12 quotes
However appalling the mess, I feel that to scrap this page would somehow break threads in the unconscious.
Littlewood's Miscellany (1986)
A good mathematical joke is better, and better mathematics, than a dozen mediocre papers.
Littlewood's Miscellany (1986)
'The surprising thing about this paper is that a man who could write it--would.'
Littlewood's Miscellany (1986)
Landau kept a printed form for dealing with proofs of Fermat's last theorem. 'On page blank, lines blank to blank, you will find there is a mistake.'
Littlewood's Miscellany (1986)
It was Mr. Littlewood (I believe) who remarked that "every positive integer was one of his personal friends."
(A. S. Besicovitch) A mathematician's reputation rests on the number of bad proofs he has given. (Pioneer work is clumsy.)
Littlewood's Miscellany (1986)
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 by now.
Littlewood's Miscellany (1986)
The Greeks first spoke a language which modern mathematicians can understand; as Littlewood said to me once, they are not clever schoolboys or "scholarship candidates", but "Fellows of another college".
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, and possibly more fruitful, approach. (So a rock climber might force a dreadful crack, instead of finding a subtle and delicate route.)
Littlewood's Miscellany (1986)
The difference when you do know (when, for example, we are looking for a new proof) is enormous. Like a Bridge problem 'if the thing is possible it must be necessary to lead the Ace and trump with the Ace in Dummy.'
Littlewood's Miscellany (1986)
Besicovitch and Harry Williams asked me what God was doing before the Creation. I said: 'Millions of words must have been written on this; but he was doing Pure Mathematics and thought it would be a pleasant change to do some Applied.'
Littlewood's Miscellany (1986)
I had been struggling for two months to prove a result I was pretty sure was true. When I was walking up a Swiss mountain, fully occupied by the effort, a very odd device emerged - so odd that, though it worked, I could not grasp the resulting proof as a whole. But not only so; I had a sense that my subconscious was saying, 'Are you never going to do it, confound you; try this.
Littlewood's Miscellany (1986)