Charles Hermite Quotes

Let no man who is not a Mathematician read the elements of my work.

For scholars and laymen alike it is not philosophy but active experience in mathematics itself that can alone answer the question: What is mathematics?

There is no philosophy which is not founded upon knowledge of the phenomena, but to get any profit from this knowledge it is absolutely necessary to be a mathematician.

For the things of this world cannot be made known without a knowledge of mathematics.

The most painful thing about mathematics is how far away you are from being able to use it after you have learned it.

In order to have wisdom we must have ignorance.

I have deeply regretted that I did not proceed far enough at least to understand something of the great leading principles of mathematics, for men thus endowed seem to have an extra sense.

The Reader may here observe the Force of Numbers, which can be successfully applied, even to those things, which one would imagine are subject to no Rules. There are very few things which we know, which are not capable of being reduc'd to a Mathematical Reasoning, and when they cannot, it's a sign our Knowledge of them is very small and confus'd; and where a mathematical reasoning can be had, it's as great folly to make use of any other, as to grope for a thing in the dark when you have a Candle standing by you.

I don’t think anything about Einstein’s theory because I don’t understand it.

I'll never know everything. My life would be a lot worse if there was nothing I knew the answers about - and if there was nothing I didn't know the answers about.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

The more you learn, the more you learn you don't know.

Fractions, decimals, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, mechanics - these are the steps up the mountain side. How high is one going to get? For me, the pinnacle was Projective Geometry. Who today has even heard of this branch of mathematics?

I still remember the realization in college at Flinders University in Australia that mathematics was not just an abstract game of symbols but could be used as a tool to analyze and understand the modern world.

I don't feel it incumbent on me to make sense of everything.

Whoever believes he knows why everything is as it is has hold of nothing.

You have to spend some energy and effort to see the beauty of math.

For only when I err do I get away from what I know and what I understand. If "truth" were what I can understand, it would end up being but a small truth, my-sized. Truth must reside precisely in what I shall never understand.

One truth that I know for sure, for me anyway, is that the more you know, the more you realize that you don't know.

Philosophical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from concepts ; mathematical knowledge is the knowledge gained by reason from the construction of concepts.

I do not know everything; still many things I understand.

The world operates by number, by physical laws, expressed mathematically. If you know these, you will have a better grasp of things. And some possible job skills.

Strange about learning; the farther I go the more I see that I never knew even existed. A short while ago I foolishly thought I could learn everything - all the knowledge in the world. Now I hope only to be able to know of its existence, and to understand one grain of it. Is there time?

Our account does not rob the mathematicians of their science... In point of fact they do not need the infinite and do not use it.