Kurt Gödel quotes

Kurt Gödel was an Austrian logician, mathematician, and philosopher, widely regarded as one of the most important logicians in history. His incompleteness theorems transformed mathematics and revealed fundamental limits of formal systems. He profoundly influenced logic, philosophy, and the foundations of mathematics. Here are 20 of his quotes:

Either mathematics is too big for the human mind, or the human mind is more than a machine. (Kurt Gödel)
Ninety percent of [contemporary philosophers] see their principal 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. View quote
Kurt Gödel
I don't believe in empirical science. I only believe in a priori truth. View quote
Kurt Gödel
The more I think about language, the more it amazes me that people ever understand each other at all. View quote
Kurt Gödel
I like Islam, it is a consistent idea of religion and open-minded. View quote
Kurt Gödel
But every error is due to extraneous factors (such as emotion and education); reason itself does not err. View quote
Kurt Gödel
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. View quote
Kurt Gödel
I am convinced of the afterlife, independent of theology. If the world is rationally constructed, there must be an afterlife. View quote
Kurt Gödel
The meaning of world is the separation of wish and fact. View quote
Kurt Gödel
I don't believe in natural science. View quote
Kurt Gödel
The development of mathematics towards 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. (Kurt Gödel)
The meaning of the world is the separation of wish and fact. Wish is a force as applied to thinking beings, to realize something. A fulfilled wish is a union of wish and fact. The meaning of the whole world is the separation and the union of fact and wish. View quote
Kurt Gödel
There is a difference between a thing and talking about a thing. View quote
Kurt Gödel
To every ω-consistent recursive class κ of formulae there correspond recursive class signs r, such that neither v Gen r nor Neg (v Gen r) belongs to Flg (κ) (where v is the free variable of r). View quote
Kurt Gödel
Only someone who (like the Intuitionist) denies that the concepts and axioms of classical set theory have any meaning could be satisfied with such a solution, not someone who believes them to describe some well-determined reality. For in reality Cantor's conjecture must be either true or false, and its undecidability from the axioms as known today can only mean that these axioms do not contain a complete description of reality. View quote
Kurt Gödel
All generalisations - perhaps except this one - are false. View quote
Kurt Gödel
Nothing new had been done in Logic since Aristotle! View quote
Kurt Gödel
The physical laws, in their observable consequences, have a finite limit of precision. View quote
Kurt Gödel
The axiomatic method is very powerful. View quote
Kurt Gödel
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. View quote
Kurt Gödel