Home > Author > Paul R. Halmos
1 " The spectacular thing about Johnny [von Neumann] was not his power as a mathematician, which was great, or his insight and his clarity, but his rapidity; he was very, very fast. And like the modern computer, which no longer bothers to retrieve the logarithm of 11 from its memory (but, instead, computes the logarithm of 11 each time it is needed), Johnny didn't bother to remember things. He computed them. You asked him a question, and if he didn't know the answer, he thought for three seconds and would produce and answer. "
― Paul R. Halmos
2 " [Mathematics] is security. Certainty. Truth. Beauty. Insight. Structure. Architecture. I see mathematics, the part of human knowledge that I call mathematics, as one thing—one great, glorious thing. Whether it is differential topology, or functional analysis, or homological algebra, it is all one thing. ... They are intimately interconnected, they are all facets of the same thing. That interconnection, that architecture, is secure truth and is beauty. That's what mathematics is to me. "
3 " Mathematics is not a deductive science - that's a cliche. When you try to prove a theorem, you don't just list the hypotheses, and then start to reason. What you do is trial and error, experimentation, guesswork. "
― Paul R. Halmos , I Want to Be a Mathematician: An Automathography
4 " The best way to learn is to do; the worst way to teach is to talk. "
5 " When a student comes and asks, "Should I become a mathematician?" the answer should be no. If you have to ask, you shouldn't even ask. "
6 " In other words, general set theory is pretty trivial stuff really, but, if you want to be a mathematician, you need some and here it is; read it, absorb it, and forget it. "
