Bombs Are Probably More Merciful Than Bayonets

I Propose To Put Forward An Apology For Mathematics; And I May Be Told That It Needs None, Since There Are Now Few Studies More Generally Recognized, For Good Reasons Or Bad, As Profitable And Praiseworthy.

Chess Problems Are The Hymn-tunes Of Mathematics.

If I Could Prove By Logic That You Would Die In Five Minutes, I Should Be Sorry You Were Going To Die, But My Sorrow Would Be Very Much Mitigated By Pleasure In The Proof.

No Mathematician Should Ever Allow Him To Forget That Mathematics, More Than Any Other Art Or Science, Is A Young Man's Game. ... Galois Died At Twenty-one, Abel At Twenty-seven, Ramanujan At Thirty-three, Riemann At Forty. There Have Been Men Who Have Done Great Work Later; ... [but] I Do Not Know Of A Single Instance Of A Major Mathematical Advance Initiated By A Man Past Fifty. ... A Mathematician May Still Be Competent Enough At Sixty, But It Is Useless To Expect Him To Have Original Ideas.

Sometimes One Has To Say Difficult Things, But One Ought To Say Them As Simply As One Knows How.