'Obvious' is the most dangerous word in mathematics. E. T. Bell More Quotes by E. T. Bell More Quotes From E. T. Bell The mistakes and unresolved difficulties of the past in mathematics have always been the opportunities of its future. E. T. Bell mistakes future mathematics past If indeed, as Hilbert asserted, mathematics is a meaningless game played with meaningless marks on paper, the only mathematical experience to which we can refer is the making of marks on paper. E. T. Bell only game mathematics experience Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions. E. T. Bell assumptions without me argument Fashion as King is sometimes a very stupid ruler. E. T. Bell king fashion stupid sometimes Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth. E. T. Bell makes eternal truth science Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past, are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness. E. T. Bell mathematics simplicity fitness art I have always hated machinery, and the only machine I ever understood was a wheelbarrow, and that but imperfectly. E. T. Bell machine only always understood It is the perennial youthfulness of mathematics itself which marks it off with a disconcerting immortality from the other sciences. E. T. Bell which off immortality mathematics Out of fifty mathematical papers presented in brief at such a meeting, it is a rare mathematician indeed who really understands what more than half a dozen are about. E. T. Bell meeting rare more half The longer mathematics lives the more abstract - and therefore, possibly also the more practical - it becomes. E. T. Bell practical more mathematics abstract The pursuit of pretty formulas and neat theorems can no doubt quickly degenerate into a silly vice, but so can the quest for austere generalities which are so very general indeed that they are incapable of application to any particular. E. T. Bell indeed pretty doubt silly Time makes fools of us all. Our only comfort is that greater shall come after us. E. T. Bell fools us comfort time
