“Proof is the idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself.”
“The icon is transparent as a representation of the special reality it depicts; an idol replaces and obscures that reality ... but the difference between icon and idol is purely subjective.”
“The mathematician does not study pure mathematics because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it and he delights in it because it is beautiful.”
“It might seem that the empirical philosopher is the slave of his material, but that the pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty.”
“She held herself very straight, like Audrey Hepburn, whom all women idolize and men never think about.”
“Genuflection before the idol or the dollar destroys the muscles which walk and the will that moves.”