(Richard Feynman)
What I cannot create, I do not understand.
(Albert Einstein)
Make physics as simple as possible, but no simpler.
(Bernhard Riemann)
The ideal is to reach proofs by comprehension rather than by computation.
(Erwin Schroedinger)
The task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen, but to think what nobody has yet thought about that which everybody sees.
(Eugene Wigner)
The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.
(Carlo Rovelli, from his book There are Places in the World where Rules are less important than Kindness)
Ideas don't fall from the sky.
(Albert Einstein)
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
(John Archibald Wheeler)
Truth is less than truth until it is made known.
(Carl Friedrich Gauss)
It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.
(Ludwig Wittgenstein)
Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystery.
(Dirac)
I understand what an equation means if I have a way of figuring out the characteristics of its solution without actually solving it.
(John Wheeler, as quoted in Anthony Zee's book Fly by Night Physics)
Never never calculate unless you already know the answer!
(Paul Halmos, as quoted in Keith Kendiq's book Sink or Float? preface)
It's examples, examples, examples, that for me, all mathematics is based on, and I always look for them. I look for them first when I begin to study, I keep looking for them, and I cherish them all.
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