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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.

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.
Didn
School
Hard
Work
Mathematics
Later
Especially
Knew

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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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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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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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Every kind of science, if it has only reached a certain degree of maturity, automatically becomes a part of mathematics.
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The infinite! No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man.
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Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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We do not master a scientific theory until we have shelled and completely prised free its mathematical kernel.
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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 knows no races or geographic boundaries for mathematics, the cultural world is one country.
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Physics is becoming too difficult for the physicists.
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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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