Chess problems are the hymn-tunes of mathematics.

The public does not need to be convinced that there is something in mathematics.

Pure mathematics is on the whole distinctly more useful than applied... For what is useful above all is technique, and mathematical technique is taught mainly through pure mathematics.

A science or an art may be said to be "useful" if its development increases, even indirectly, the material well-being and comfort of men, it promotes happiness, using that word in a crude and commonplace way.

No mathematician should ever allow himself to forget that mathematics, more than any other art or science, is a young man's game

No one has yet discovered any warlike purpose to be served by the theory of numbers or relativity, and it seems unlikely that anyone will do so for many years.

The creative life was the only one for a serious man.