To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.

And all this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country`s pride.

Vanity is a motive of immense potency.

We know too much and feel too little. At least, we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs.

Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.

Official morality has always been oppressive and negative: it has said "thou shalt not," and has not troubled to investigate the effect of activities not forbidden by the code.

To expect a personality to survive the disintegration of the brain is like expecting a cricket club to survive when all of its members are dead.