Top 30 Littlewood's Quotes
#1. 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
#2. The first test of potential in mathematics is whether you can get anything out of geometry.
John Edensor Littlewood
#4. 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
#5. 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
#7. A good mathematical joke is better, and better mathematics, than a dozen mediocre papers.
John Edensor Littlewood
#8. Good theatre draws the energies out of the place where it is and gives it back as joie de vivre.
Joan Littlewood
#9. Upon hearing via Littlewood an exposition on the theory of relativity: To think I have spent my life on absolute muck.
Bertrand Russell
#10. I listen only to Bach, Beethoven or Mozart. Life is too short to waste on other composers.
John Edensor Littlewood
#11. Maybe I should be a lawyer instead of a magical baker, Rose thought. Lawyers' mistakes rarely result in old men climbing on top of towers and taking off their pants.
~Bliss
Kathryn Littlewood
#13. Before creation, God did just pure mathematics. Then He thought it would be a pleasant change to do some applied.
John Edensor Littlewood
#15. 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
#16. 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
#19. 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
#21. 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
#22. Bernard Bastable!" Miss Thistle shouted, finally. "I love you too! I want to make you my frog prince! Never in all my years have I seen a man with such magnificent, froglike charisma! You are a treasure! Kiss me now!
Kathryn Littlewood
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. As Littlewood said to me once [of the ancient Greeks], they are not clever school boys or 'scholarship candidates,' but 'Fellows of another college.
G.H. Hardy
#26. 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
#27. He [Russell] said once, after some contact with the Chinese language, that he was horrified to find that the language of Principia Mathematica was an Indo-European one.
J.E. Littlewood
#28. 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
#29. Well, you ought to stick with it, even after you mess up-but sticking with it is a lot easier if you have a family who believes in you.
Kathryn Littlewood
#30. There are so many forms, I believe people are bright enough to make their own laws, more subtle ones than we've had before.
Joan Littlewood
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