I Wrote A Great Deal During The

A Chess Problem Is Genuine Mathematics, But It Is In Some Way "trivial" Mathematics. However, Ingenious And Intricate, However Original And Surprising The Moves, There Is Something Essential Lacking. Chess Problems Are Unimportant. The Best Mathematics Is Serious As Well As Beautiful-"important" If You Like, But The Word Is Very Ambiguous, And "serious" Expresses What I Mean Much Better.

Mathematics May, Like Poetry Or Music, "promote And Sustain A Lofty Habit Of Mind."

317 Is A Prime, Not Because We Think So, Or Because Our Minds Are Shaped In One Way Rather Than Another, But Because It Is So, Because Mathematical Reality Is Built That Way.

It Is A Melancholy Experience For A Professional Mathematician To Find Himself Writing About Mathematics. The Function Of A Mathematician Is To Do Something, To Prove New Theorems, To Add To Mathematics, And Not To Talk About What He Or Other Mathematicians Have Done. Statesmen Despise Publicists, Painters Despise Art-critics, And Physiologists, Physicists, Or Mathematicians Have Usually Similar Feelings: 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.

No One Has Yet Discovered Any Warlike Purpose To Be Served By The Theory Of Numbers Or Relativity, And It Seems Unlikely That Anyone Will Do So For Many Years.