It becomes the urgent duty of mathematicians, therefore, to meditate about the essence of mathematics, its motivations and goals and the ideas that must bind divergent interests together.

For scholars and laymen alike it is not philosophy but active experience in mathematics itself that can alone answer the question: What is mathematics?

Calculus is the outcome of a dramatic intellectual struggle which has lasted for twenty-five hundred years.

Mathematics as an expression of the human mind reflects the active will, the contemplative reason, and the desire for aesthetic perfection.

With an absurd oversimplification, the "invention" of calculus [method in mathematics] is sometimes ascribed to two men, Newton and Leibniz.

Euler - The unsurpassed master of analytic invention.

Starting in the seventeenth century, the general theory of extreme values - maxima and minima - has become one of the systematic integrating principles of science.

It’s OKAY to be scared. Being scared means you’re about to do something really, really brave.

Excellence is a better teacher than mediocrity. The lessons of the ordinary are everywhere. Truly profound and original insights are to be found only in studying the exemplary.

This is the way the world ends; not with a bang or a whimper, but with zombies breaking down the back door.

I started working when I was three years old and was basically known before I knew who my own name was. My parents needed money, so at that time it became my responsibility to pay the bills.

Souls generally do not fall away from Christ because of the Creed; they first have difficulty with the Commandments.

Art is an escape from reality.

Most of the work on multitasking suggests that it generally makes you less efficient, not more.

American political opportunities are loaded against those who are simultaneously intelligent and honest.

We should try to achieve things for ourselves and not rely on former or past family glories with which we have no connection but the arbitrary nature of our birth.

I believe that creativity comes from compromise. If you could have everything you ever wanted, it doesn't always work.