Kurt Godel Quotes

Said to physicist John Bahcall. I don't believe in natural science.

All generalisations - perhaps except this one - are false.

A consistency proof for [any] system ... can be carried out only by means of modes of inference that are not formalized in the system ... itself.

The development of mathematics toward greater precision has led, as is well known, to the formalization of large tracts of it, so that one can prove any theorem using nothing but a few mechanical rules ... One might therefore conjecture that these axioms and rules of inference are sufficient to decide any mathematical question that can at all be formally expressed in these systems. It will be shown below that this is not the case, that on the contrary there are in the two systems mentioned relatively simple problems in the theory of integers that cannot be decided on the basis of the axioms.

All generalizations, with the possible exception of this one, are false.

I don't believe in natural science.

Ninety percent of [contemporary philosophers] see their principle task as that of beating religion out of men's heads ... We are far from being able to provide scientific basis for the theological world view.

Time-travel is possible, but no person will ever manage to kill his past self. Godel laughed his laugh then, and concluded, The a priori is greatly neglected. Logic is very powerful.

The formation in geological time of the human body by the laws of physics (or any other laws of similar nature), starting from a random distribution of elementary particles and the field is as unlikely as the separation of the atmosphere into its components. The complexity of the living things has to be present within the material [from which they are derived] or in the laws [governing their formation].

The physical laws, in their observable consequences, have a finite limit of precision.

But, despite their remoteness from sense experience, we do have something like a perception of the objects of set theory, as is seen from the fact that the axioms force themselves upon us as being true. I don't see any reason why we should have less confidence in this kind of perception, i.e., in mathematical intuition, than in sense perception.

There is a difference between a thing and talking about a thing.

The axiomatic method is very powerful

I don't believe in empirical science. I only believe in a priori truth.

Our total reality and total existence are beautiful and meaningful . . . . We should judge reality by the little which we truly know of it. Since that part which conceptually we know fully turns out to be so beautiful, the real world of which we know so little should also be beautiful. Life may be miserable for seventy years and happy for a million years: the short period of misery may even be necessary for the whole.