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Paul Halmos
9 quotes
“I read once that the true mark of a pro — at anything — is that he understands, loves, and is good at even the drudgery of his profession.”
Paul Halmos (1916–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The author discusses valueless measures in pointless spaces.”
Paul Halmos (1916–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mathematics is not a deductive science — that's a cliché. When you try to prove a theorem, you don't just list the hypotheses, and then start to reason. What you do is trial and error, experimentation, guesswork. You want to find out what the facts are, and what you do is in that respect similar to what a laboratory technician does. Possibly philosophers would look on us mathematicians the same way as we look on the technicians, if they dared.”
Paul Halmos (1916–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Don't just read it; fight it! Ask your own question, look for your own examples, discover your own proofs. Is the hypothesis necessary? Is the converse true? What happens in the classical special case? What about the degenerate cases? Where does the proof use the hypothesis?”
Paul Halmos (1916–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What does it take to be [a mathematician]? I think I know the answer: you have to be born right, you must continually strive to become perfect, you must love mathematics more than anything else, you must work at it hard and without stop, and you must never give up.”
Paul Halmos (1916–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I like words more than numbers, and I always did.”
Paul Halmos (1916–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It takes a long time to learn to live — by the time you learn your time is gone.”
Paul Halmos (1916–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was too near it then to see how shallow it all was...”
Paul Halmos (1916–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'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.”
Paul Halmos (1916–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source