Eric Temple Bell

Topics: mathematics, simplicity

• Something more than impeccable logic is required in mathematics. An expert logician will not necessarily be a passable mathematician for all his skill in logic, any more than a scholarly prosodist will be a respectable poet for all his mastery of meter.

  — Eric Temple Bell

• Nearly always it is the recondite and complicated which is elaborated first; and it is only when some relatively unsophisticated mind attacks a problem that its deep simplicity is revealed.

  — Eric Temple Bell