David Hilbert

We must know. We will know. (Epitaph)

One can measure the importance of a scientific work by the number of earlier publications rendered superfluous by it.

History teaches the continuity of the development of science. We know that every age has its own problems, which the following age either solves or casts aside as profitless and replaces by new ones.

Mathematics is the foundation of all exact knowledge of natural phenomena.

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.

Galileo was no idiot. Only an idiot could believe that science requires martyrdom - that may be necessary in religion, but in time a scientific result will establish itself.

How thoroughly it is ingrained in mathematical science that every real advance goes hand in hand with the invention of sharper tools and simpler methods which, at the same time, assist in understanding earlier theories and in casting aside some more complicated developments.

If I were to awaken after having slept for a thousand years, my first question would be: Has the Riemann hypothesis been proven?

If 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.

Mathematical science is in my opinion an indivisible whole, an organism whose vitality is conditioned upon the connection of its parts.

The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality.