Hermann Weyl - Quotes

Quotes

Weyl's comment, although half a joke, sums up his personality:

My work always tried to unite the truth with the beautiful, but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.
The question for the ultimate foundations and the ultimate meaning of mathematics remains open; we do not know in which direction it will find its final solution nor even whether a final objective answer can be expected at all. "Mathematizing" may well be a creative activity of man, like language or music, of primary originality, whose historical decisions defy complete objective rationalization.
Gesammelte Abhandlungen
The problems of mathematics are not problems in a vacuum....
vicious circle, which has crept into analysis through the foggy nature of the usual set and function concepts, is not a minor, easily avoided form of error in analysis.
In these days the angel of topology and the devil of abstract algebra fight for the soul of each individual mathematical domain. Weyl (1939b, p.500)

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