I really believed that I was on the right track, but that did not mean that I would necessarily reach my goal

I tried to fit it in with some previous broad conceptual understanding of some part of mathematics that would clarify the particular problem I was thinking about.

Pure mathematicians just love to try unsolved problems - they love a challenge.

Always try the problem that matters most to you.

I had this rare privilege of being able to pursue in my adult life, what had been my childhood dream.

Mathematicians aren't satisfied because they know there are no solutions up to four million or four billion, they really want to know that there are no solutions up to infinity.

The definition of a good mathematical problem is the mathematics it generates rather than the problem itself.

I grew up in Cambridge in England, and my love of mathematics dates from those early childhood days.

The greatest problem for mathematicians now is probably the Riemann Hypothesis.

I never use a computer.

However impenetrable it seems, if you don't try it, then you can never do it.

Never expect a yield of milk from a bull.

Freedom of speech is always under attack by Fascist mentality, which exists in all parts of the world, unfortunately.

To begin by always thinking of love as an action rather than a feeling is one way in which anyone using the word in this manner automatically assumes accountability and responsibility.

It is hypocrisy for man to make any other use of his religion, or the credit of it, than to sanctify and save his soul.

I think there's nothing more dangerous than mislearning lessons of history, and we do it perpetually.

Mathematics is really an art, not a science.

Winners don't eat wieners.

It was phenomenal to see what was going on there. I came away from there so energized about India, and I was pretty sure that [Narenda] Modi was going to win an election that wasn't easy to see.

I would have loved to have been in The Stand. I would also loved to have been in The Mask.

Somewhere around the place I've got an unfinished short story about Schrodinger's Dog; it was mostly moaning about all the attention the cat was getting.