Pierre de Fermat

The search for truth is the most noble occupation of the mind; its publication, a duty.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

The art of proposing a question must be held of higher value than solving it.

Mathematics has its own mysteries, no less profound than those of nature.

I have found that the path of least time also governs the refraction of light.

Nature always acts by the shortest paths.

Given any number of polygonal numbers, to find as many others such that the sum of each set is equal.

I challenge the English mathematicians to solve this problem...

I do not write for the crowd, but for those who are capable of understanding the mysteries of numbers.

The beauty of arithmetic lies in its certainty and its evidence, which admits of no dispute.

A number which is a power, say a square, can also be a sum of two squares in many ways.

There is no right triangle in numbers whose area is a square.

I have solved it, but the solution is too long to be written here.

The advancement of human knowledge is a step-by-step process; each generation builds upon the last.

To understand the properties of numbers is to understand the language in which the universe is written.

I have sent you a collection of theorems, not their proofs, to test the ingenuity of your mathematicians.

The greatest truths are often the simplest, though not the most easily discovered.

In mathematics, it is not enough to know; one must also apply.

I have considered the problem of points, and my solution is based on equitable expectations.

The value of a future gain must be discounted in proportion to the distance in time.