Quotations

Lipman Bers


View the biography of Lipman Bers


... mathematics is very much like poetry ... what makes a good poem -- a great poem -- is that there is a large amount of thought expressed in very few words. In this sense formulas like Bers1 or Bers2 are poems.
Quoted in D Albers, G Alexanderson, C Reid, More Mathematical People
Mathematics is a collection of cheap tricks and dirty jokes.
There are two kind of mathematicians, smart ones, and dumb ones. I am one of the dumb ones.