Are mathematical ideas invented or discovered? This question has been repeatedly posed by philosophers through the ages and will probably be with us forever.

God created infinity, and man, unable to understand infinity, had to invent finite sets.

We often hear that mathematics consists mainly of "proving theorems." Is a writer's job mainly that of "writing sentences?"

If we have no idea why a statement is true, we can still prove it by induction.

Nature imitates mathematics.

The progress of mathematics can be viewed as progress from the infinite to the finite.

There is something in statistics that makes it very similar to astrology.

[In mathematics] There are two kinds of mistakes. There are fatal mistakes that destroy a theory, but there are also contingent ones, which are useful in testing the stability of a theory.

Running overtime is the one unforgivable error a lecturer can make. After fifty minutes (one microcentury as von Neumann used to say) everybody's attention will turn elsewhere.

It is a common public relations gimmick to give the entire credit for the solution of famous problems to the one mathematician who is responsible for the last step.

The pendulum of mathematics swings back and forth towards abstraction and away from it with a timing that remains to be estimated.

The things you struggle with today are the things you choose to struggle with.Because you believe that what you want to accomplish, is worth struggling for.

It’s a lot easier to be angry at someone than it is to tell them you’re hurt.

Terror starts picking at the seams of my mind, throwing hateful words like rapture and holocaust at me.

People are not evil; they are schlemiels.

Another one of President Barack Obama's nominees is having tax issues, which proves one thing: The Democrats like raising the taxes, but they hate paying them.

Talk about the joys of the unexpected, can they compare with the joys of the expected, of finding everything delightfully and completely what you knew it was going to be?

It's very tough for me to focus. I'm like: 'Look, something shiny! No, focus. Oh, there goes a butterfly!'

The fact that somebody is reducing your salary is just telling me they're not satisfied with what you're doing.

Don't focus on the good old days, look forward towards the good new days.