Jean Dieudonné Quotes

8 Sourced Quotes

We have not begun to understand the relationship between combinatorics and conceptual mathematics.

Jean Dieudonné
Engineers, always looking for optimal values for the measures of magnitudes which interest them, think of mathematicians as custodians of a fund of formulae, to be supplied to them on demand.

Jean Dieudonné
A mathematician, then, will be defined in what follows as someone who has published the proof of at least one non-trivial theorem.

Jean Dieudonné
The life of a mathematician is dominated by an insatiable curiosity, a desire bordering on passion to solve the problems he is studying.

Jean Dieudonné
It has been said that the art of geometry is to reason well from false diagrams.

Jean Dieudonné
This difficulty lead very gradually to the recognition of the need for a shorthand to make the sequence of operations easily comprehensible: here we have the problem of notation, which crops up again after every introduction of new objects, and which will probably never cease to torment mathematicians.

Jean Dieudonné
In the flowering of a mathematical talent social environment has an important part to play.

Jean Dieudonné
On foundations we believe in the reality of mathematics, but of course when philosophers attack us with their paradoxes we rush to hide behind formalism and say: "Mathematics is just a combination of meaningless symbols..."

Jean Dieudonné