Life stands before me like an eternal spring with new and brilliant clothes.
It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.
You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length.
There have been only three epoch-making mathematicians, Archimedes, Newton, and Eisenstein.
Mathematicians stand on each other’s shoulders.
I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.
The problem of distinguishing prime numbers from composite numbers and of resolving the latter into their prime factors is known to be one of the most important and useful in arithmetic.
Theory attracts practice as the magnet attracts iron.
Mathematics is the queen of the sciences.
No contradictions will arise as long as Finite Man does not mistake the infinite for something fixed, as long as he is not led by an acquired habit of mind to regard the infinite as something bounded.
When a philosopher says something that is true then it is trivial. When he says something that is not trivial then it is false.
Mathematics is concerned only with the enumeration and comparison of relations.
In mathematics there are no true controversies.
Mathematical discoveries, like springtime violets in the woods, have their season which no human can hasten or retard.
Finally, two days ago, I succeeded – not on account of my hard efforts, but by the grace of the Lord. Like a sudden flash of lightning, the riddle was solved. I am unable to say what was the conducting thread that connected what I previously knew with what made my success possible.
You have no idea, how much poetry there is in the calculation of a table of logarithms!