Quotes from the Mathematical Quotations Server

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Churchman, C. W.
The measure of our intellectual capacity is the capacity to feel less and less satisfied with our answers to better and better problems.
In J.E. Littlewood A Mathematician's Miscellany. Methuen and Co., Ltd. 1953.

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Cocteau
The composer opens the cage door for arithmetic, the draftsman gives geometry its freedom.

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Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)
...from the time of Kepler to that of Newton, and from Newton to Hartley, not only all things in external nature, but the subtlest mysteries of life and organization, and even of the intellect and moral being, were conjured within the magic circle of mathematical formulae.
The Theory of Life.

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Comte, Auguste (1798-1857)
C'este donc par l'�ude des math�atiques, et seulement par elle, que l'on peut se faire une id� juste et approfondie de ce que c'est qu'une science.
Quoted by T. H. Huxley in Fortnightly Review, Vol. II, N.S. 5.

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Conrad, Joseph
Don't talk to me of your Archimedes' lever. He was an absentminded person with a mathematical imagination. Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.
Preface to A Personal Record.

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Coolidge, Julian Lowell (1873 - 1954)
[Upon proving that the best betting strategy for "Gambler's Ruin" was to bet all on the first trial.]
It is true that a man who does this is a fool. I have only proved that a man who does anything else is an even bigger fool.
In H. Eves Return to Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1988.

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Copernicus, Nicholaus (1473-1543)
Mathematics is written for mathematicians.
De Revolutionibus.

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Crick, Francis Harry Compton (1916 - )
In my experience most mathematicians are intellectually lazy and especially dislike reading experimental papers. He (Ren�Thom) seemed to have very strong biological intuitions but unfortunately of negative sign.
What Mad Pursuit. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988.

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Crowe, Michael
Revolutions never occur in mathematics.
Historia Mathematica. 1975.

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D'Alembert, Jean Le Rond (1717-1783)
Just go on..and faith will soon return.
[To a friend hesitant with respect to infinitesimals.]
In P. J. Davis and R. Hersh The Mathematical Experience, Boston: Birkh�ser, 1981.

Thus metaphysics and mathematics are, among all the sciences that belong to reason, those in which imagination has the greatest role. I beg pardon of those delicate spirits who are detractors of mathematics for saying this .... The imagination in a mathematician who creates makes no less difference than in a poet who invents.... Of all the great men of antiquity, Archimedes may be the one who most deserves to be placed beside Homer.
Discours Preliminaire de L'Encyclopedie, Tome 1, 1967. pp 47 - 48