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Gottlob Frege Quotes

Every good mathematician is at least half a philosopher, and every good philosopher is at least half a mathematician.

Every good mathematician is at least half a philosopher, and every good philosopher is at least half a mathematician.

Attributed in "Mathematics as grammar: 'Grammar' in Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics during the Middle Period" by A. A. B. Aspeitia, Indiana University, (p. 25), 2000.

...one can hardly deny that mankind has a common store of thoughts which is transmitted from one generation to another.

Gottlob Frege (1952). “Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege”

A scientist can hardly meet with anything more undesirable than to have the foundations give way just as the work is finished. I was put in this position by a letter from Mr. Bertrand Russell when the work was nearly through the press.

Note in the appendix of "Grundlagen der Arithmetik" (Vol. 2), after Frege had received a letter of Bertrand Russell in which Russell had explained his discovery of, what is now known as, Russell's paradox, 1903.

Your discovery of the contradiction caused me the greatest surprise and, I would almost say, consternation, since it has shaken the basis on which I intended to build my arithmetic.

"From Frege to Godel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879-1931". Book edited by J. van Heijenoort, "Letter to Bertrand Russel" (1902), 1967.