Mathematicians have tried in vain to this day to discover some order in the sequence of prime numbers, and we have reason to believe that it is a mystery into which the human mind will never penetrate.
— Leonhard Euler
Thrilling Prime Numbers quotations
A prime number is one (which is) measured by a unit alone.
The problem of distinguishing prime numbers from composite numbers and of resolving the latter into their prime factors is known to be one of the most important and useful in arithmetic.
Number is divided into even and odd. Even number is divided into the following: evenly even, evenly uneven, and unevenly uneven. Odd number is divided into the following: prime and incomposite, composite, and a third intermediate class (mediocris) which in a certain way is prime and incomposite but in another way secondary and composite.
In a great number of the cosmogonic myths the world is said to have developed from a great water, which was the prime matter. In many cases, as for instance in an Indian myth, this prime matter is indicated as a solution, out of which the solid earth crystallized out.
3 is a prime, 5 is a prime, and 7 is a prime.
Why bother with non-prime numbers when the primes can do everything?
Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away.
I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.
Quadratic reciprocity is the song of love in the land of prime numbers.
Why add prime numbers? Prime numbers are made to be multiplied, not added.
I, Galileo, son of the late Vicenzo Galilei, swear that I never said that the prime numbers are useless. What I said was that you cannot count lunar craters by counting 2, 3, 5, 7.
The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers.
Primes are the atoms of the arithmetic - the hydrogen and oxygen of the world of numbers
Although the prime numbers are rigidly determined, they somehow feel like experimental data.
The brain is the only kind of object capable of understanding that the cosmos is even there, or why there are infinitely many prime numbers, or that apples fall because of the curvature of space-time, or that obeying its own inborn instincts can be morally wrong, or that it itself exists.
3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime. According to some ancient manuscripts 9 is not a prime number, but beyond the distant horizon of the oceans, in the New World that I am going to discover, there are surely lots of them.
The only option to avoid war is the departure of the number one warmonger in the world US President George W Bush. His policy has brought disaster to the United States. This crazy man should go and also his subject, disciple and follower UK Prime Minister Tony Blair.
The largest known prime number is 2^32582657-1.
I am proud to say that I memorized all its digits-in binary.
Euclid manages to obtain a rigorous proof without ever dealing with infinity, by reducing the problem [of the infinitude of primes] to the study of finite numbers. This is exactly what contemporary mathematical analysis does.
My dad, a mathematician, raised me to believe that mathematics is beautiful, so math is a part of my imaginative terrain. In my late 20s I wrote several 11-line poems because I wanted to create poems that couldn't be uniformly divided into couplets, tercets, or quatrains, 11 being a prime number.
We differ with the Israeli Government about a number of things, and they know that. In the past, I have discussed with Prime Minister [Ariel] Sharon these issues. The fact that we differ about something or the other shouldn't be a matter of strain.
3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is a paradox;
as is a paradox why the number 1 is not prime if it has no other divisors besides himself.
Number theorists say that number theory is too complicated, so let's pretend that there is only one prime number, and then let's combine all these results. Surprisingly, sometimes it works.
My work on prime gaps lead to lots of media coverage, some good, some bad, some ugly, and some merely ridiculous. For example, a reporter of our university newspaper, who admitted that he is still learning English, wrote that "Prof. Goldston solved one of the most controversial problems in the prime number theory last month with support from his Turkish partner."
While a great many other ideas and measures are of prime importance for the good life of the community, that which concerns its architectural expression is the notion of the community as limited in numbers, and in area... To express these relations clearly, to embody them in buildings and roads and gardens in which each individual structure will be subordinated to the whole - this is the end of community planning.
It never happens that, when we go home and open the refrigerator, we see all infinitely many prime numbers there.
The prime ideal is a princess of the world of ideals.
Her father is the prince 'Point' in the world of geometry. Her mother is the princess 'Prime Numbers' in the world of numbers. She inherits the purity from her parents.
If all sentient beings in the universe disappeared, there would remain a sense in which mathematical objects and theorems would continue to exist even though there would be no one around to write or talk about them. Huge prime numbers would continue to be prime, even if no one had proved them prime.
...Then it said on the news, "And tonight the Prime Minister has just got to Number Ten." I looked down at Jas and said, "Ooer." Meaning he'd got to number ten on the snogging scale. And then we both laughed like loons. Vati just looked at us like we were mad.