Below are some of my favorite quotes, listed alphabetically according to the last names.

It appears to me that if one wants to make progress in mathematics, one should study the masters and not the pupils. --- Niels Henrik Abel

Some people may sit back and say, "I want to solve this problem" and they sit down and say, "How do I solve this problem?" I don't. I just move around in the mathematical waters, thinking about things, being curious, interested, talking to people, stirring up ideas; things emerge and I follow them up. Or I see something which connects up with something else I know about, and I try to put them together and things develop. I have practically never started off. with any idea of what I'm going to be doing or where it's going to go. I'm interested in mathematics; I talk, I learn, I discuss and then interesting questions simply emerge. I have never started off with a particular goal, except the goal of understanding mathematics. --- Michael Atiyah

Don't try to make the problem fit your tools; get yourself the tools that fit the problem. --- Toby Berger

I've worked in so many areas—I'm sort of a dilettante. Basically, I'm not interested in doing research and I never have been. I'm interested in understanding, which is quite a different thing. And often to understand something you have to work it out yourself because no one else has done it. --- David Blackwell

The statistical community has been committed to the almost exclusive use of data models. This commitment has led to irrelevant theory, questionable conclusions, and has kept statisticians from working on a large range of interesting current problems. --- Leo Breiman

Esse quam videri. --- Marcus Tullius Cicero

Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler. --- Albert Einstein

It is the object of the statistical processes employed in the reduction of data to exclude this irrelevant information, and to isolate the whole of the relevant information contained in the data. --- R. A. Fisher

I have had my results for a long time, but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them. --- Carl Friedrich Gauß

The ultimate goal of mathematics is to eliminate any need for intelligent thought. --- R. L. Graham et al., Concrete Mathematics

When a situation, from the most humble to the most immense, has been understood in the essential aspects, the proof of what is understood (and of the remainder) falls like a fruit that is just ripe. Whereas the proof snatched like an unripe fruit from the tree of knowledge leaves an after-taste of dissatisfaction, a frustration of our thirst, not at all silenced. --- A. Grothendieck

Do not trust any principle. --- Lucien Le Cam

Good, he did not have enough imagination to become a mathematician. --- David Hilbert

I have tried to avoid long numerical computations, thereby following Riemann's postulate that proofs should be given through ideas and not voluminous computations. --- David Hilbert

Nothing is more practical than a good theory. --- Kurt Lewin

The intelligent engineer will always ask why he is doing something before asking how he should do it. --- James Massey

The problem of intelligence seemed hopelessly profound. I can’t remember considering anything else worth doing. --- by Marvin Minsky

Que sais-je? --- Michel de Montaigne

It is not even wrong. --- Wolfgang Pauli

In reality, there is nothing 'inherent' nor inevitable about either property, for both are just concepts defined by us, and they are there because we say so. --- Jorma Rissanen

We often hear that mathematics consists mainly of "proving theorems." Is a writer's job mainly that of "writing sentences?" --- Gian-Carlo Rota

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. --- Henry Thoreau

One is not performing a service to science if one pretends to have a solution when one does not. --- Leslie Valiant

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen. --- Ludwig Wittgenstein

Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics and leads the philosopher into complete darkness. --- Ludwig Wittgenstein

How can any scientific endeavor which is "relatively easy" be "exciting" or hold out much prospect as a research discipline?...Can the study of this engage for long the serious efforts of first-rate minds? --- Jacob Wolfowitz

人莫鑑於流水而鑑於止水，惟止能止眾止。 --- 莊子

住妄想境，不加了知。於無了知，不辨真實。 --- 圓覺經

傲骨虛心。 --- 鳩山一郎

學問家如說肩背上負著多沉重的學問，那是不對的；如說當初覺得有什麼，現在才曉得原來沒有什麼，那就對了。道理越看得明透，越覺得無甚話可說，還是一點不說的好。心裡明白，口裡講不出來。反過來說，學問淺的人說話愈多，思想不清楚的人名詞越多。讓一個沒有學問的人看見，真要把他嚇壞了！其實道理明透了，名詞便可用，可不用，或隨意拾用。 --- 梁漱溟

我們貢獻這所大學于宇宙的精神。 --- 傅斯年

重要的思想不需要是對的。 --- 張五常

一度シャッターを切ること、それですべては終わる。 --- 中平卓馬

知識分子和那種只會讀一堆書的書呆子不同喔！怎麼說…他們可以化身為小丑模樣，也可以化身成觀察自己小丑模樣的自己，還有，從旁煽風點火的自己，以及取笑這一切的自己。 --- 荒木經惟