To such idle talk it might further be added: that whenever a certain exclusive occupation is coupled with specific shortcomings, it is likewise almost certainly divorced from certain other shortcomings.

I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.

Mathematical discoveries, like springtime violets in the woods, have their season which no human can hasten or retard.

We must admit with humility that, while number is purely a product of our minds, space has a reality outside our minds, so that we cannot completely prescribe its properties a priori.

It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.

It may be true, that men, who are mere mathematicians, have certain specific shortcomings, but that is not the fault of mathematics, for it is equally true of every other exclusive occupation.

There have been only three epoch-making mathematicians, Archimedes, Newton, and Eisenstein.