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One must be able to say at all times--instead of points, straight lines, and planes--tables, chairs, and beer mugs

David Hilbert

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David Hilbert
Age: 81 †
Born: 1862
Born: January 23
Died: 1943
Died: February 14
Mathematician
Philosopher
Physicist
University Teacher
Königsberg i. Pr.
Beer
Tables
Straight
Instead
Mugs
Lines
Mug
Times
Chairs
Able
Planes
Must
Points

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The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality.
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Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper.
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Physics is becoming too difficult for the physicists.
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I do not see that the sex of the candidate is an argument against her admission as a Privatdozent. After all, the Senate is not a bathhouse. Objecting to sex discrimination being the reason for rejection of Emmy Noether's application to join the faculty at the University of Gottingen.
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No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man no other idea has so fruitfully stimulated his intellect yet no other concept stands in greater need of clarification than that of the infinite.
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Geometry is the most complete science.
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Indignant reply to the blatent sex discrimination expressed in a colleague's opposition when Hilbert proposed appointing Emmy Noether as the first woman professor at their university.
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Every mathematical discipline goes through three periods of development: the naive, the formal, and the critical.
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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.
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No one shall expel us from the paradise which Cantor has created for us. Expressing the importance of Cantor's set theory in the development of mathematics.
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I didn't work especially hard at mathematics at school, because I knew that's what I'd be doing later.
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Mathematical science is in my opinion an indivisible whole, an organism whose vitality is conditioned upon the connection of its parts.
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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.
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Geometry, like arithmetic, requires for its logical development only a small number of simple, fundamental principles. These fundamental principles are called the axioms of geometry.
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The infinite! No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man.
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[On Cantor's work:] The finest product of mathematical genius and one of the supreme achievements of purely intellectual human activity.
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The arithmetical symbols are written diagrams and the geometrical figures are graphic formulas.
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Sometimes it happens that a man's circle of horizon becomes smaller and smaller, and as the radius approaches zero it concentrates on one point. And then that becomes his point of view.
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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.
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Every kind of science, if it has only reached a certain degree of maturity, automatically becomes a part of mathematics.
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