I recall once saying that when I had given the same lecture several times I couldn't help feeling that they really ought to know it by now.

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.

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

If you're going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use two feet.

All I have is me, myself and I and we are all getting really tired of each other.

I want a man who watches me walk away.

If you want to build a boat, do not instruct the men to saw wood, stitch the sails, prepare the tools and organize the work, but make them long for setting sail and travel to distant lands.

When I play, I make love – it is the same thing.

It looked to me like a vamp version of a pissing contest. Men will be boys.

Our students learn more in 30 days than one could learn in 30 years without our training. To really maximize your potential as an umpire, you need to get a solid foundation as soon as you can.

[quoting someone else] the American constitution is a document designed by geniuses to be eventually interpreted by idiots

My life really began when I married my husband.

The more that we choose not to talk about domestic violence, the more we shy away from the issue, the more we lose.