The infinitely competent can be uncreative.

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 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.

If you're brave enough to do something you better damn well be brave enough to accept the consequences.

I came to terms with not fitting in a long time ago. I never really fitted in. I don't want to fit in. And now people are buying into that.

Pain made you strong. Loss made you powerful.

There's no point apologizing about where you come from.

Pain always produces logic, which is very bad for you.

Science demands objective factual evidence - proof; spiritual experience is subjective and leads to faith.

What to us may seem like a tragedy when it happens eventually can form itself into a gift.

Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done.

Infinitely more important than sharing one's material wealth is sharing the wealth of ourselves-our time and energy, our passion and commitment, and, above all, our love.

For me, writing is 75 percent procrastinating and 25 percent actually sitting down and working.