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Top 20 Eric Temple Bell Quotes (2025 Update)

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “Obvious is the most dangerous word in mathematics.”

1. “Obvious is the most dangerous word in mathematics.”

— Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “If a lunatic scribbles a jumble of mathematical symbols it does not follow that the writing means anything merely because to the inexpert eye it is indistinguishable from higher mathematics.”

2. “If a lunatic scribbles a jumble of mathematical symbols it does not follow that the writing means anything merely because to the inexpert eye it is indistinguishable from higher mathematics.”

— Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “If “Number rules the universe” as Pythagoras asserted, Number is merely our delegate to the throne, for we rule Number.”

3. “If “Number rules the universe” as Pythagoras asserted, Number is merely our delegate to the throne, for we rule Number.”

— Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “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.”

4. “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 Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth.”

5. “Science makes no pretension to eternal truth or absolute truth.”

— Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “Any impatient student of mathematics or science or engineering who is irked by having algebraic symbolism thrust upon him should try to get along without it for a week.”

6. “Any impatient student of mathematics or science or engineering who is irked by having algebraic symbolism thrust upon him should try to get along without it for a week.”

— Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “It is the perennial youthfulness of mathematics itself which marks it off with a disconcerting immortality from the other sciences.”

7. “It is the perennial youthfulness of mathematics itself which marks it off with a disconcerting immortality from the other sciences.”

— Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “Pick the assumptions to pieces till the stuff they are made of is exposed to plain view – this is the cardinal rule for understanding the basis of our beliefs.”

8. “Pick the assumptions to pieces till the stuff they are made of is exposed to plain view – this is the cardinal rule for understanding the basis of our beliefs.”

— Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “Time makes fools of us all. Our only comfort is that greater shall come after us.”

9. “Time makes fools of us all. Our only comfort is that greater shall come after us.”

— Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions.”

10. “Euclid taught me that without assumptions there is no proof. Therefore, in any argument, examine the assumptions.”

— Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “Even stranger things have happened; and perhaps the strangest of all is the marvel that mathematics should be possible to a race akin to the apes.”

11. “Even stranger things have happened; and perhaps the strangest of all is the marvel that mathematics should be possible to a race akin to the apes.”

— Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “Nevertheless, the consuming hunger of the uncritical mind for what it imagines to be certainty or finality impels it to feast upon shadows in the prevailing famine of substance.”

12. “Nevertheless, the consuming hunger of the uncritical mind for what it imagines to be certainty or finality impels it to feast upon shadows in the prevailing famine of substance.”

— Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “The mistakes and unresolved difficulties of the past in mathematics have always been the opportunities of its future.”

13. “The mistakes and unresolved difficulties of the past in mathematics have always been the opportunities of its future.”

— Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “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.”

14. “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 Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “The very basis of creative work is irreverence! The very basis of creative work is bold experimentation. There has never been a creator of lasting importance who has not also been an innovator.”

15. “The very basis of creative work is irreverence! The very basis of creative work is bold experimentation. There has never been a creator of lasting importance who has not also been an innovator.”

— Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “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.”

16. “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.”

— Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “The Handmaiden of the Sciences.”

17. “The Handmaiden of the Sciences.”

— Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “Wherever groups disclosed themselves, or could be introduced, simplicity crystallized out of comparative chaos.”

18. “Wherever groups disclosed themselves, or could be introduced, simplicity crystallized out of comparative chaos.”

— Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “Fashion as King is sometimes a very stupid ruler.”

19. “Fashion as King is sometimes a very stupid ruler.”

— Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “The only royal road to elementary geometry is ingenuity.”

20. “The only royal road to elementary geometry is ingenuity.”

— Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “The longer mathematics lives the more abstract – and therefore, possibly also the more practical – it becomes.”

21. “The longer mathematics lives the more abstract – and therefore, possibly also the more practical – it becomes.”

— Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “Although he was a limited mathematician with no pretensions to scientific greatness, Crelle was a broadminded man, in fact a great man.”

22. “Although he was a limited mathematician with no pretensions to scientific greatness, Crelle was a broadminded man, in fact a great man.”

— Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “I have always hated machinery, and the only machine I ever understood was a wheelbarrow, and that but imperfectly.”

23. “I have always hated machinery, and the only machine I ever understood was a wheelbarrow, and that but imperfectly.”

— Eric Temple Bell

Eric Temple Bell Quote: “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.”

24. “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 Temple Bell

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