I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. -- John Adams
We could use up two Eternities in learning all that is to be learned about our own world and the thousands of nations that have arisen and flourished and vanished from it. Mathematics alone would occupy me eight million years. -- Mark Twain
If I were to awaken after having slept for a thousand years, my first question would be: Has the Riemann hypothesis been proven? -- David Hilbert
A formal manipulator in mathematics often experiences the discomforting feeling that his pencil surpasses him in intelligence. -- Howard Eves
The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry. -- Bertrand Russell
Mathematics seems to endow one with something like a new sense. -- Charles Darwin
To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature ... If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in. -- Richard Feynman
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. -- Galileo Galilei
It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry. -- Thomas Paine
I believe that through its rational evaluation of truth and indifference to personal belief, science transcends religious and political divisions and so does bind us into a greater, more resilient whole. -- Brian Greene
That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. -- Christopher Hitchens
There is no other species on Earth that does science. It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. -- Carl Sagan