Indignant reply to the blatent sex discrimination expressed in a colleague's opposition when Hilbert proposed appointing Emmy Noether as the first woman professor at their university.

However unapproachable these problems may seem to us and however helpless we stand before them, we have, nevertheless, the firm conviction that their solution must follow by a finite number of purely logical processes.

Mathematics is a game played according to certain simple rules with meaningless marks on paper.

Before beginning [to try to prove Fermat's Last Theorem] I should have to put in three years of intensive study, and I haven't that much time to squander on a probable failure.

Mathematics knows no races or geographic boundaries; for mathematics, the cultural world is one country.

Wir mussen wissen. Wir werden wissen. We must know. We will know. Inscribed on his tomb in Gilttingen.

One must be able to say at all times--instead of points, straight lines, and planes--tables, chairs, and beer mugs