Try a hard problem. You may not solve it, but you will prove something else.

Before creation, God did just pure mathematics. Then He thought it would be a pleasant change to do some applied.

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.

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

A socialist is just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, fruitless, unremitting toil.

Discretion is nothing other than the sense of justice with respect to the sphere of the intimate contents of life.

I got on my knees and sort of communicated with the spirits. When I came out, I was in charge. I couldn't have acted that, I couldn't have written that.

When my hair's all but gone and my memory fades And the crowds don't remember my name When my hands don't play the strings the same way I know you will still love me the same.

A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.

See, I'm looking for a man that'll rub me slow, make me sing real high when he goes down low.

It is unnatural in a large field to have only one shaft of wheat, and in the infinite Universe only one living world.

Andreotti had style and class; Berlusconi does not

I also like a great Caesar salad with anchovies, although I don't know why some places say 'with anchovies.' If you're making a proper Caesar salad, it's going to have anchovies.

Self-confidence is either a petty pride in our own narrowness, or a realization of our duty and privilege as one of God's children.