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

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.

[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.

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

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.

Everything in life is possible only when you set your priorities straight”.

Mr. Lisbon had the feeling that he didn't know who she was, that children were only strangers you agreed to live with.

And the further they go, the more they'll remember, they can take it from me.

A whole bunch of big technological shocks occurred when Asian innovations - paper, gunpowder, the stirrup, the moldboard plow and so on - came to Europe via the Silk Road.

The question was heatedly debated of how much Western culture should be brought into China.

I wasn't born with a tie or with Mark Shields stapled to my left hip. I have another life.

I'm still shocked every time I see snow. The first bit of snow each year... I stay up and I watch it. And then I go out and pick it up and eat it and move around in it.

Pity costs nothing, and it ain't worth nothing.

There hardly can be a greater difference between any two men, than there too often is, between the same man, a lover and a husband.

If you don't keep and guard and mature your force, and above all, have time and quiet to perfect your work, you will be writing things not much better than you did five years ago.