Alexander Grothendieck famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

The introduction of the cipher 0 or the group concept was general nonsense too, and mathematics was more or less stagnating for thousands of years because nobody was around to take such childish steps...
-- Alexander Grothendieck

#Years #Groups #Ciphers
Discovery is the privilege of the child: the child who has no fear of being once again wrong, of looking like an idiot, of not being serious, of not doing things like everyone else.
-- Alexander Grothendieck

#Children #Discovery #Privilege
I am not really doing research, just trying to cultivate myself.
-- Alexander Grothendieck

#Math #Trying #Research
The question you raise, 'How can such a formulation lead to computations?' doesn't bother me in the least! Throughout my whole life as a mathematician, the possibility of making explicit, elegant computations has always come out by itself, as a byproduct of a thorough conceptual understanding of what was going on. Thus I never bothered about whether what would come out would be suitable for this or that, but just tried to understand - and it always turned out that understanding was all that mattered.
-- Alexander Grothendieck

#Math #Understanding #Would Be
A different image came to me a few weeks ago.The unknown thing to be known appeared to me as some stretch of earth orhard marl, resisting penetration the sea advances insensibly insilence, nothing seems to happen, nothing moves, the water is sofar off you hardly hear it yet it finally surrounds the resistantsubstance.
-- Alexander Grothendieck

#Moving #Sea #Water
If there is one thing in mathematics that fascinates me more than anything else (and doubtless always has), it is neither "number" nor "size", but always form. And among the thousand-and-one faces whereby form chooses to reveal itself to us, the one that fascinates me more than any other and continues to fascinate me, is the structure hidden in mathematical things.
-- Alexander Grothendieck

#Numbers #Faces #Size

We must never forget that Christ did not suffer just during His three years of public ministry or the last few days of His life when He was crucified. No, He suffered throughout His life on earth. He who was without sin lived daily with the corruption and sinfulness of lost humanity.
In 1917 European history, in the old sense, came to an end. World history began. It was the year of Lenin and Woodrow Wilson, both of whom repudiated the traditional standards of political behaviour. Both preached Utopia, Heaven on Earth. It was the moment of birth for our contemporary world.
If you imagine writing 1,000 words a day, which most journalists do, that would be a very long book a year.
A man who has made up his mind on a given subject twenty-five years ago and continues to hold his political opinions after he has been proved to be wrong is a man of principle; while he who from time to time adapts his opinions to the changing circumstances of life is an opportunist.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Obama, Thank you for sending me Christmas and New Year greetings yet again. Welcome back to India... Would have loved to host you at my concert in Baroda on the 26th!
There's this group online that I frequent. It's a group of prop crazies just like me called the Replica Props Forum, and it's people who trade, make and travel in information about movie props.
The introduction of the cipher 0 or the group concept was general nonsense too, and mathematics was more or less stagnating for thousands of years because nobody was around to take such childish steps...
We write our lives indeed, But in a cipher none can read, Except the author
Nobility of birth is like a cipher; it has no power in itself, like wealth or talent; but, it tells with all the power of a cipher when added to either of the other two.
An enormous amount of scientific language is metaphorical. We talk about a genetic code, where code originally meant a cipher; we talk about the solar system model of the atom as though the atom were like a sun and moon and planets.

Alexander Grothendieck famous quotes

You may also like: