Top 14 Paul Erdős Quotes

SF means Supreme Fascist — this would show that God is bad. I don't claim that this is correct, or that God exists, but it is just sort of half a joke. … As a joke I said, "What is the purpose of Life?" "Proof and conjecture, and keep the SF's score low." Now, the game with the SF is defined as follows: If you do something bad the SF gets at least two points. If you don't do something good which you could have done, the SF gets at least one point. And if nothing — if you are okay, then no one gets any point. And the aim is to keep the SF's score low.

This one's from the Book!

We'll continue tomorrow — if I live.

Finally I am becoming stupider no more.

Végre nem butulok tovább

It is not enough to be in the right place at the right time. You should also have an open mind at the right time.

If numbers aren't beautiful, I don't know what is.

Some French socialist said that private property was theft … I say that private property is a nuisance.

The SF created us to enjoy our suffering. … The sooner we die, the sooner we defy His plans.

Television is something the Russians invented to destroy American education.

Suppose aliens invade the earth and threaten to obliterate it in a year's time unless human beings can find the Ramsey number for red five and blue five. We could marshal the world's best minds and fastest computers, and within a year we could probably calculate the value. If the aliens demanded the Ramsey number for red six and blue six, however, we would have no choice but to launch a preemptive attack.

Another roof, another proof.

I'm not competent to judge. But no doubt he was a great man.

I think that, as , a very clever young Israeli mathematician, once said, "I am an opportunist. I do what I can do." If there is anything in number theory that I can do, I certainly do it. But you see some of the problems in number theory are enormously difficult and many of these classic problems are very, very hard to make any progress in.