A precisian professor had the habit of saying: "... quartic polynomial ax^4+bx^3+cx^2+dx+e , where e need not be the base of the natural logarithms."

Before creation, God did just pure mathematics. Then He thought it would be a pleasant change to do some applied.

Try a hard problem. You may not solve it, but you will prove something else.

The first test of potential in mathematics is whether you can get anything out of geometry.

The infinitely competent can be uncreative.

The surprising thing about this paper is that a man who could write it would.

I've been giving this lecture to first-year classes for over twenty-five years. You'd think they would begin to understand it by now.

A linguist would be shocked to learn that if a set is not closed this does not mean that it is open, or again that "E is dense in E" does not mean the same thing as "E is dense in itself".

A good mathematical joke is better, and better mathematics, than a dozen mediocre papers.

I listen only to Bach, Beethoven or Mozart. Life is too short to waste on other composers.

Mathematics is a dangerous profession; an appreciable proportion of us go mad.

Their friendship was like a wilted bunch of flowers that she insisted on topping up with water. Why not let it die instead? It was unrealistic to expect a friendship to last forever…

Wall Street is one big turf war. By benefiting one person you are disadvantaging another person.

I hear that in my head all the time now: 'Why don't you go and see?'.

There are writers who can express in as little as twenty pages what I occasionally need as many as two for.

Aikido is the Way and Principle of harmonizing Heaven, Earth and Man.

The choice of personnel, perhaps the most important choice (because 'people are policy'), never proceeds according to plan, but there have been some successful transitions that upheld high standards.

Look at me, chica." When she does, I repeat, "Eres hermosa." "What does it mean?" "You're beautiful.

I didn't just want to be the one who was always looking around at the weird family members. I wanted to make my mistakes.

Certain roles are more challenging than others, but I haven't come across one yet that I can't tackle.