Bombs Are Probably More Merciful Than Bayonets

I Have Never Done Anything 'useful'. No Discovery Of Mine Has Made, Or Is Likely To Make, Directly Or Indirectly, For Good Or Ill, The Least Difference To The Amenity Of The World... Judged By All Practical Standards, The Value Of My Mathematical Life Is Nil; And Outside Mathematics It Is Trivial Anyhow. I Have Just One Chance Of Escaping A Verdict Of Complete Triviality, That I May Be Judged To Have Created Something Worth Creating. And That I Have Created Something Is Undeniable: The Question Is About Its Value.

Archimedes Will Be Remembered When Aeschylus Is Forgotten, Because Languages Die And Mathematical Ideas Do Not. "immortality" May Be A Silly Word, But Probably A Mathematician Has The Best Chance Of Whatever It May Mean.

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

It Is Hardly Possible To Maintain Seriously That The Evil Done By Science Is Not Altogether Outweighed By The Good. For Example, If Ten Million Lives Were Lost In Every War, The Net Effect Of Science Would Still Have Been To Increase The Average Length Of Life.

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