No One Should Ever Be Bored. …

A Chess Problem Is Simply An Exercise In Pure Mathematics.

I Believe That Mathematical Reality Lies Outside Us, That Our Function Is To Discover Or Observe It, And That The Theorems Which We Prove, And Which We Describe Grandiloquently As Our "creations," Are Simply The Notes Of Our Observations.

When The World Is Mad, A Mathematician May Find In Mathematics An Incomparable Anodyne. For Mathematics Is, Of All The Arts And Sciences, The Most Austere And The Most Remote, And A Mathematician Should Be Of All Men The One Who Can Most Easily Take Refuge Where, As Bertrand Russell Says, "one At Least Of Our Nobler Impulses Can Best Escape From The Dreary Exile Of The Actual World."

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.

The Mathematician Is In Much More Direct Contact With Reality. ... [whereas] The Physicist's Reality, Whatever It May Be, Has Few Or None Of The Attributes Which Common Sense Ascribes Instinctively To Reality. A Chair May Be A Collection Of Whirling Electrons.