David Hilbert

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

"One cannot escape the feeling that these mathematical formulas have an independent existence and an intelligence of their own."

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

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

"We must know. We will know."

"Geometry will come to play a much larger role in physics."

"Out of the various hypotheses which compete for acceptance, we must select that which most successfully interprets the facts."

"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life."

"Mathematics is not a body of theorems, but a creative activity of the human spirit."

"A mathematical problem should be difficult in order to entice us, but not completely inaccessible, lest it mock our efforts."

"The axioms and definitions are not discovered but created by us."

"In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them."

"The truly precious gift is a keen sense of proportion and of one's proper place in the world."

"Physics is really nothing more than a guide to mathematics."

"Every statement in mathematics must have a complete proof."

"The problems of mathematics are not problems about symbols, but problems about things, or rather, problems about conditions we want to realize."

"In a mathematical proof, we are not seeking rhetorical persuasion but rather scientific truth."

"What is life without the courage to attempt something?"

"A new field opens itself to a close study of any questions of absolute importance."

"The edifice of mathematics must be built upon the unshakeable foundation of logic."

"Sometimes it happens that a man's circle of horizon becomes contracted, and as the concentration increases, one discovers in the distance new and unsuspected phenomena."

"A science is said to be useful if its development tends to accentuate the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth."

"Every problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems."

"One cannot escape the feeling that these formulas have an independent existence and intelligence of their own."

"No one shall expel us from the paradise that Cantor created for us."

"The infinite! No other question has ever moved so profoundly the spirit of man."

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

"The problems in mathematics have made my life exciting and meaningful."

"What is a theory, but a mechanism for drawing conclusions from observed facts?"

"In the sequence of integers I discern a hidden order."