Greek mathematics is the real thing. The Greeks first spoke a language which modern mathematicians can understand... So Greek mathematics is 'permanent', more permanent even than Greek literature.

In [great mathematics] there is a very high degree of unexpectedness, combined with inevitability and economy.

There is no scorn more profound, or on the whole more justifiable, than that of the men who make for the men who explain.

A chess problem is simply an exercise in pure mathematics.

I was at my best at a little past forty, when I was a professor at Oxford.

I count Maxwell and Einstein, Eddington and Dirac, among "real" mathematicians. The great modern achievements of applied mathematics have been in relativity and quantum mechanics, and these subjects are at present at any rate, almost as "useless" as the theory of numbers.

A science is said to be useful if its development tends to accentuate the existing inequalities in the distribution of wealth, or more directly promotes the destruction of human life.