Ragini > Ragini's Quotes

“I had this very rare privilege of being able to pursue in my life what had been my childhood dream. I know it's a rare privilege, but if you can tackle something in adult life that means that much to you, then it's more rewarding than anything imaginable." - Andrew Wiles”
― Simon Singh, Fermat's Enigma

“The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s, must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics. G.H. Hardy”
― Simon Singh, Fermat’s Last Theorem: The compelling biography and history of mathematical intellectual endeavour

“Maths is one of the purest forms of thought, and to outsiders mathematicians may seem almost other-worldly.”
― Simon Singh, Fermat’s Last Theorem: The compelling biography and history of mathematical intellectual endeavour

“Proof is what lies at the heart of maths, and is what marks it out from other sciences. Other sciences have hypotheses that are tested against experimental evidence until they fail, and are overtaken by new hypotheses. In maths, absolute proof is the goal, and once something is proved, it is proved forever, with no room for change.”
― Simon Singh, Fermat’s Last Theorem: The compelling biography and history of mathematical intellectual endeavour

“A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.”
― G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology

“Real mathematics must be justified as art if it can be justified at all.”
― G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology

“The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s must be beautiful; the ideas like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.”
― G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology

“Judged by all practical standards, the value of my mathematical life is nil; and
outside mathematics it is trivial anyhow. I have just one chance of escaping a verdict of
complete triviality, that I may be judged to have created something worth creating. And
that I have created something is undeniable: the question is about its value.

The case for my life, then, or for that of any one else who has been a mathematician in the same sense in which I have been one, is this: that I have added something to knowledge, and helped others to add more; and that these somethings have a value which differs in degree only, and not in kind, from that of the creations of the great mathematicians, or of any of the other artists, great or small, who have left some kind of memorial behind them.”
― G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology

“North Korea invites parody. We laugh at the excesses of the propaganda and the gullibility of the people. But consider that their indoctrination began in infancy, during the fourteen-hour days spent in factory day-care centers; that for the subsequent fifty years, every song, film, newspaper article, and billboard was designed to deify Kim Il-sung; that the country was hermetically sealed to keep out anything that might cast doubt on Kim Il-sung's divinity. Who could possibly resist?”
― Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

“North Korean defectors often find it hard to settle down. It is not easy for somebody who’s escaped a totalitarian country to live in the free world. Defectors have to rediscover who they are in a world that offers endless possibilities. Choosing where to live, what to do, even which clothes to put on in the morning is tough enough for those of us accustomed to making choices; it can be utterly paralyzing for people who’ve had decisions made for them by the state their entire lives.”
― Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

“It is axiomatic that one death is a tragedy, a thousand is a statistic. So it was for Mi-ran. What she didn't realize is that her indifference was an acquired survival skill. In order to get through the 1990s alive, one had to suppress any impulse to share food. To avoid going insane, one had to learn to stop caring.”
― Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

“Emotions somehow meant more when they were handwritten on precious scraps of paper and conveyed on slow trains running out of fuel.”
― Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

“The night sky in North Korea is a sight to behold. It might be the most brilliant in Northeast Asia, the only place spared the coal dust, Gobi Desert sand, and carbon monoxide choking the rest of the continent. In the old days, North Korean factories contributed their share to the cloud cover, but no longer. No artificial lighting competes with the intensity of the stars etched into its sky.”
― Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

“This is not the sort of thing that shows up in satellite photographs. Whether in CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, or in the East Asian studies department of a university, people usually analyze North Korea from afar. They don't stop to think that in the middle of this black hole, in this bleak, dark country where millions have died of starvation, there is also love.”
― Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

“It's an entire world of just 64 squares. I feel safe in it. I can control it; I can dominate it. And it's predictable. So, if I get hurt, I only have myself to blame.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“Chess isn't always competitive. Chess can also be beautiful.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“Her mind was luminous, and her soul sang to her in the sweet moves of chess.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit