"The theory of numbers is the last great uncivilized continent of mathematics. It is split up into innumerable countries, fertile enough in themselves, but all the more or less indifferent to one another’s welfare and without a vestige of a central, intelligent government. If any young Alexander is weeping for a new world to conquer, it lies before him." (Eric T Bell, "The Queen of the Sciences", 1931)
"Pick your assumptions to pieces till the stuff they are made of is exposed to plain view." (Eric T Bell, 1935)
"All measurements in science are statistical in character." (Eric T Bell, "The Handmaiden of the Sciences", 1937)
"A circle no doubt has a certain appealing simplicity at the first glance, but one look at a healthy ellipse should have convinced even the most mystical of astronomers that that the perfect simplicity of the circle is akin to the vacant smile of complete idiocy. Compared to what an ellipse can tell us, a circle has nothing to say." (Eric T Bell, "The Handmaiden of the Sciences", 1937)
"The algebraic numbers are spotted over the plane like stars against a black sky; the dense blackness is the firmament of the transcendentals." (Eric T Bell, "Men of Mathematics", 1937)
"The longer mathematics lives the more abstract - and therefore, possibly also the more practical - it becomes." (Eric T Bell, "Men of Mathematics", 1937)
"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." (Eric T Bell, "Men of Mathematics", 1937)
"Abstractness, sometimes hurled as a reproach at mathematics, is its chief glory and its surest title to practical usefulness. It is also the source of such beauty as may spring from mathematics." (Eric T Bell, "The Development of Mathematics", 1940)
"A circle no doubt has a certain appealing simplicity at the first glance, but one look at a healthy ellipse should have convinced even the most mystical of astronomers that that the perfect simplicity of the circle is akin to the vacant smile of complete idiocy. Compared to what an ellipse can tell us, a circle has nothing to say." (Eric T Bell, "The Handmaiden of the Sciences", 1937)
"The algebraic numbers are spotted over the plane like stars against a black sky; the dense blackness is the firmament of the transcendentals." (Eric T Bell, "Men of Mathematics", 1937)
"The longer mathematics lives the more abstract - and therefore, possibly also the more practical - it becomes." (Eric T Bell, "Men of Mathematics", 1937)
"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." (Eric T Bell, "Men of Mathematics", 1937)
"Abstractness, sometimes hurled as a reproach at mathematics, is its chief glory and its surest title to practical usefulness. It is also the source of such beauty as may spring from mathematics." (Eric T Bell, "The Development of Mathematics", 1940)
"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 T Bell, "The Development of Mathematics", 1940)
"There are no absolutes [...] in mathematics or in its history." (Eric Temple Bell, "The Development of Mathematics", 1940)
"The mistakes and unresolved difficulties of the past in mathematics have always been the opportunities of its future; and should analysis ever appear to be without or blemish, its perfection might only be that of death." (Eric T Bell, "The Development of Mathematics", 1940)
"The only royal road to elementary geometry is ingenuity." (Eric T Bell, "The Development of Mathematics", 1940)
"This abstracting of common experience is one of the principal sources of the utility of mathematics and the secret of its scientific power. The world that impinges on the senses of all but introverted solipsists is too intricate for any exact description yet imagined by human beings. By abstracting and simplifying the evidence of the senses, mathematics brings the worlds of science and daily life into focus with our myopic comprehension, and makes possible a rational description of our experiences which accords remarkably well with observation." (Eric T Bell, "The Development of Mathematics", 1940)
"Without the strictest deductive proof from admitted assumptions, explicitly stated as such, mathematics does not exist." (Eric T Bell, "The Development of Mathematics", 1940)
"The straight line of the geometers does not exist in the material universe. It is a pure abstraction, an invention of the imagination or, if one prefers, an idea of the Eternal Mind." (Eric T Bell, "The Magic of Numbers", 1946)
"Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions." (Eric T Bell, Mathematics Magazine, 1949)
"’Obvious’ is the most dangerous word in mathematics." (Eric T Bell, "Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science", 1951)
"Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth; some of its rivals do." (Eric T Bell, "Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science", 1951)
"Without the strictest deductive proof from admitted assumptions, explicitly stated as such, mathematics does not exist." (Eric T Bell, "The Development of Mathematics", 1940)
"The straight line of the geometers does not exist in the material universe. It is a pure abstraction, an invention of the imagination or, if one prefers, an idea of the Eternal Mind." (Eric T Bell, "The Magic of Numbers", 1946)
"Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions." (Eric T Bell, Mathematics Magazine, 1949)
"’Obvious’ is the most dangerous word in mathematics." (Eric T Bell, "Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science", 1951)
"Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth; some of its rivals do." (Eric T Bell, "Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science", 1951)
"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 T Bell, "Mathematics, Queen and Servant of Science", 1951)
"The technical analysis of any large collection of data is a task for a highly trained and expensive man who knows the mathematical theory of statistics inside and out. Otherwise the outcome is likely to be a collection of drawings - quartered pies, cute little battleships, and tapering rows of sturdy soldiers in diversified uniforms - interesting enough in the colored Sunday supplement, but hardly the sort of thing from which to draw reliable inferences." (Eric T Bell, "Mathematics: Queen and Servant of Science", 1951)
"Wherever groups disclosed themselves, or could be introduced, simplicity crystallized out of comparative chaos." (Eric T Bell, "Mathematics, Queen and Servant of Science", 1951)
"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." (Eric T Bell)"Mathematics has a light and wisdom of its own, above any possible applications to science, and it will richly reward any intelligent human being to catch a glimpse of what mathematics means to itself. This is not the old doctrine of art for art's sake; it is art for humanity's sake." (Eric T Bell)
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