David Hilbert Quotes About Math

Quotes about: Math

• Mathematics knows no races or geographic boundaries; for mathematics, the cultural world is one country.

  David Hilbert

  Country, Math, Race

  "Mathematical Circles Revisited". Book by Howard Whitley Eves, 1971.

• Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper.

  David Hilbert

  Math, Simple, Games

• I have tried to avoid long numerical computations, thereby following Riemann's postulate that proofs should be given through ideas and not voluminous computations.

  David Hilbert

  Math, Ideas, Long

• The further a mathematical theory is developed, the more harmoniously and uniformly does its construction proceed, and unsuspected relations are disclosed between hitherto separated branches of the science.

  David Hilbert

  Math, Science, Doe

  "Mathematical Problems". Lecture delivered before the International Congress of Mathematicians at Paris, translated by Maby Winton Newson, mathcs.clarku.edu. 1900.

• The infinite! No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man.

  David Hilbert

  Math, Men, Spirit

  "Über das Unendliche" ["On the Infinite"] (1925) address to der Westfälischen Mathematischen Gesellschaft in honour to the memory of Karl Weierstrass, as quoted in "Number The Language of Science" by Tobias Dantzig, 1930.

• Galileo was no idiot. Only an idiot could believe that science requires martyrdom - that may be necessary in religion, but in time a scientific result will establish itself.

  David Hilbert

  Time, Believe, Math

  "Mathematical Circles Squared : A Third Collection of Mathematical Stories and Anecdotes" by Howard Whitley Eves, (p. 125), 1972.

• The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality.

  David Hilbert

  Art, Math, Special

  "Hilbert". Book by Constance Reid, 1970.

• How thoroughly it is ingrained in mathematical science that every real advance goes hand in hand with the invention of sharper tools and simpler methods which, at the same time, assist in understanding earlier theories and in casting aside some more complicated developments.

  David Hilbert

  Time, Real, Math

• Physics is much too hard for physicists.

  David Hilbert

  Math, Physics, Physicist

• Besides it is an error to believe that rigour is the enemy of simplicity. On the contrary we find it confirmed by numerous examples that the rigorous method is at the same time the simpler and the more easily comprehended. The very effort for rigor forces us to find out simpler methods of proof.

  David Hilbert

  Believe, Math, Errors

• The arithmetical symbols are written diagrams and the geometrical figures are graphic formulas.

  David Hilbert

  Math, Figures, Diagrams

• One can measure the importance of a scientific work by the number of earlier publications rendered superfluous by it

  David Hilbert

  Work, Math, Science

  Quoted in Howard Eves, Mathematical Circles Revisited (1971)

• Before beginning [to try to prove Fermat's Last Theorem] I should have to put in three years of intensive study, and I haven't that much time to squander on a probable failure.

  David Hilbert

  Time, Math, Should Have

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