Eric Temple Bell - Men of Mathematics (1937)

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This does not mean that objections cannot be well taken: it merely calls attention to the fact that in mathematics, as in everything else, this earth is not yet to be confused with the Kingdom of Heaven.

Eric Temple Bell
Perfection is a chimaera, and that, in the words of Crelle, we can only hope for closer and closer approximations to mathematical truth — whatever that may be, if anything.

Eric Temple Bell
The pursuit of pretty formulas and neat theorems can no doubt quickly degenerate into a silly vice, but so also can the quest for austere generalities which are so very general indeed that they are incapable of application to any particular.

Eric Temple Bell
The longer mathematics lives the more abstract - and therefore, possibly also the more practical - it becomes.

Eric Temple Bell
The mathematician is a much rarer character in fiction than his cousin the scientist, and when he does appear in the pages of a novel or on the screen he is only too apt to be a slovenly dreamer totally devoid of common sense — comic relief.

Eric Temple Bell
If "Number rules the universe" as Pythagoras asserted, Number is merely our delegate to the throne, for we rule Number.

Eric Temple Bell
The algebraic numbers are spotted over the plane like stars against a black sky; the dense blackness is the firmament of the transcendentals.

Eric Temple Bell