Paul Erdos Quotes

[When asked why are numbers beautiful?] It’s like asking why is Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony beautiful. If you don't see why, someone can't tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren't beautiful, nothing is.

A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems

I'll tell you once, and I'll tell you again. There's always a prime between n and 2n.

Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper

When Euler died, he simply said I am finished and collapsed, to which someone in the audience muttered darkly" Another conjecture of Euler is proved

Non numerantur, sed ponderantur

When the interests of Erdos's colleagues drifted away from pure mathematics, he made no secret of his disapproval. "When I wasn't sure whether to stay a mathematician or go to the Technical University and become an engineer, Vazsonyi recalled, "Erdos warned me: 'I'll hide, and when you enter the Technical University, I will shoot you.' That settled the matter." When probability theorist Mark Kac had a paper published in the Journal if Applied Physics based on his work during the war at MIT's Radiation Laboratory, Erdos sent him a one sentence postcard: "I am praying for your soul." Erdos was "reminding me," Kac said, "that I might be straying from the path of true virtue, which, as a matter of fact, I was.