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Quotes · Collages · Sources

Famous Math Quotes and the Stories Behind Them

Every famous line in mathematics was said by someone, somewhere, for a reason. Here each quote gets a cut-and-paste collage, its exact wording with the source, the story of why it was said, and the book to read next.

No made-up quotes. Where the popular version differs from what was actually said, we show both.

“Either mathematics is too big for the human mind, or the human mind is more than a machine.”

— Kurt Gödel, 1951

The quotes

6 collages and counting

Collage of Kurt Gödel in 1925 wearing orange round glasses and a blue jacket with a puzzle-piece hole, on green, with his quote about the human mind and the machine

Logician · 1951

Kurt Gödel

A lecture in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1951, and the strangest either–or in mathematics.

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Collage of David Hilbert in his white hat with a cyan band and colored paper feathers, beside a red 1930s ON AIR radio microphone, on orange, with the words We must know. We will know.

Mathematician · 1930

David Hilbert

Six words on a radio broadcast, carved later on a gravestone, and answered the day before.

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Collage of two copies of Henri Poincaré side by side, one black and white and one mirrored in cyan, both wearing red HELLO my name is Poincaré name tags, on yellow

Mathematician · 1908

Henri Poincaré

Why a single well-chosen word can be worth more than a hundred theorems.

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Collage of Bertrand Russell in 1907 as a pale marble statue on a classical plinth engraved B·RUSSELL, crowned with a green laurel wreath, on sky blue

Philosopher & logician · 1907

Bertrand Russell

A philosopher in the middle of Principia Mathematica, defending mathematics as art.

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Collage of Albert Einstein in 1921, half his face and body covered in white graph-paper grid, a yellow measuring tape across his shoulders, labeled reality and certain, on red-orange

Physicist · 1921

Albert Einstein

A Berlin lecture in 1921 on why the most certain science says nothing about the world.

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Collage of Paul Dirac in 1933 split down the face by a zigzag tear, one half black and white and the other a yellow-and-navy photographic negative, with e⁻ and e⁺ stickers, on teal

Physicist · 1963

Paul Dirac

The quietest man in physics, on why Schrödinger should have trusted his equation.

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