“To discover something in mathematics is to overcome an inhibition and a tradition. You cannot move forward if you are not subversive.”

“We live of novelty in science. So when you do something new, you have to overcome certain beliefs that it cannot be done, that it's not interesting and so on.”

“You can overcome anything, if and only if you love something enough.”

“Now what is history? It is the centuries of systematic explorations of the riddle of death, with a view to overcoming death. That’s why people discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves, that’s why they write symphonies..”

“You could argue that there's maybe some mathematical interest in a Bach fugue, say, but the only thing that music does really well is "move" people -- make them feel something.”

“once you laugh at you own weaknesses, you can move forward. Comedy breaks down walls. It opens up people. If you're good, you can fill up those openings with something positive. Mabye…….. combat some the ugliness in the world.”

“Group consciousness is something that is not widely understood, yet it is extremely powerful and can, if you are not careful, often overcome individual consciousness. If you cannot find a group whose consciousness matches your own, be the source of one. Others of like consciousness will be drawn to you.”

“Now with the big bang there is only one event that happened. So like the sun you can’t say that there are other big bangs going on that are what ours was like. The second problem is that at the big bang mathematics and physics break down. So there is no way of mathematically describing it. That is not a satisfactorily scientific approach, to ascribe something to speculations which you cannot justify using mathematics and physics.”

“Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear.”

“You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.”