David Hilbert Mathematician Quotes & Sayings

Never trust an ugly woman. She's got a grudge against the world,' said Grandma who was no oil painting herself. — Richard Peck

To the average mathematician who merely wants to know his work is securely based, the most appealing choice is to avoid difficulties by means of Hilbert's program. Here one regards mathematics as a formal game and one is only concerned with the question of consistency ... The Realist position is probably the one which most mathematicians would prefer to take. It is not until he becomes aware of some of the difficulties in set theory that he would even begin to question it. If these difficulties particularly upset him, he will rush to the shelter of Formalism, while his normal position will be somewhere between the two, trying to enjoy the best of two worlds. — Paul Cohen

An old French mathematician said: A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street. This clearness and ease of comprehension, here insisted on for a mathematical theory, I should still more demand for a mathematical problem if it is to be perfect; for what is clear and easily comprehended attracts, the complicated repels us. — David Hilbert

And whether you're an honest man, or whether you're a thief, depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief. — Benjamin Franklin

You never understood games. Maybe that's why the world was such a mystery to you. — Daniel Suarez

The best way to refine an interpretation is by getting out and performing. — Joshua Bell

Marriage and dating are man-made ideologies; if having a lover was a prerequisite to living, we'd all be born in pairs; as couples. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

I don't think there's anything unique about human intelligence. — Bill Gates

There's this primary America of freeways and jet flights and TV and movie spectaculars, and people caught up in this primary America seem to go through huge portions of their lives without much consciousness of what immediately surrounds them. The media have convinced them that what's right around them is unimportant. And that's why they're lonely. — Robert M. Pirsig

It will kill you to love like you will never die. — Tim Kinsella

Von Neumann, by contrast, wore a three-piece suit at almost all times, including on a donkey ride down the Grand Canyon; even as a student he was so well dressed that, upon first meeting him, the mathematician David Hilbert reportedly had but one question: Who is his tailor?45 — Walter Isaacson

Plenty of mathematicians, Hardy knew, could follow a step-by-step discursus unflaggingly-yet counted for nothing beside Ramanujan. Years later, he would contrive an informal scale of natural mathematical ability on which he assigned himself a 25 and Littlewood a 30. To David Hilbert, the most eminent mathematician of the day, he assigned an 80. To Ramanujan he gave 100. — Robert Kanigel