Young Men Should Prove Theorems, Old Men

No Mathematician Should Ever Allow Him To Forget That Mathematics, More Than Any Other Art Or Science, Is A Young Man's Game. ... Galois Died At Twenty-one, Abel At Twenty-seven, Ramanujan At Thirty-three, Riemann At Forty. There Have Been Men Who Have Done Great Work Later; ... [but] I Do Not Know Of A Single Instance Of A Major Mathematical Advance Initiated By A Man Past Fifty. ... A Mathematician May Still Be Competent Enough At Sixty, But It Is Useless To Expect Him To Have Original Ideas.

The Creative Life Was The Only One For A Serious Man.

The Primes Are The Raw Material Out Of Which We Have To Build Arithmetic, And Euclid's Theorem Assures Us That We Have Plenty Of Material For The Task.

The Study Of Mathematics Is, If An Unprofitable, A Perfectly Harmless And Innocent Occupation.

The Fact Is There Are Few More Popular Subjects Than Mathematics. Most People Have Some Appreciation Of Mathematics, Just As Most People Can Enjoy A Pleasant Tune.