David Mumford Quotes

#1. My own view is that no major advance was ever found as a result of a committee's recommendation ... We should be honest in telling these agencies we often don't know where some ideas are going to lead, but we hope they are going to clarify a problem.

David Mumford

#2. The world is a very complicated place, as babies know.

David Mumford

#3. I think that mathematics can benefit by acknowledging that the creation of good models is just as important as proving deep theorems.

David Mumford

#4. A Noah's Ark of mathematicians, their lives, loves, hard times, and madnesses, Loving and Hating Mathematics shows our community with all its warts as well as its triumphs. I especially liked the chapter on much-hated school mathematics, 'Almost All Children Left Behind.'

David Mumford

#5. Logic has virtually nothing to do with the way we think.

David Mumford

#6. I am accustomed, as a professional mathematician, to living in a sort of vacuum, surrounded by people who declare with an odd sort of pride that they are mathematically illiterate.

David Mumford

#7. Images of the world are Renormalization Group fixed points.

David Mumford

#8. The world is continuous, but the mind is discrete.

David Mumford

#9. The extreme possibilities are the most illuminating.

David Mumford

#10. Algebraic geometry seems to have acquired the reputation of being esoteric, exclusive, and very abstract, with adherents who are secretly plotting to take over all the rest of mathematics. In one respect this last point is accurate.

David Mumford