Top 27 John E Littlewood Quotes
#1. 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 into playing for safety.
John Edensor Littlewood
#2. She was fire, and light, and ash, and embers. She was Aelin Fireheart, and she bowed for no one and nothing, save the crown that was hers by blood and survival and triumph.
Sarah J. Maas
#3. 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 research. The trouble, however, I freely admit, is that in practice you get either no teaching, or else far too much.
John Edensor Littlewood
#4. 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 reaction was, "I wonder who said that; I wish I had." In the next proof-sheets I read (what now stands), "It was Littlewood who said ... "
John Edensor Littlewood
#5. The higher mental activities are pretty tough and resilient, but it is a devastating experience if the drive does stop. Some people lose it in their forties and can only stop. In England they are a source of Vice-Chancellors.
John Edensor Littlewood
#6. 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 "E is dense in E" does not mean the same thing as "E is dense in itself".
John Edensor Littlewood
#7. Littlewood, on Hardy's own estimate, is the finest mathematician he has ever known. He was the man most likely to storm and smash a really deep and formidable problem; there was no one else who could command such a combination of insight, technique and power.
Henry Hallett Dale
#9. 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.
John Edensor Littlewood
#11. Launching a breakthrough idea is like shooting skeet. People's needs change, so you must aim well ahead of the target to hit it.
Ray Kurzweil
#13. 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 possible more fruitful, approach. (So a rock climber might force a dreadful crack, instead of finding a subtle and delicate route.)
John Edensor Littlewood
#14. A painstaking course in qualitative and quantitative analysis by John Wing gave me an appreciation of the need for, and beauty of, accurate measurement.
Paul D. Boyer
#15. I can never make up my mind if I'm happy being a flute player, or if I wish I were Eric Clapton.
Ian Anderson
#17. I've been giving this lecture to first-year classes for over twenty-five years. You'd think they would begin to understand it by now.
John Edensor Littlewood
#19. Before creation, God did just pure mathematics. Then He thought it would be a pleasant change to do some applied.
John Edensor Littlewood
#21. I listen only to Bach, Beethoven or Mozart. Life is too short to waste on other composers.
John Edensor Littlewood
#22. A good mathematical joke is better, and better mathematics, than a dozen mediocre papers.
John Edensor Littlewood
#24. The referee said it was not acceptable, but the Press considered they could not refuse to publish a book by a professor of the university.
John Edensor Littlewood
#25. 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 not say the adverse chance was 1:10. Mathematics is a dangerous profession; an appreciable proportion of us go mad, and then this particular event would be quite likely.
John Edensor Littlewood
#26. In some way, the magazine helped validate a new kind of American manhood--the kind of guy who would court you with mix tapes, sported Converse Chuck Taylors and shaggy bedhead on his lanky frame, wept over the disappearing rain forest, and had Backlash on his bookshelf.
Kara Jesella
#27. The first test of potential in mathematics is whether you can get anything out of geometry.
John Edensor Littlewood
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