Quotations about
Mathematics and Mathematicians

  1. The good Christian should beware of Mathematicians and all those who make empty prophesies. The danger already exists that the Mathematicians have made a covenant with the Devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.
    -Saint Augustine

  2. I have no fault to find with those who teach geometry. That science is the only one which has not produced sects; it is founded on analysis and on synthesis and on the calculus; it does not occupy itself with probable truth; moreover it has the same method in every country.
    -Fredrick the Great

  3. In my opinion a mathematician, in so far as he is a mathematician, need not preoccupy himself with philosophy-an opinion, moreover, which has been expressed by many philosophers.
    -Lebesgue

  4. He is unworthy of the name of MAN who is ignorant of the fact that the diagonal of a square is incommensurable with its side.
    -Plato

  5. Mathematics is an obscure field, an abstruse science, complicated and exact; yet so many have attained perfection in it that we might conclude almost anyone who seriously applied himself would achieve a measure of success.
    -Cicero

  6. So far as theories of mathematics are about reality; they are not certain; so far as they are certain, they are not about reality.
    -Einstein

  7. Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.
    -Goethe

  8. The study of non-Euclidean Geometry brings nothing to students but fatigue, vanity, arrogance, and imbecility.
    … "Non-Euclidean" space is the false invention of demons, who gladly furnish the dark understanding of the "non-Euclideans" with false knowledge. … The "Non-Euclideans," like the ancient sophists, seem unaware that their understandings have become obscured by the promptings of the evil spirits.
    -Matthew Ryan (1905)