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Some quotes I like.

• "New ideas are not easy to find. If you are lucky enough to be working on an idea which is actually right, it can take a long time before you know that it's right. Conversely, if you are going up a blind alley, it can also take a long time before you find out. You can end up saying 'Oops, I've been working for years on something wrong.' A good mathematician must have the courage to take a lot of work and throw it away." - Charles L. Fefferman
  
  
• "Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them." - Albert Einstein
  
  
• "If you can't answer a question about a structure, then there is always a simpler question about the same structure which you can't answer. Find it !"- George Polya
  
  
• "... pleasure has probably been the main goal all along. But I hesitate to admit it, because computer scientists want to maintain their image as hard-working individuals who deserve high salaries. Sooner or later society will realise that certain kinds of hard work are in fact admirable even though they are more fun than just about anything else." - Donald E. Knuth
  A relevant article is here
  
  
• "Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts"- Albert Einstein
  
  
• "The important thing to me is not the destination, but the journey. The real purpose of playing golf is not really to put the ball in the hole."- Donald E. Knuth
  
  
• The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the gems of generality - David Hilbert
  
  
• I value joy, truth, beauty and justice more than just "success". Richard Stallman
  
  
• When a philosopher says something that is true then it is trivial. When he says something that is not trivial then it is false - Carl Friedrich Gauss
  
  
• All of the scientists I've known have at least one quality in common: they do what they do because they love it, and because they cannot imagine doing anything else. In a sense, this is the real reason a scientist does science. Because the scientist must. Such a compulsion is both blessing and burden. A blessing because the creative life, in any endeavor, is a gift filled with beauty and not given to everyone, a burden because the call is unrelenting and can drown out the rest of life. - Alan Lightman
  
  
• A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street. - David Hilbert quoting an old french mathematician.
  
  
• My mother said, "Even you, Paul, can be in only one place at one time." Maybe soon I will be relieved of this disadvantage. Maybe, once I've left, I'll be able to be in many places at the same time. Maybe then I'll be able to collaborate with Archimedes and Euclid. - Paul Erdos
  
  
• I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones - Albert Einstein
  
  
• Geometry is the science of correct reasoning with incorrect figures - George Polya
  
  
• Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind - Albert Einstein - who quoted himself as a non-believer who is deeply religious - if there is anything in me that can be called "religious" then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world as far as science can reveal it.
  
  

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Last update: Wed 28 Jan 2026 09:52 IST