of science”, Tempus Books

  57 Copy quote

• Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Absolute Truth, Eternal, Pretension

  Eric Temple Bell (1988). “Mathematics, queen and servant of science”, Tempus Books

  8 Copy quote

• Pick the assumptions to pieces till the stuff they are made of is exposed to plain view - this is the cardinal rule for understanding the basis of our beliefs.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Views, Understanding, Pieces

  Eric Temple Bell (1946). “The Search for Truth”

  4 Copy quote

• Fashion as King is sometimes a very stupid ruler.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Fashion, Kings, Stupid

  Eric Temple Bell (1988). “Mathematics, queen and servant of science”, Tempus Books

  7 Copy quote

• Archimedes, Newton, and Gauss, these three, are in a class by
  themselves among the great mathematicians, and it is not for
  ordinary mortals to attempt to range them in order of merit.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Order, Class, Ordinary

  Eric Temple Bell (1945). “Men of Mathematics”

  5 Copy quote

• Any impatient student of mathematics or science or engineering who is irked by having algebraic symbolism thrust upon him should try to get along without it for a week.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Engineering, Symbolism, Trying

  7 Copy quote

• It is the perennial youthfulness of mathematics itself which marks it off with a disconcerting immortality from the other sciences.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Graphic Design, Immortality, Mathematics

  Eric Temple Bell (1938). “The queen of the sciences”

  9 Copy quote

• Wherever groups disclosed themselves, or could be introduced, simplicity crystallized out of comparative chaos.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Simplicity, Groups, Statistics

  Eric Temple Bell (1938). “The queen of the sciences”

  4 Copy quote

• Abstractness, sometimes hurled as a reproach at mathematics, is its chief glory and its surest title to practical usefulness. It is also the source of such beauty as may spring from mathematics.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Beauty, Spring, Math

  "The Development of Mathematics" by Eric Temple Bell, (p. 9), 1940.

  7 Copy quote

• A number of aspects of mathematics are not much talked about in contemporary histories of mathematics. We have in mind business and commerce, war, number mysticism, astrology, and religion. In some instances, writers, hoping to assert for mathematics a noble parentage and a pure scientific experience, have turned away their eyes. Histories have been eager to put the case for science, but the Handmaiden of the Sciences has lived a far more raffish and interesting life than her historians allow.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Math, Mathematics, Mathematical

  "The Mathematical Experience". Book by Philip J. Davis, "Underneath the Fig Leaf," p.89, 1980.

  6 Copy quote

• Poincaré [was] the last man to take practically all mathematics, pure and applied, as his province. ... Few mathematicians have had the breadth of philosophic vision that Poincaré had, and none in his superior in the gift of clear exposition.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Men, Vision, Lasts

  4 Copy quote

• Galois read the geometry from cover to cover as easily as other boys read a pirate yarn.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Teenager, Science, Boys

  "Men of Mathematics".

  7 Copy quote

• The only royal road to elementary geometry is ingenuity.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Science, Royal, Geometry

  11 Copy quote

• The pursuit of pretty formulas and neat theorems can no doubt quickly degenerate into a silly vice, but so can the quest for austere generalities which are so very general indeed that they are incapable of application to any particular.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Silly, Math, Doubt

  Eric Temple Bell (1937). “Men of Mathematics”

  8 Copy quote

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