At the age of eleven, I began Euclid, with my brother as my tutor. This was one of the great events of my life, as dazzling as first love. I had not imagined there was anything so delicious in the world. From that moment until I was thirty-eight, mathematics was my chief interest and my chief source of happiness.

The . . . increase in the power of officials is a constant source of irritation to everybody else.

Broadly speaking, we are in the middle of a race between human skill as a means and human folly as an end.

Machines have altered our way of life, but not our instincts. Consequently, there is maladjustment.

Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.

Modern life cannot be constructed on . . . physically strenuous principles. A great deal of work is sedentary, and most manual work exercises only a few specialized muscles.

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.