David Hilbert (January 23, 1862 - February 14, 1943) was a German mathematician.
Verified
- "Wir müssen wissen. Wir werden wissen" ("We must know. We will know.")
- Source: Speech in Königsberg in 1930, now on his tomb in Göttingen
- "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."
- Quoted in: D. MacHale, Comic Sections, Dublin 1993
- "One can measure the importance of a scientific work by the number of earlier publications rendered superfluous by it."
- Quoted in: H. Eves, Mathematical Circles Revisited, Boston 1971
- "Mathematics knows no races or geographic boundaries; for mathematics, the cultural world is one country."
- Quoted in: H. Eves, Mathematical Circles Revisited, Boston 1971
Attributed
- "No one shall expel us from the Paradise that Cantor has created."
- "If I were to awaken after having slept for a thousand years, my first question would be: Has the Riemann hypothesis been proven?"
