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.
More Quotes from J. E. Littlewood:
The surprising thing about this paper is that a man who could write it would.J. E. Littlewood
I constantly meet people who are doubtful, generally without due reason, about their potential capacity as mathematicians. The first test is whether you got anything out of geometry. To have disliked or failed to get on with other mathematical subjects need mean nothing much drill and drudgery is unavoidable before they can get started, and bad teaching can make them unintelligible even to a born mathematician.
J. E. Littlewood
A precisian professor had the habit of saying '... quartic polynomial ax4bx3cx2dxe, where e need not be the base of the natural logarithms.'
J. E. Littlewood
We come finally, however, to the relation of the ideal theory to real world, or 'real' probability. If he is consistent a man of the mathematical school washes his hands of applications. To someone who wants them he would say that the ideal system runs parallel to the usual theory 'If this is what you want, try it it is not my business to justify application of the system that can only be done by philosophizing I am a mathematician'. In practice he is apt to say 'try this if it works that will justify it'. But now he is not merely philosophizing he is committing the characteristic fallacy. Inductive experience that the system works is not evidence.
J. E. Littlewood
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.)
J. E. Littlewood
The infinitely competent can be uncreative.
J. E. Littlewood
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Life is a travelling to the edge of knowledge, then a leap taken.
David Herbert Lawrence
Love does not dominate; it cultivates.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Do you know that the ready concession of minor points is a part of the grace of life?
Henry Harland