27 Quotes by Gian-Carlo Rota

A mathematician’s work is mostly a tangle of guesswork, analogy, wishful thinking and frustration, and proof, far from being the core of discovery, is more often than not a way of making sure that our minds are not playing tricks.

The progress of mathematics can be viewed as progress from the infinite to the finite.

Our faith in Mathematics is not likely to wane if we openly acknowledge that the personalities of even the greatest mathematicians may be as flawed as those of anyone else.

The pendulum of mathematics swings back and forth towards abstraction and away from it with a timing that remains to be estimated.

Theorems are not to mathematics what successful courses are to a meal.

It is a common public relations gimmick to give the entire credit for the solution of famous problems to the one mathematician who is responsible for the last step.

Are mathematical ideas invented or discovered? This question has been repeatedly posed by philosophers through the ages and will probably be with us forever.

Mathematicians also make terrible salesmen. Physicists can discover the same thing as a mathematician and say ‘We’ve discovered a great new law of nature. Give us a billion dollars.’ And if it doesn’t change the world, then they say, ‘There’s an even deeper thing. Give us another billion dollars.’

Very little mathematics has direct applications – though fortunately most of it has plenty of indirect ones.