After you understand about the sun and the stars and the rotation of the earth, you may still miss the radiance of the sunset.

I will not go so far as to say that to construct a history of thought without profound study of the mathematical ideas of successive epochs is like omitting Hamlet from the play which is named after him. That would be claiming too much. But it is certainly analogous to cutting out the part of Ophelia. This simile is singularly exact. For Ophelia is quite essential to the play, she is very charming . . . and a little mad.

Error itself may be happy chance.

It takes an extraordinary intelligence to contemplate the obvious.

The learned tradition is not concerned with truth, but with the learned adjustment of learned statements of antecedent learned people.

The real history does not get written, because it is not in people's brains but in their nerves and vitals.

Mathematics as a science, commenced when first someone, probably a Greek, proved propositions about "any" things or about "some" things, without specifications of definite particular things.