If Intellectual Curiosity, Professional Pride, And Ambition

There Is No Scorn More Profound, Or On The Whole More Justifiable, Than That Of The Men Who Make For The Men Who Explain.

A Man Who Sets Out To Justify His Existence And His Activities Has To Distinguish Two Different Questions. The First Is Whether The Work Which He Does Is Worth Doing; And The Second Is Why He Does It (whatever Its Value May Be).

I Believe That Mathematical Reality Lies Outside Us, That Our Function Is To Discover Or Observe It, And That The Theorems Which We Prove, And Which We Describe Grandiloquently As Our "creations," Are Simply The Notes Of Our Observations.

Most People Have Some Appreciation Of Mathematics, Just As Most People Can Enjoy A Pleasant Tune; And There Are Probably More People Really Interested In Mathematics Than In Music. Appearances Suggest The Contrary, But There Are Easy Explanations. Music Can Be Used To Stimulate Mass Emotion, While Mathematics Cannot; And Musical Incapacity Is Recognized (no Doubt Rightly) As Mildly Discreditable, Whereas Most People Are So Frightened Of The Name Of Mathematics That They Are Ready, Quite Unaffectedly, To Exaggerate Their Own Mathematical Stupidity

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.