Mathematicians
- ...beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. 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.
- -St. Augustine, De Genesi ad Litteram (actually "mathematicians" in this context refers mainly to astrologers and such)
A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems .
- -Paul Erdös
Die Mathematiker sind eine Art Franzosen; redet man mit ihnen, so übersetzen sie es in ihre Sprache, und dann ist es alsobald ganz etwas anderes. (Mathematicians are [like] a sort of Frenchmen; if you talk to them, they translate it into their own language, and then it is immediately something quite different.)
- -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- "I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning." --Plato
- "A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there." --Charles Darwin
- "A topologist is one who doesn't know the difference between a doughnut and a coffee cup." --John Kelley
- "You know we all became mathematicians for the same reason: we were lazy." --Max Rosenlicht
- "The mathematician has reached the highest rung on the ladder of human thought." --Havelock Ellis
- "There are two kinds of mistakes. There are fatal mistakes that destroy a theory; but there are also contingent ones, which are useful in testing the stability of a theory." --Gian-Carlo Rota
- "Give us something to take home!" --Dirk Struik
