Most People Can Do Nothing At All

Bradman Is A Whole Class Above Any Batsman Who Has Ever Lived: If Archimedes, Newton And Gauss Remain In The Hobbs Class, I Have To Admit The Possibility Of A Class Above Them, Which I Find Difficult To Imagine. They Had Better Be Moved From Now On Into The Bradman Class.

No Mathematician Should Ever Allow Himself To Forget That Mathematics, More Than Any Other Art Or Science, Is A Young Man's Game

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.

I Was At My Best At A Little Past Forty, When I Was A Professor At Oxford.

Perhaps Five Or Even Ten Per Cent Of Men Can Do Something Rather Well. It Is A Tiny Minority Who Can Do Anything Really Well, And The Number Of Men Who Can Do Two Things Well Is Negligible. If A Man Has Any Genuine Talent, He Should Be Ready To Make Almost Any Sacrifice In Order To Cultivate It To The Full.