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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index W > André Weil Quotes

André Weil
(6 May 1906 - 6 Aug 1998)

mathematician.

Science Quotes by André Weil (2 quotes)

Every mathematician worthy of the name has experienced, if only rarely, 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….
— André Weil
In The Apprenticeship of a Mathematician (1992), 91.
Science quotes on:  |  Do (1905)  |  Eager (17)  |  Exaltation (5)  |  Experience (494)  |  Feel (371)  |  Feeling (259)  |  Hour (192)  |  Last (425)  |  Lucid (9)  |  Mathematician (407)  |  Miraculous (11)  |  Name (359)  |  Repeat (44)  |  State (505)  |  Succeed (114)  |  Thought (995)  |  Time (1911)  |  Unable (25)  |  Will (2350)  |  Work (1402)  |  Worthy (35)

God exists since mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exists since we cannot prove it.
— André Weil
Given as “A. Weil has said…”, in Paul C. Rosenbloom, The Elements of Mathematical Logic (1950), 72. Note that Rosenbloom gives the quote in narrative form, not within quotation marks, which suggests these words may not be verbatim. Later texts have added quotation marks [which may not be justified. —Webmaster] As yet, Webmaster has not found an earlier source to validate whether the quotations marks can be used. (Can you help?)
Science quotes on:  |  Consistent (50)  |  Devil (34)  |  Exist (458)  |  God (776)  |  Mathematics (1395)  |  Prove (261)



Quotes by others about André Weil (1)

André Weil suggested that there is a logarithmic law at work: first-rate people attract other first-rate people, but second-rate people tend to hire third-raters, and third-rate people hire fifth-raters. If a dean or a president is genuinely interested in building and maintaining a high-quality university (and some of them are), then he must not grant complete self-determination to a second-rate department; he must, instead, use his administrative powers to intervene and set things right. That’s one of the proper functions of deans and presidents, and pity the poor university in which a large proportion of both the faculty and the administration are second-raters; it is doomed to diverge to minus infinity.
In I Want to be a Mathematician: an Automathography (1985), 123.
Science quotes on:  |  Administration (15)  |  Attract (25)  |  Both (496)  |  Build (211)  |  Building (158)  |  Complete (209)  |  Dean (2)  |  Department (93)  |  Determination (80)  |  Diverge (3)  |  Doom (34)  |  Faculty (76)  |  First (1302)  |  First-Rate (2)  |  Function (235)  |  Grant (76)  |  High (370)  |  High-Quality (2)  |  Hire (7)  |  Infinity (96)  |  Interest (416)  |  Intervene (8)  |  Large (398)  |  Law (913)  |  Logarithm (12)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Minus (7)  |  Must (1525)  |  Other (2233)  |  People (1031)  |  Poor (139)  |  Power (771)  |  President (36)  |  Proper (150)  |  Proportion (140)  |  Quality (139)  |  Right (473)  |  Second-Rate (4)  |  Self (268)  |  Set (400)  |  Tend (124)  |  Thing (1914)  |  University (130)  |  Use (771)  |  Work (1402)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
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James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
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Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
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Frederick Banting
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- 80 -
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Louis Pasteur
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Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
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Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
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Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
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Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
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- 10 -
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John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
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Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
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