Galois read the geometry from cover to cover as easily as other boys read a pirate yarn.

Poincaré was a vigorous opponent of the theory that all mathematics can be rewritten in terms of the most elementary notions of classical logic; something more than logic, he believed, makes mathematics what it is.

Pick the assumptions to pieces till the stuff they are made of is exposed to plain view - this is the cardinal rule for understanding the basis of our beliefs.

Even stranger things have happened; and perhaps the strangest of all is the marvel that mathematics should be possible to a race akin to the apes.

Wherever groups disclosed themselves, or could be introduced, simplicity crystallized out of comparative chaos.

I have always hated machinery, and the only machine I ever understood was a wheelbarrow, and that but imperfectly.

Any impatient student of mathematics or science or engineering who is irked by having algebraic symbolism thrust upon him should try to get along without it for a week.