Nature, even in the act of satisfying anticipation, often provides a surprise.

When you're average, you're just as close to the bottom as you are the top.

The point of mathematics is that in it we have always got rid of the particular instance, and even of any particular sorts of entities. So that for example, no mathematical truths apply merely to fish, or merely to stones, or merely to colours. So long as you are dealing with pure mathematics, you are in the realm of complete and absolute abstraction. . . . Mathematics is thought moving in the sphere of complete abstraction from any particular instance of what it is talking about.

Knowledge shrinks as wisdom grows.

Now in creative thought common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgement is that the new ideas shall look like the old ones. In other words it can only work by suppressing originality.

Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language.

No Roman ever died in contemplation over a geometrical diagram.