The infinitely competent can be uncreative.

A precisian professor had the habit of saying: ... quartic polynomial ax^4+bx^3+cx^2+dx+e , where e need not be the base of the natural logarithms.

Mathematics is a dangerous profession an appreciable proportion of us go mad.

The first lecture of each new year renews for most people a light stage fright.

The higher mental activities are pretty tough and resilient, but it is a devastating experience if the drive does stop. Some people lose it in their forties and can only stop. In England they are a source of Vice-Chancellors.

A heavy warning used to be given that pictures are not rigorous this has never had its bluff called and has permanently frightened its victims into playing for safety.

The referee said it was not acceptable, but the Press considered they could not refuse to publish a book by a professor of the university.

I recall once saying that when I had given the same lecture several times I couldn't help feeling that they really ought to know it by now.

The first test of potential in mathematics is whether you can get anything out of geometry.

It is possible for a mathematician to be too strong for a given occasion. He forces through, where another might be driven to a different, and possible more fruitful, approach. (So a rock climber might force a dreadful crack, instead of finding a subtle and delicate route.)

I read in the proof sheets of Hardy on Ramanujan: As someone said, each of the positive integers was one of his personal friends. My reaction was, I wonder who said that I wish I had. In the next proof-sheets I read (what now stands), It was Littlewood who said...

Try a hard problem. You may not solve it, but you will prove something else.

I listen only to Bach, Beethoven or Mozart. Life is too short to waste on other composers.