I Wrote A Great Deal During The

Reductio Ad Absurdum, Which Euclid Loved So Much, Is One Of A Mathematician's Finest Weapons. It Is A Far Finer Gambit Than Any Chess Play: A Chess Player May Offer The Sacrifice Of A Pawn Or Even A Piece, But A Mathematician Offers The Game.

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.

I Am Interested In Mathematics Only As A Creative Art.

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

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.