The first lecture of each new year renews for most people a light stage fright.

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.

The first lecture of each new year renews for most people a light stage fright.

I constantly meet people who are doubtful, generally without due reason, about their potential capacity [as mathematicians]. The first test is whether you got anything out of geometry. To have disliked or failed to get on with other [mathematical] subjects need mean nothing; much drill and drudgery is unavoidable before they can get started, and bad teaching can make them unintelligible even to a born mathematician.

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.

Try a hard problem. You may not solve it, but you will prove something else.

The surprising thing about this paper is that a man who could write it would.