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

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.

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."

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.

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

don't let someone rearrange your path because they lost sight of their own.

I didn't know how to tell him that I hadn't lost the instinct to survive and yet at the same time I didn't feel much need for self-preservation, that somehow there was a distinction between the two.

I have become convinced that we blacks spend too much time on the playing field and too little time in libraries.

I'M SIGNIFICANT!!! ... Say's the dust speck.

Every country in the world now needs to have its veterinary services on high alert for H5N1 to be sure they are not caught unawares.

You can choose to be peaceful right here and now ... it has nothing to do with what other people do or think.

The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it.

I've always been slow but I'm even slower now. I'm more into the waiting, or I guess I'm more patient about the waiting.

I was now prepared to accept any faith so long as it did not demand a direct denial of reason, which would have been a deceit.

Don't fear the light within. May it ignite the Sacred Flame in your soul.