I Was At My Best

In [great Mathematics] There Is A Very High Degree Of Unexpectedness, Combined With Inevitability And Economy.

Most People Are So Frightened Of The Name Of Mathematics That They Are Ready, Quite Unaffectedly, To Exaggerate Their Own Mathematical Stupidity.

When The World Is Mad, A Mathematician May Find In Mathematics An Incomparable Anodyne. For Mathematics Is, Of All The Arts And Sciences, The Most Austere And The Most Remote, And A Mathematician Should Be Of All Men The One Who Can Most Easily Take Refuge Where, As Bertrand Russell Says, "one At Least Of Our Nobler Impulses Can Best Escape From The Dreary Exile Of The Actual World."

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.

The Mathematician's Patterns, Like The Painter's Or The Poet's, Must Be Beautiful.