John Edensor Littlewood

"It was Mr. Littlewood (I believe) who remarked that "every positive integer was one of his personal friends."

"The Greeks first spoke a language which modern mathematicians can understand; as Littlewood said to me once, they are not clever schoolboys or "scholarship candidates", but "Fellows of another college"."

"A good mathematical joke is better, and better mathematics, than a dozen mediocre papers."

"The surprising thing about this paper is that a man who could write it--would."

"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... (What had happened was that Hardy had received the remark in silence and with a poker face, and I wrote it off as a dud....)"

"Landau kept a printed form for dealing with proofs of Fermats last theorem. On page blank, lines blank to blank, you will find there is a mistake."

"I recall once saying that when I had given the same lecture several times I couldnt help feeling that they really ought to know it by now."