Good, he did not have enough imagination to become a mathematician.
David HilbertAus dem Paradies, das Cantor uns geschaffen, soll uns niemand vertreiben können.
David HilbertOne can measure the importance of a scientific work by the number of earlier publications rendered superfluous by it.
David HilbertMathematics knows no races or geographic boundaries; for mathematics, the cultural world is one country.
David HilbertIf 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.
David HilbertIf I were to awaken after having slept for a thousand years, my first question would be: Has the Riemann hypothesis been proven?
David HilbertOne of the supreme achievements of purely intellectual human activity.
David HilbertSometimes it happens that a man's circle of horizon becomes smaller and smaller, and as the radius approaches zero it concentrates on one point. And then that becomes his point of view.
David HilbertKeep computations to the lowest level of the multiplication table.
David HilbertBegin with the simplest examples.
David HilbertI do not see that the sex of the candidate is an argument against her admission as a Privatdozent. After all, the Senate is not a bath-house.
David HilbertEvery kind of science, if it has only reached a certain degree of maturity, automatically becomes a part of mathematics.
David HilbertAn old French mathematician said: A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street. This clearness and ease of comprehension, here insisted on for a mathematical theory, I should still more demand for a mathematical problem if it is to be perfect; for what is clear and easily comprehended attracts, the complicated repels us.
David HilbertPhysics is too difficult for physicists!
David Hilbert"Mathematics is a presuppositionless science. To found it I do not need God, as does Kronecker, or the assumption of a special faculty of our understanding attuned to the principle of mathematical induction, as does Poincaré, or the primal intuition of Brouwer, or, finally, as do Russell and Whitehead, axioms of infinity, reducibility, or completeness, which in fact are actual, contentual assumptions that cannot be compensated for by consistency proofs.
David Hilbert