A Mathematician ... Has No Material To

The Public Does Not Need To Be Convinced That There Is Something In Mathematics.

What We Do May Be Small, But It Has A Certain Character Of Permanence; And To Have Produced Anything Of The Slightest Permanent Interest, Whether It Be A Copy Of Verses Or A Geometrical Theorem, Is To Have Done Something Utterly Beyond The Powers Of The Vast Majority Of Men.

The Primes Are The Raw Material Out Of Which We Have To Build Arithmetic, And Euclid's Theorem Assures Us That We Have Plenty Of Material For The Task.

As Littlewood Said To Me Once [of The Ancient Greeks], They Are Not Clever School Boys Or "scholarship Candidates," But "fellows Of Another College."

If A Man Is In Any Sense A Real Mathematician, Then It Is A Hundred To One That His Mathematics Will Be Far Better Than Anything Else He Can Do, And That He Would Be Silly If He Surrendered Any Decent Opportunity Of Exercising His One Talent In Order To Do Undistinguished Work In Other Fields. Such A Sacrifice Could Be Justified Only By Economic Necessity Of Age.