I Propose To Put Forward An Apology

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.

Beauty Is The First Test: There Is No Permanent Place In The World For Ugly Mathematics.

If Intellectual Curiosity, Professional Pride, And Ambition Are The Dominant Incentives To Research, Then Assuredly No One Has A Fairer Chance Of Gratifying Them Than A Mathematician.

The Primes Are The Raw Material Out Of Which We Have To Build Arithmetic, And Euclid's Theorem Assures Us That We Have Plenty Of Material For The Task.

I Do Not Remember Having Felt, As A Boy, Any Passion For Mathematics, And Such Notions As I May Have Had Of The Career Of A Mathematician Were Far From Noble. I Thought Of Mathematics In Terms Of Examinations And Scholarships: I Wanted To Beat Other Boys, And This Seemed To Be The Way In Which I Could Do So Most Decisively.