"God exists since mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exists since we cannot prove it."
"In the future, as in the past, the great ideas [of mathematics] must be simplifying ideas, the creator must always be one who clarifies, for himself, and for others, the most complicated issues of formulas and concepts."
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Source: Mathematical Circles Adieu: A Fourth Collection of Mathematical Stories and Anecdotes. Book by Howard Whitley Eves, 1977.
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More quotes by Andre Weil
"Rigour is to the mathematician what morality is to men."
"Every mathematician worthy of the name has experienced . . . the state of lucid exaltation in which one thought succeeds another as if miraculously . . . this feeling may last for hours at a time, even for days. Once you have experienced it, you are eager to repeat it but unable to do it at will, unless perhaps by dogged work. . . ."
"First rate mathematicians choose first rate people, but second rate mathematicians choose third rate people."
"When a branch of mathematics ceases to interest any but the specialists, it is very near its death, or at any rate dangerously close to a paralysis, from which it can be rescued only by being plunged back into the vivifying source of the science."
"What is crucial is there be laws."