My own view on religion is . . . It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and . . . to chronicle eclipses . . . These two services I am prepared to acknowledge.

The pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty.

The evolution of our spirit is blazed on the dark background of eternity by our individual wakes. Every person can, if he/she wishes, leave a more or less brilliant wake behind them.

Emphatic and reiterated assertion, especially during childhood, produces in most people a belief so firm as to have a hold even over the unconscious.

No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate?

For some reason which I have failed to understand, many people like the system [scientific totalitarianism] when it is Russian but disliked the very same system when it was German. I am compelled to think that this is due to the power of labels; these people like whatever is labelled ‘Left’ without examining whether the label has any justification.

The axiomatic method has many advantages over honest work.