We really have to get over the idea that some stuff is just worth knowing even if you never do anything with it. Human memories happily erase stuff that has no purpose, so why try to fill up children's heads with such stuff? -- Roger Schank, Engines for Education
We now come to the decisive step of mathematical abstraction: we forget about what the symbols stand for. ...[The mathematician] need not be idle; there are many operations which he may carry out with these symbols, without ever having to look at the things they stand for. -- Hermann Weyl, The Mathematical Way of Thinking
To follow the path: look to the master, follow the master, walk with the master, see through the master, become the master. -- Modern zen Poem
The proof is by reductio ad absurdum, and reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematician’s finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess gambit: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game. -- G. H. Hardy
Good work is no done by ‘humble’ men. -- H. Hardy, A mathematician's apology.
Lisp is a programmable programming language. -- John Foderaro
Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him. –Booker T. Washington
The starting point of all achievement is desire. ~Napolean Hill
You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. ~Steve Jobs
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absense of fear. ~Mark Twain