Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. - Samuel Beckett I've worked in so many areas -- I'm sort of a dillettante. Basically, I am not interested in doing research and I never have been. I'm interested in understanding .. which quite a different thing. And often to understand something, you have to work it out yourself because no one else has done it. - David Blackwell I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. - Douglas Adams Beware of your thoughts, they become your words. Beware of your words, they become your actions. Beware of your actions, they become your habits. Beware of your habits, they become your character. Beware of your character, it becomes your destiny. - Unknown I hear, I forget. I see, I remember. I do, I understand. - Confucius A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. - Confucius Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. - Albert Einstein Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. - Ludwig Wittgenstein How many existentialists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Two. One to screw it in, and one to observe how the lightbulb itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a maudlin cosmos of nothingness. - Anonymous A lot people are afraid of heights. Not me, I am afraid of widths. - Steven Wright If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen? - Steven Wright Research is the process of going up alleys to see if they are blind - Marston Bates If you want truly to understand something, try to change it. - Kurt Lewin It isn't what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about. - Dale Carnegie The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn't need its brain anymore, so it eats it! (It's rather like getting tenure.) - SIGACT News, Quarterly Quote (September 1994, vol. 25, number 3) I would like to make a confession which may seem immoral. I do not believe in Hilbert space anymore. - John von Neumann (in a letter to Birkhoff). Abel wrote in 1828 "Divergent series are the invention of the devil, and it is shameful to base on them any demonstration whatsoever." In the ensuing period of critical revision they were simply rejected. Then came a time when it was found that something after all could be done about them. This is now a matter of course, but in the early years of the century the subject, while in no way mystical or unrigorous, was regarded as sensational, and about the present title, now colourless, there hung an aroma of paradox and audacity. - J.E. Littlewood (in a preface to "Divergent Series" by G.H. Hardy) Don't worry about the overall importance of the problem; work on it if it looks interesting. I think there's a sufficient correlation between interest and importance. - David Blackwell .. mathematical ideas originate in empirics, although the genealogy is sometimes long and obscure. But, once they are so conceived, the subject begins to live a peculiar life of its own and is better compared to a creative one, governed by almost entirely aesthetical motivations, than to anything else and, in particular, to an empirical science. There is, however, a further point which, I believe, needs stressing. As a mathematical discipline travels far from its empirical source, or still more, if it is a second and third generation only indirectly inspired by ideas coming from 'reality', it is beset with very grave dangers. It becomes more and more purely aestheticising, more and more purely l'art pour l'art. This need not be bad, if the empirical connections, or if the discipline is under influence of [people] with an exceptionally well-developed taste. But there is a grave danger that the subject will develop along the line of least resistance, that the stream, so far from its source, will separate into a multitude of insignificant branches, and that the discipline will become a disorganized mass of details and complexities. In other words, at a great distance from its empirical source, or after much 'abstract' inbreeding, a mathematical subject is in danger of degeneration. - John von Neumann The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality. - David Hilbert