TREFETHEN'S INDEX CARDS Quotes

“The essence of being a workaholic is not that one must be getting worthwhile things done, but merely that one must be constantly busy.”
― Lloyd N. Trefethen, TREFETHEN'S INDEX CARDS: FORTY YEARS OF NOTES ABOUT PEOPLE, WORDS AND MATHEMATICS

“There is a fundamental conflict between intellectual and political life... The essence of the intellectual life is the impulse to analyze everything indiscriminately, to understand the explanations for everything. The essence of political success is the contrary habit. Whatever one's internal understanding of the world, one must train oneself never to express those conclusions needlessly, for they may offend. Truth must be offered up by teaspoons, always with a purpose.”
― Lloyd N. Trefethen, TREFETHEN'S INDEX CARDS: FORTY YEARS OF NOTES ABOUT PEOPLE, WORDS AND MATHEMATICS

“When I write an article, I aim for it to shrink the diameter of intellectual space. It should make connections, make the reader's world a little more coherent.”
― Lloyd N. Trefethen, TREFETHEN'S INDEX CARDS: FORTY YEARS OF NOTES ABOUT PEOPLE, WORDS AND MATHEMATICS

“Classical music and pure mathematics get trapped in their own history, their own self-awareness, their own high standards.”
― Lloyd N. Trefethen, TREFETHEN'S INDEX CARDS: FORTY YEARS OF NOTES ABOUT PEOPLE, WORDS AND MATHEMATICS

“Most cliches have a respectable past: if you only listen with a fresh ear, they express an imaginative thought or a clever analogy.”
― Lloyd N. Trefethen, TREFETHEN'S INDEX CARDS: FORTY YEARS OF NOTES ABOUT PEOPLE, WORDS AND MATHEMATICS

“No writer is great unless he also has the knack of stirring up associations in his readers' minds with every phrase.”
― Lloyd N. Trefethen, TREFETHEN'S INDEX CARDS: FORTY YEARS OF NOTES ABOUT PEOPLE, WORDS AND MATHEMATICS

“We are too sloppy thinkers to deserve the luxury of leaving logic implicit.”
― Lloyd N. Trefethen, TREFETHEN'S INDEX CARDS: FORTY YEARS OF NOTES ABOUT PEOPLE, WORDS AND MATHEMATICS

“Close friends, and good books. In the absence of the former, the latter is an alarmingly good substitute.”
― Lloyd N. Trefethen, TREFETHEN'S INDEX CARDS: FORTY YEARS OF NOTES ABOUT PEOPLE, WORDS AND MATHEMATICS

“Readers want to be exercised, not informed. It's not the amplitude of the signal that matters, but how much it resonates.”
― Lloyd N. Trefethen, TREFETHEN'S INDEX CARDS: FORTY YEARS OF NOTES ABOUT PEOPLE, WORDS AND MATHEMATICS

“The quality of a written work is equal to the quantity of thinking it stimulates in the reader.”
― Lloyd N. Trefethen, TREFETHEN'S INDEX CARDS: FORTY YEARS OF NOTES ABOUT PEOPLE, WORDS AND MATHEMATICS

“Names are not ideas, but there is no better way to fix a structure of ideas than by pinning it throughout with names.”
― Lloyd N. Trefethen, TREFETHEN'S INDEX CARDS: FORTY YEARS OF NOTES ABOUT PEOPLE, WORDS AND MATHEMATICS

“A good idea is often not much more than a sentence from one's internal monologue that sounds particularly good.”
― Lloyd N. Trefethen, TREFETHEN'S INDEX CARDS: FORTY YEARS OF NOTES ABOUT PEOPLE, WORDS AND MATHEMATICS