"In the last 30 years, the prestige of mathematics has declined in all countries. I think that mathematicians are partially to be blamed as well—foremost, Hilbert and Bourbaki—the ones who proclaimed that the goal of their science was investigation of all corollaries of arbitrary systems of axioms."

Vladimir Arnold Mathematics See all quotes by Vladimir Arnold →

React to this quote

More by Vladimir Arnold

“V. I. Arnold's web page”

“Problems from 5 to 15, a text by Arnold for school students, available at the IMAGINARY platform”

“In the middle of the twentieth century it was attempted to divide physics and mathematics. The consequences turned out to be catastrophic. Whole generations of mathematicians grew up without knowing half of their science and, of course, in total ignorance of any other sciences. They first began teaching their ugly scholastic pseudo-mathematics to their students, then to schoolchildren .”

“V. I. Arnold lecturing on Continued Fractions”

“On Teaching Mathematics, text of a talk espousing Arnold's opinions on mathematical instruction”

“In almost all textbooks, even the best, this principle is presented so that it is impossible to understand." . I have not chosen to break with tradition.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Moral conduct includes every thing in which men are active and for which they are accountable. They are active in their desires, their affections, their designs, their intentions, and in every thing t…"

— Nathaniel Emmons

Art1704–1740

#love

"The principles of the theory of probabilities serve to guide us in the election of... hypotheses."

— George Boole

Mathematics1815–1864

#science

"Look, I tried the cat experiment. On the third trial, the cat was dead. On each of the subsequent 413 trials, it remained dead. Am I doing something wrong?"

— James Nicoll

Literature

#science

"Major parties have lived more for patronage than for principles; their goal has been to bind together a sufficiently large coalition of diverse interests to get into power; and once in power, to arran…"

— Richard Hofstadter

Education1916–1970

#life