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

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 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.

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

Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later, he will regret not having left it intact.

If you must have motivation, think of your paycheck on Friday.

For Christians, faith is a precious good, the most valuable personal and social resource. When it is left untapped, the common good suffers - not just the particular interests of Christians.

An economist is a man who knows a hundred ways of making love but doesn't know any women.

I was a dishwasher at one of those Japanese places that cook on your table. Not too fun.

I have always had a hidden wish, a frustrated desire, to run a hotel.

If [Donald] Trump succeeds, then Trump will be the change agent.

We have less reason to be surprised or offended when we find others differ from us in opinion, because we very often differ from ourselves.

One cannot really argue with a mathematical theorem.

...expatriated Americans, even Henry James himself, have always seemed to me somewhat anchorless, rudderless, drifting before thewind.