Mathematicians create by acts of insights and intuition. Logic then sanctions the conquests of intuition.

The writing in mathematics text is not only laconic to a fault; it is cold, monotonous, dry, dull, and even ungrammatical... The books are not only printed by machines; they are written by machines.

Statistics: the mathematical theory of ignorance.

Universities hire professors the way some men choose wives - they want the ones the others will admire.

A elegantly executed proof is a poem in all but the form in which it is written.

Actually, most mathematics courses do not teach reasoning of any kind. Students are so baffled by the material that they are obliged to memorize in order to pass examinations.

Psychologically, the teaching of abstractions first is wrong. Indeed, a thorough understanding of the concrete must precede the abstract.

There is no rigorous definition of rigor.

A proof tells us where to concentrate our doubts.

In brief, the whole world is the totality of mathematically expressible motions of objects in space and time, and the entire universe is a great, harmonious, and mathematically designed machine.

Mathematics is a body of knowledge, but it contains no truths.

For me, writing is immortality. It is wisdom. It is never-ending.

Most successful people move from fear to failure

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.

The more I help out, the more successful I become. But I measure success in what it has done for the people around me. That is the real accolade.

The institutional scene in which American man has developed has lacked that accumulation from intervening stages which has been so dominant a feature of the European landscape.

There are no bridges in folk songs because the peasants died building them.

Death is death no matter how it is inflicted

[On her father's death:] Gone was the person who had known me better than anyone else on earth and who had loved and admired me unconditionally since the day I was born.

I know I'm a person who's been bugged for years about the up and down weight thing.

I'm working it out, man. I'm working through some stuff, trying to find my way like everyone.