A surprising proportion of mathematicians are accomplished musicians. Is it because music and mathematics share patterns that are beautiful?

It is part of the pholosophic dullness of our time that there are millions of rational monsters walking about on their hind legs, observing the world through pairs of flexible little lenses, periodically supplying themselves with energy by pushing organic substances through holes in their faces, who see nothing fabulous whatever about themselves.

Consider a cow. A cow doesn't have the problem-solving skill of a chimpanzee, which has discovered how to get termites out of the ground by putting a stick into a hole. Evolution has developed the brain's ability to solve puzzles, and at the same time has produced in our brain a pleasure of solving problems.

As Bertrand Russell once wrote, two plus two is four even in the interior of the sun.

In no other branch of mathematics is it so easy for experts to blunder as in probability theory.

The sudden hunch, the creative leap of mind that "sees" in a flash how to solve a problem in a simple way, is something quite different from general intelligence.

The violence and double-talk in the Alice books probably does no harm to children, but the novels should not be allowed to circulate indiscriminately among adults who are undergoing analysis.