Srinivasa Ramanujan Quotes & Sayings

While asleep, I had an unusual experience. There was a red screen formed by flowing blood, as it were. I was observing it. Suddenly a hand began to write on the screen. I became all attention. That hand wrote a number of elliptic integrals. They stuck to my mind. As soon as I woke up, I committed them to writing. — Srinivasa Ramanujan

An equation means nothing to me unless it expresses a thought of God. — Srinivasa Ramanujan

To preserve my brains I want food and this is now my first consideration. Any sympathetic letter from you will be helpful to me here to get a scholarship ... — Srinivasa Ramanujan

{Replying to G. H. Hardy's suggestion that the number of a taxi (1729) was 'dull', showing off his spontaneous mathematical genius}

No, it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as a sum of two cubes in two different ways, the two ways being 13 + 123 and 93 + 103. — Srinivasa Ramanujan