In [great Mathematics] There Is A Very

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.

If I Could Prove By Logic That You Would Die In Five Minutes, I Should Be Sorry You Were Going To Die, But My Sorrow Would Be Very Much Mitigated By Pleasure In The Proof.

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.

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.

A Mathematician, Like A Painter Or A Poet, Is A Maker Of Patterns.