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Quote by Andre Weil

“In the future, as in the past, the great ideas [of mathematics] must be simplifying ideas, the creator must always be one who clarifies, for himself, and for others, the most complicated issues of formulas and concepts.”

Quote by Andre Weil

Author

Andre Weil was a renowned mathematician born on May 6, 1906, and died on August 6, 1998. He made significant contributions to algebraic geometry and number theory, particularly with his work on the Weil conjectures and the Weil-Châtelet theorem. Weil's research had a profound impact on the development of modern mathematics. more

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“The question for the ultimate foundations and the ultimate meaning of mathematics remains open; we do not know in which direction it will find its final solution nor even whether a final objective answer can be expected at all. "Mathematizing" may well be a creative activity of man, like language or music, of primary originality, whose historical decisions defy complete objective rationalization.”

Source: Levels of Infinity: Selected Writings on Mathematics and Philosophy

“The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.”

Facts Weapons Discovery Paradox Concrete Our Thoughts Abstraction Epiphany

Book:Science and the Modern World

Source: Science and the Modern World

“He marvelled at the fact that the cats had two holes cut in their fur at precisely the spot where their eyes were.”

Two Facts Eye Science Cutting Cat Holes Spots Fur

Author:Georg C. Lichtenberg

“Here I beg you to observe in passing that the scruples that prevented ancient writers from using arithmetical terms in geometry, and which can only be a consequence of their inability to perceive clearly the relation between these two subjects, introduced much obscurity and confusion into their explanations.”

Two Term Subjects Consequence Experience Relation Ancient Passing Passings Confusion Perceive Explanation Inability Geometry Obscurity Scruples

Author:Rene Descartes

“Human wisdom remains always one and the same although applied to the most diverse objects and it is no more changed by their diversity than the sunshine is changed by the variety of objects which it illuminates.”

Humans Objects Changed Diversity Experience Remains Variety Sunshine Diverse Human Wisdom

Author:Rene Descartes

“No thought, no idea, can possibly be conveyed as an idea from one person to another. When it is told it is to the one to whom it is told another fact, not an idea. The communication may stimulate the other person to realize the question for himself and to think out a like idea, or it may smother his intellectual interest and suppress his dawning effort at thought. But what he directly gets cannot be an idea. Only by wrestling with the conditions of the problem at first hand, seeking and finding his own way out, does he think.”

Source: The Middle Works of John Dewey, 1899-1924, Volume 9: 1916, Democracy and Education

“[On Richard P. Feynman's live demonstration of the rigidity of the O-rings when cold that doomed the space shuttle Challenger, killing seven astronauts:] The public saw with their own eyes how science is done, how a great scientist thinks with his hands, how nature gives a clear answer when a scientist asks her a clear question.”

“Does the pursuit of truth give you as much pleasure as before? Surely it is not the knowing but the learning, not the possessing but the acquiring, not the being-there but the getting there that afford the greatest satisfaction. If I have exhausted something, I leave it in order to go again into the dark. Thus is that insatiable man so strange: when he has completed a structure it is not in order to dwell in it comfortably, but to start another.”

Ifs Men Giving Doe Order Dark Pleasure Knowing Strange Experience Structure Satisfaction Pursuit Exhausted Being There Possessing Insatiable

Author:Carl Friedrich Gauss

“The paradox of the human condition is expressed more in education than elsewhere in human culture, because learning to learn has been and continues to be Homo Sapiens' most formidable evolutionary task... It must also be clear that we will never quite learn how to learn, for since Homo Sapiens is self-changing, and since the more culture changes the faster it changes, man's methods and rate of learning will never quite keep pace with his need to learn.”

Men Needs Humans Has Beens Self Culture Clear Conditions Tasks Experience Method Rate Faster Paradox Pace Human Condition Elsewhere Never Quit Homo Sapiens Formidable Culture Change

Author:Jules Henry

“Puzzles are made of the things that the mathematician, no less than the child, plays with, and dreams and wonders about, for they are made of things and circumstances of the world he [or she] live in.”

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Author:Edward Kasner