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".

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 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.

It is better to dwell on the beautiful things in life than the negative.

Perhaps the universe is a big fat consciousness and the matter is just an illusion.

Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.

At times like this, Eryn didn't feel like they were just twins. They were teammates. They were partners. They were two halves of the same brain.

True love believes everything, and bears everything, and trusts everything.

With the exception of capitalism, there is nothing so revolting as revolution.

He is rich who wishes no more than he has.

Sometimes we become what we see. Sometimes we take what we see and make it the model for what we refuse to become.

The median isn't the message.

There is no moral difference between gambling at cards or in lotteries or on the race track and gambling in the stock market. One method is just pernicious to the body politic as the other kind.