Am I really a good mathematician?

I have said that the modern man, and especially the modern American, however much 'know-how' he may have, has very little 'know-what'

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. It is a field which has often been compared with chess, but differs from the latter in that it is only one's best moments that count and not one's worst. A single inattention may lose a chess game, whereas a single successful approach to a problem, among many which have been relegated to the wastebasket, will make a mathematician's reputation.

The simplest type of breakdown exhibits itself as an oscillation in a goal-seeking process which appears only when that process is actively invoked.

In all important respects, the man who has nothing but his physical power to sell has nothing to sell which it is worth anyone's money to buy

In a very real sense, we are shipwrecked passengers on a doomed planet. Yet, even in a shipwreck, human decencies and human values do not necessarily vanish, and we must make the most of them. We shall go down, but let it be in a manner to which we may look forward as worthy of our dignity.

The more we get out of the world the less we leave, and in the long run we shall have to pay our debts at a time that may be very inconvenient for our own survival.