I dislike frontiers, political or intellectual, and I find that ignoring them is an essential catalyst for creative thought. Ideas should flow withou…

- Michael Atiyah

In the broad light of day mathematicians check their equations and their proofs, leaving no stone unturned in their search for rigour. But, at night,…

- Michael Atiyah

Everything useful in mathematics has been devised for a purpose. Even if you don't know it, the guy who did it first, he knew what he was doing. Bana…

- Michael Atiyah

If theory is the role of the architect, then such beautiful proofs are the role of the craftsman. Of course, as with the great renaissance artists, s…

- Michael Atiyah

The aim of mathematics is to explain as much as possible in simple terms.

- Michael Atiyah

If you attack a mathematical problem directly, very often you come to a dead end, nothing you do seems to work and you feel that if only you could pe…

- Michael Atiyah

I think it is said that Gauss had ten different proofs for the law of quadratic reciprocity. Any good theorem should have several proofs, the more th…

- Michael Atiyah

There is no clear-cut distinction between example and theory

- Michael Atiyah

I'm not the sort of person who does my mathematics writing on paper. I do that at the last stage of the game. I do my mathematics in my head. I sit d…

- Michael Atiyah