David Hilbert Quotes

I am a bit of a head-in-the-sand person as concerns things happening beyond the walls of my study. And I don't feel particularly guilty about that. I figure that my primary job is producing the very best stories I am capable of writing, and that is what I concentrate upon doing. That is within my control.

There's nothing you can't prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited.

Silicon Valley tends to be very myopic - to be focused on one or two things - which has some strengths as well as weaknesses.

Our daily lives are so mundane, we get taken over by what is immediately in front of us and we don't see beyond that.

A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.

Sometimes one can be so closely involved with things that the larger context is lost to view.

It's a personality trait: from the very beginning, I knew what I was concentrating on. I'm only doing the kernel - I always found everything around it to be completely boring.

The problem is I don't know anything or anyone. I am so focused on the immediate picture in front of me.

When you sit on something for so long you can't see beyond it. It's all you can see, so you become locked in it.

He who sees only what is before his eyes sees the worst part of every view.

The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem!

I think that a lot of people in all walks of life have the impression, of course, that, 'I specialize in something. I can't - I don't have the time to read other things. I'll just go to pure entertainment when I'm relaxing, and then I'll come back to my pure specialty.' That produces - that attitude produces idiot savants, unfortunately.

The man who consumes sports to the exclusion of all other things will never be well-rounded.

Listen. I got three expressions: looking left, looking right and looking straight ahead.

People see everything through the lens of their obsessions.

It is the eye which makes the horizon.

It gives me a sense of tunnel vision.

Attachment constrains our vision so that we are not able to see things from a wider perspective.

Everyone [in higher education] was what I call drillers of deeper wells. These academics sit at the bottom of a deep well and they look up and see a sliver of the sky. They know everything about that little sliver of sky and nothing else. I scan all my horizons.

An ignorant man believes that the whole universe only exists for him: as if nothing else required any consideration. If, therefore, anything happens to him contrary to his expectation, he at once concludes that the whole universe is evil. If, however, he would take into consideration the whole universe, form an idea of it, and comprehend what a small portion he is of the Universe, he will find the truth. There are many ... passages in the books of the prophets expressing the same idea.

In a bird's eye view you tend to survey everything and decide on a particular point, then you swoop down and pick it up. In a worms eye view you don't have that advantage of looking at everything.

If something is opinion, put it in the opinion section: Don't put it in the facts section.

When we wish to correct with advantage, and to show another that he errs, we must notice from what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true.

A specialist is a barbarian whose ignorance is not well-rounded.

Education, I fear, is learning to see one thing by going blind to another.