This result is too beautiful to be false; it is more important to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit experiment.

A hedge fund in possession of a vast pile of finance will eventually start pursuing risky strategies when markets look too boring for too long.

What we need is not a skilled monetary driver of the economic vehicle continuously turning the steering wheel to adjust to the the unexpected irregularities of the route, but some means of keeping the monetary passenger who is in the back seat as ballast from occasionally leaning over and giving the steering wheel a jerk that threatens to send the car off the road.

Reductio ad absurdum, which Euclid loved so much, is one of a mathematicians finest weapons. It is a far finer gambit than any chess play: a chess player may offer the sacrifice of a pawn or even a piece, but a mathematician offers the game.

Mathematical proofs, like diamonds, are hard as well as clear.