April 1859
1820s, Journals (1822–1863)
Context: I have been writing & speaking what were once called novelties, for twenty five or thirty years, & have not now one disciple. Why? Not that what I said was not true; not that it has not found intelligent receivers but because it did not go from any wish in me to bring men to me, but to themselves. I delight in driving them from me. What could I do, if they came to me? — they would interrupt and encumber me. This is my boast that I have no school & no follower. I should account it a measure of the impurity of insight, if it did not create independence.
“... I have said for twenty-five or thirty years that the one thing I would really like to know before I die is why the monster group exists.”
[Life, Death and the Monster - Numberphile, 9 May 2014, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOCe5HUObD4]
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John Horton Conway 2
British mathematician 1937Related quotes
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