Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture Quotes

“one should be brutally honest with oneself about weaknesses, acknowledge them with courage and chart further course accordingly.”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture

“Success in life is to be measured by the goals you’ve set yourself.”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture

“His sin, indeed, had been Pride. And the pride was still there, nowhere more apparent than in his inability to come face to face with himself.”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession

“The development of my own affair with mathematics had taught me an important lesson: one should be brutally honest with oneself about weaknesses, acknowledge them with courage and chart further course accordingly. For myself I had done this, but had Uncle Petros?”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession

“You should know — Aesop was a Greek.’ ‘What’s Aesop got to do with it?”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession

“He smiled, sadly. ‘You know the popular saying that the three conditions impossible to conceal are a cough, wealth and being in love? Well, to me there is a fourth: mathematical gift.”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession

“Success in life is to be measured by the goals you’ve set yourself. There are tens of thousands of new theorems published every year the world over, but no more than a handful per century that make history!”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession

“Could my uncle have finally become unhinged?”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession

“But after a few months of tortuous happiness (‘alas, too few,’ my uncle said with a sigh), Isolde abandoned the family home and the arms of her boy-lover in order to marry a dashing lieutenant of the Prussian artillery. Petros was, of course, heartbroken.”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession

“Every person has the right to expose himself to whatever disappointment he chooses,”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession

“I had mixed feelings for the proposed deal: I hated tests but adored challenges.”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession

“Every family has its black sheep — in ours it was Uncle Petros.”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture: A Novel of Mathematical Obsession

“The amalgam of Truth and Beauty revealed through the understanding of an important theorem cannot be attained through any other human activity, unless it be (I wouldn’t know) that of mystical religion.”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture

“The proverbial ‘mad mathematician’ was more fact than fancy.”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture

“Intuition,’ he answered with a shrug. ‘It is the only tool left to the mathematician in the absence of proof.”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture

“Truth is not always provable!”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture

“mathematics as a tree with strong roots (the Axioms), a solid trunk (Rigorous Proof) and ever growing branches blooming with wondrous flowers (the Theorems).”
― Apostolos Doxiadis, Uncle Petros and Goldbach's Conjecture