The great achievements of the past were the adventures of the past. Only the adventurous can understand the greatness of the past.

Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude.

Mathematics, in its widest significance, is the development of all types of formal, necessary, deductive reasoning.

It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.

The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.

The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.

Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct form ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.