Quotes from the Mathematical Quotations Server

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Donatus, Aelius (4th Century)
Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
"To the devil with those who published before us."
[Quoted by St. Jerome, his pupil]

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Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan (1859-1930)
Detection is, or ought to be, an exact sciences and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism, which produces much the same effect as if you worked a love story or an elopement into the fifth proposition of Euclid.
The Sign of Four.
When you have eliminated the impossible, what ever remains, however improbable must be the truth.
The Sign of Four.
From a drop of water a logician could predict an Atlantic or a Niagara.
A study in Scarlet 1929.
It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.
Scandal in Bohemia.

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Dryden, John (1631-1700)
Mere poets are sottish as mere drunkards are, who live in a continual mist, without seeing or judging anything clearly. A man should be learned in several sciences, and should have a reasonable, philosophical and in some measure a mathematical head, to be a complete and excellent poet.
Notes and Observations on The Empress of Morocco. 1674.

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Dubos, Ren�J.
Gauss replied, when asked how soon he expected to reach certain mathematical conclusions, that he had them long ago, all he was worrying about was how to reach them!
In Mechanisms of Discovery in I. S. Gordon and S. Sorkin (eds.) The Armchair Science Reader, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959.

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Dunsany, Lord
Logic, like whiskey, loses its beneficial effect when taken in too large quantities.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.

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Drer, Albrecht (1471-1528)
But when great and ingenious artists behold their so inept performances, not undeservedly do they ridicule the blindness of such men; since sane judgment abhors nothing so much as a picture perpetrated with no technical knowledge, although with plenty of care and diligence. Now the sole reason why painters of this sort are not aware of their own error is that they have not learnt Geometry, without which no one can either be or become an absolute artist; but the blame for this should be laid upon their masters, who are themselves ignorant of this art.
The Art of Measurement. 1525.
Whoever ... proves his point and demonstrates the prime truth geometrically should be believed by all the world, for there we are captured.
J Heidrich (ed.) Albrecht Drer's schriftlicher Nachlass Berlin, 1920.
And since geometry is the right foundation of all painting, I have decided to teach its rudiments and principles to all youngsters eager for art...
Course in the Art of Measurement

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Dyson, Freeman
I am acutely aware of the fact that the marriage between mathematics and physics, which was so enormously fruitful in past centuries, has recently ended in divorce.
Missed Opportunities, 1972. (Gibbs Lecture?)

For a physicist mathematics is not just a tool by means of which phenomena can be calculated, it is the main source of concepts and principles by means of which new theories can be created.
Mathematics in the Physical Sciences.

The bottom line for mathematicians is that the architecture has to be right. In all the mathematics that I did, the essential point was to find the right architecture. It's like building a bridge. Once the main lines of the structure are right, then the details miraculously fit. The problem is the overall design.
"Freeman Dyson: Mathematician, Physicist, and Writer". Interview with Donald J. Albers, The College Mathematics Journal, vol 25, no. 1, January 1994

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Eddington, Sir Arthur (1882-1944)
Proof is the idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC: Rome Press Inc., 1988.
We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about `and'.
In N. Rose Mathematical Maxims and Minims, Raleigh NC: Rome Press Inc., 1988.
We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origins. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own.
Space, Time and Gravitation. 1920.
It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.
I believe there are 15,747,724,136,275,002,577,605,653,961,181,555,468 ,044,717,914,527,116,709,366,231,425,076,185,631,0 31,296 protons in the universe and the same number of electrons.
The Philosophy of Physical Science. Cambridge, 1939.
To the pure geometer the radius of curvature is an incidental characteristic - like the grin of the Cheshire cat. To the physicist it is an indispensable characteristic. It would be going too far to say that to the physicist the cat is merely incidental to the grin. Physics is concerned with interrelatedness such as the interrelatedness of cats and grins. In this case the "cat without a grin" and the "grin without a cat" are equally set aside as purely mathematical phantasies.
The Expanding Universe..
Human life is proverbially uncertain; few things are more certain than the solvency of a life-insurance company.
In J. R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.

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Edwards, Jonathon When I am violently beset with temptations, or cannot rid myself of evil thoughts, [I resolve] to do some Arithmetic, or Geometry, or some other study, which necessarily engages all my thoughts, and unavoidably keeps them from wandering.
In T. Mallon A Book of One's Own. Ticknor & Fields, New York, 1984, p. 106-107.

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Egrafov, M.
If you ask mathematicians what they do, yo always get the same answer. They think. They think about difficult and unusual problems. They do not think about ordinary problems: they just write down the answers.
Mathematics Magazine, v. 65 no. 5, December 1992.