A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.
Young men should prove theorems, old men should write books.
I was at my best at a little past forty, when I was a professor at Oxford.
A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.
There is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain. Exposition, criticism, appreciation, is work for second-rate minds.
It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.
