Siraaj Khandkar > Siraaj's Quotes

“The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

“Nothing is more important than to see the sources of invention which are, in my opinion, more interesting than the inventions themselves.”
― George Pólya, How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method

“Everything popular is wrong.”
― Oscar Wilde

“line of reasoning by which the detective solves the mystery is more important than the identity of the murderer.”
― Cédric Villani, Birth of a Theorem: A Mathematical Adventure

“In a word, to comport oneself with perfect propriety in Polygonal society, one ought to be a Polygon oneself. Such at least is the painful teaching of my experience.”
― Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

“It is amazing how often the reason you can't find a convincing explanation for something is because your conclusion is wrong.”
― Steven S. Skiena

“Problem-solving is not a science, but part art and part skill. It is one of the skills most worth developing.”
― Steven S. Skiena, The Algorithm Design Manual

“teaching of calculus to engineers and physicists, could be essentially improved if the nature of heuristic reasoning were better understood,”
― George Pólya, How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method

“It is generally useless to carry out details without having seen the main connection, or having made a sort of plan.”
― George Pólya, How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method

“Suzuki method or no Suzuki method, what matters most of all is the teacher,”
― Cédric Villani, Birth of a Theorem: A Mathematical Adventure

“Once again I had to put myself in a vulnerable position in order to become stronger.”
― Cédric Villani, Birth of a Theorem: A Mathematical Adventure

“… understanding consists in reducing one type of reality to another.” Claude Levi-Strauss”
― Robert Goldblatt, Topoi: The Categorial Analysis of Logic

“Contrary to all prior belief, the vast continent of arithmetical truth cannot be brought into systematic order by laying down for once and for all a fixed set of axioms and rules of inference from which every true arithmetical statement can be formally derived.”
― Ernest Nagel, Godel's Proof

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass

“Shallow ideas can be assimilated; ideas that require people to reorganize their picture of the world provoke hostility.”
― James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science

“quoting Tolstoy: “I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”
― James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science

“Proofs are to mathematics what spelling (or even calligraphy) is to poetry. Mathematical works do consist of proofs, just as poems do consist of words.”
― V. I. Arnold

“you should be grateful for all new ideas, also for the lesser ones, also for the hazy ones, also for the supplementary ideas adding some precision to a hazy one, or attempting the correction of a less fortunate one.”
― George Pólya, How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method

“Analogy pervades all our thinking,”
― George Pólya, How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method

“there is nothing to learn about reasoning and invention if the motive and purpose of the most conspicuous step remain incomprehensible.”
― George Pólya, How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method

“Such neglect of the obvious does not show necessarily stupidity but rather indifference toward artificial problems.”
― George Pólya, How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method

“O Perfect One, why do you do this thing? For though we find joy in it, we know not the celestial reason nor the correspondency of it’. And Sabbah answered: ‘I will tell you first what I do; I will tell you the reasons afterward.”
― W. W. Sawyer, Prelude to Mathematics

“I have actually known a case where a Woman has exterminated her whole household, and half an hour afterwards, when her rage was over and the fragments swept away, has asked what has become of her husband and her children.”
― Edwin Abbott Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

“To see the clear, logical ideas gradually being disentangled from vagueness and confusion is vastly more instructive than simply starting with the logical ideas.”
― W. W. Sawyer, Prelude to Mathematics

“The art of reasoning consists in getting hold of the subject at the right end, of seizing on the few general ideas that illuminate the whole, and of persistently organizing all subsidiary facts round them.”
― W. W. Sawyer, Prelude to Mathematics

“Nobody can be a good reasoner unless by constant practice he has realised the importance of getting hold of the big ideas and hanging on to them like grim death.”
― W. W. Sawyer, Prelude to Mathematics

“The main difficulty the student of groups meets is not that of following the argument, which is nearly always straightforward, but of grasping the purpose of the investigation.”
― W. W. Sawyer, Prelude to Mathematics

“To solve a problem means to reduce it to something simpler than itself.”
― W. W. Sawyer, Prelude to Mathematics

“The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see.”
― Alexandra K.Trenfor

“To doubt everything and to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; each saves us from thinking.”
― Henri Poincaré, The Foundations of Science: Science and Hypothesis, The Value of Science, Science and Method