Charles Hermite

“I turn aside with a shudder of horror from this lamentable plague of functions which have no derivatives.”

“There exists, if I am not mistaken, an entire world which is the totality of mathematical truths, to which we have access only with our mind, just as a world of physical reality exists, the one like the other independent of ourselves, both of divine creation.”

“Abel has left mathematicians enough to keep them busy for 500 years.”

“We are servants rather than masters in mathematics.”