If the human being is condemned and restricted to perform the same functions over and over again, he will not even be a good ant, not to mention a good human being.

I may remark parenthetically that the modern apparatus of the theory of small samples, once it goes beyond the determination of its own specially defined parameters and becomes a method for positive statistical inference in new cases, does not inspire me with any confidence unless it is applied by a statistician by whom the main elements of the dynamics of the situation are either explicitly known or implicitly felt.

Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions. It seems almost as if progress itself and our fight against the increase of entropy intrinsically must end in the downhill path from which we are trying to escape.

Am I really a good mathematician?

To live effectively is to live with adequate information.

The advantage is that mathematics is a field in which one's blunders tend to show very clearly and can be corrected or erased with a stroke of the pencil.

Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions.