David Hilbert

1862–1943 · German mathematician

Topics: mathematics, learning

• Wir müssen wissen — wir werden wissen!

  — David Hilbert

• This conviction of the solvability of every mathematical problem is a powerful incentive to the worker. We hear within us the perpetual call: There is the problem. Seek its solution. You can find it by pure reason, for in mathematics there is no ignorabimus.

  — David Hilbert

• Every kind of science, if it has only reached a certain degree of maturity, automatically becomes a part of mathematics.

  — David Hilbert

• A mathematical problem should be difficult in order to entice us, yet not completely inaccessible, lest it mock at our efforts. It should be to us a guide post on the mazy paths to hidden truths, and ultimately a reminder of our pleasure in the successful solution.

  — David Hilbert

• History teaches the continuity of the development of science. We know that every age has its own problems, which the following age either solves or casts aside as profitless and replaces by new ones.

  — David Hilbert

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

  — David Hilbert

• Aus dem Paradies, das Cantor uns geschaffen, soll uns niemand vertreiben können.

  — David Hilbert

• To new concepts correspond, necessarily, new signs. These we choose in such a way that they remind us of the phenomena which were the occasion for the formation of the new concepts.

  — David Hilbert

• Mathematics is a presuppositionless science.

  — David Hilbert