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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.

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.
Needs
Infinite
Stimulated
Men
Question
Illuminating
Greater
Profoundly
Idea
Stands
Spirit
Concept
Ideas
Intellect
Ever
Concepts
Fruitfully
Need
Moved
Clarification

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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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Some people have got a mental horizon of radius zero and call it their point of view.
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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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Every kind of science, if it has only reached a certain degree of maturity, automatically becomes a part of mathematics.
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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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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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One must be able to say at all times--instead of points, straight lines, and planes--tables, chairs, and beer mugs
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Is mathematics doomed to suffer the same fate as other sciences that have split into separate branches?... Mathematics is, in my opinion, an indivisible whole... May the new century bring with it ingenious champions and many zealous and enthusiastic disciples.
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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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The arithmetical symbols are written diagrams and the geometrical figures are graphic formulas.
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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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If one were to bring ten of the wisest men in the world together and ask them what was the most stupid thing in existence, they would not be able to discover anything so stupid as astrology.
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Every mathematical discipline goes through three periods of development: the naive, the formal, and the critical.
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Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper.
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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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[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 art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality.
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Geometry is the most complete science.
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We do not master a scientific theory until we have shelled and completely prised free its mathematical kernel.
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Mathematics knows no races or geographic boundaries for mathematics, the cultural world is one country.
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