There's never need to fear Violence of the poor world's abstract storm. Lullaby in Encounter , 1957. The Apprenticeship of a Mathematician. God exists since mathematics is consistent, and the Devil exists since we cannot prove it. West, Nathanael Prayers for the condemned man will be offered on an adding machine.
Numbers constitute the only universal language.
An archeologist who, five thousand years from now, shall unearth some of our income tax returns together with relics of engineering works and mathematical books, will probably date them a couple of centuries earlier, certainly before Galileo and Vieta. The Mathematical Way of Thinking , an address given at the Bicentennial Conference at the University of Pennsylvania, 1940. We are not very pleased when we are forced to accept a mathematical truth by virtue of a complicated chain of formal conclusions and computations, which we traverse blindly, link by link, feeling our way by touch. Translation by Abe Shenitzer appeared in The American Mathematical Monthly , v. 102, no. Translation by Abe Shenitzer appeared in The American Mathematical Monthly , v. 102, no.