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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.

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.
Three
Havens
Trying
Haven
Fermat
Much
Beginning
Squander
Years
Prove
Theorem
Time
Failure
Intensive
Study
Theorems
Lasts
Probable
Last
Math

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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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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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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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[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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Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper.
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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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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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Some people have got a mental horizon of radius zero and call it their point of view.
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Physics is becoming too difficult for the physicists.
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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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The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality.
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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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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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Every mathematical discipline goes through three periods of development: the naive, the formal, and the critical.
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The arithmetical symbols are written diagrams and the geometrical figures are graphic formulas.
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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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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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We do not master a scientific theory until we have shelled and completely prised free its mathematical kernel.
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The infinite! No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man.
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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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