42 Quotes by Eric Temple Bell

EULER CALCULATED WITHOUT APPARENT EFFORT, as men breathe, or as eagles sustain themselves in the wind” (as Arago said), is not an exaggeration of the unequalled mathematical facility of Leonard Euler (1707-1783)

He (Gauss) lives everywhere in mathematics

Obvious is the most dangerous word in mathematics.

If a lunatic scribbles a jumble of mathematical symbols it does not follow that the writing means anything merely because to the inexpert eye it is indistinguishable from higher mathematics.

If “Number rules the universe” as Pythagoras asserted, Number is merely our delegate to the throne, for we rule Number.

It is the perennial youthfulness of mathematics itself which marks it off with a disconcerting immortality from the other sciences.

Pick the assumptions to pieces till the stuff they are made of is exposed to plain view – this is the cardinal rule for understanding the basis of our beliefs.

Even stranger things have happened; and perhaps the strangest of all is the marvel that mathematics should be possible to a race akin to the apes.

Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions.