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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.

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.
May
Requires
Believe
Mathematics
Galileo
Time
Result
Martyrdom
Necessary
Establish
Results
Idiot
Belief
Mathematical
Religion
Math
Science
Scientific

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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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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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The arithmetical symbols are written diagrams and the geometrical figures are graphic formulas.
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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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Mathematics knows no races or geographic boundaries for mathematics, the cultural world is one country.
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Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper.
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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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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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Geometry is the most complete science.
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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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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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Every kind of science, if it has only reached a certain degree of maturity, automatically becomes a part of mathematics.
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Every mathematical discipline goes through three periods of development: the naive, the formal, and the critical.
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Physics is becoming too difficult for the physicists.
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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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The tool which serves as intermediary between theory and practice, between thought and observation, is mathematics it is mathematics which builds the linking bridges and gives the ever more reliable forms.
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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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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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