Mathematics is a dangerous profession; an appreciable proportion of us go mad.

I recall once saying that when I had given the same lecture several times I couldn't help feeling that they really ought to know it by now.

A precisian professor had the habit of saying: "... quartic polynomial ax^4+bx^3+cx^2+dx+e , where e need not be the base of the natural logarithms."

A good mathematical joke is better, and better mathematics, than a dozen mediocre papers.

I've been giving this lecture to first-year classes for over twenty-five years. You'd think they would begin to understand it by now.

Mathematics is a dangerous profession; an appreciable proportion of us go mad.

The theory of numbers is particularly liable to the accusation that some of its problems are the wrong sort of questions to ask. I do not myself think the danger is serious; either a reasonable amount of concentration leads to new ideas or methods of obvious interest, or else one just leaves the problem alone. "Perfect numbers" certainly never did any good, but then they never did any particular harm.