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

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

Asked if he believes in one G-d, a mathematician answered: "Yes, up to isomorphism".

As Littlewood said to me once [of the ancient Greeks], they are not clever school boys or "scholarship candidates," but "Fellows of another college."

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

I do not remember having felt, as a boy, any passion for mathematics, and such notions as I may have had of the career of a mathematician were far from noble. I thought of mathematics in terms of examinations and scholarships: I wanted to beat other boys, and this seemed to be the way in which I could do so most decisively.

I wrote a great deal during the next ten [early] years,but very little of any importance; there are not more than four or five papers which I can still remember with some satisfaction.