John Edensor Littlewood Quotes

16 quotes in 349 categories

• 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…
• It is true that I should have been surprised in the past to learn that Professor Hardy had joined the Oxford Group. But one could…
• In passing, I firmly believe that research should be offset by a certain amount of teaching, if only as a change from the agony of…
• I read in the proof sheets of Hardy on Ramanujan: "As someone said, each of the positive integers was one of his personal friends." My…
• A heavy warning used to be given that pictures are not rigorous; this has never had its bluff called and has permanently frightened its victims…
• 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…
• A linguist would be shocked to learn that if a set is not closed this does not mean that it is open, or again that…
• The surprising thing about this paper is that a man who could write it would.
• 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…
• 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."
• It is possible for a mathematician to be "too strong" for a given occasion. He forces through, where another might be driven to a different,…
• The infinitely competent can be uncreative.
• A good mathematical joke is better, and better mathematics, than a dozen mediocre papers.
• Mathematics is a dangerous profession; an appreciable proportion of us go mad.
• In presenting a mathematical argument the great thing is to give the educated reader the chance to catch on at once to the momentary point…
• Before creation, God did just pure mathematics. Then He thought it would be a pleasant change to do some applied.

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