“People tend to think that mathematicians always work in sterile conditions, sitting around and staring at the screen of a computer, or at a ceiling, in a pristine office. But in fact, some of the b...”

“How to describe the excitement I felt when I saw this beautiful work and realized its potential? I guess it's like when, after a long journey, suddenly a mountain peak comes in full view. You catch...”

“More often than not, at the end of the day (or a month, or a year), you realize that your initial idea was wrong, and you have to try something else. These are the moments of frustration and despai...”

“Where there is no mathematics, there is no freedom.”

“It was as though applied mathematics was my spouse, and pure mathematics was my secret lover.”

“I should attempt to treat human vice and folly geometrically... the passions of hatred, anger, envy, and so on, considered in themselves, follow from the necessity and efficacy of nature... I shall...”

“If you can't test it, it's not theorics -- it's metatheorics. A branch of philosophy. So, if you want to think of it this way, our test equipment is what defines the boundary separating theorics fr...”

“Physicists have come to realize that mathematics, when used with sufficient care, is a proven pathway to truth.”

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettie...”

“To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth. ”

“The scientist only imposes two things, namely truth and sincerity, imposes them upon himself and upon other scientists.”