9 Rota Quotes & Sayings

When I'm creating at the piano, I tend to feel happy; but - the eternal dilemma - how can we be happy amid the unhappiness of others? I'd do everything I could to give everyone a moment of happiness. That's what's at the heart of my music. — Nino Rota

Mathematicians - for what they do - are really poorly rewarded. And it's a very competitive field, almost as bad as being a concert pianist. — Gian-Carlo Rota

Thou art moist and soft clay; thou must instantly be shaped by the glowing wheel.
[Lat., Udum et molle lutum es: nunc, nunc properandus et acri
Fingendus sine fine rota.] — Aulus Persius Flaccus

My dad is the first to say that Mum deals with the mortgage payments, the bills, the rota, things like that, while my dad is the emotional one who keeps the home together. He's the nurturer, but together, they work perfectly. — Cush Jumbo

Saint Teresa, as the Roman Rota attests, never fell into any mortal sin; but still Our Lord showed her the place prepared for her in Hell; not because she deserved Hell, but because, had she not risen from the state of lukewarmness in which she lived, she would in the end have lost the grace of God and been damned. — Alphonsus Liguori

THE COMPUTER IS JUST AN INSTRUMENT for doing faster what we already know how to do slower. All pretensions to computer intelligence and paradise-tomorrow promises should be toned down before the public turns away in disgust. And if that should happen, our civilization might not survive. — Gian-Carlo Rota

A mathematician's work is mostly a tangle of guesswork, analogy, wishful thinking and frustration, and proof, far from being the core of discovery, is more often than not a way of making sure that our minds are not playing tricks. — Gian-Carlo Rota

It is a common public relations gimmick to give the entire credit for the solution of famous problems to the one mathematician who is responsible for the last step. — Gian-Carlo Rota

The pendulum of mathematics swings back and forth towards abstraction and away from it with a timing that remains to be estimated. — Gian-Carlo Rota

How did he do it? He must be a genius! — Gian-Carlo Rota

Stan Ulam was lazy, ... He talked too much ... He was self-centered ... He had an overpowering personality. — Gian-Carlo Rota

If we have no idea why a statement is true, we can still prove it by induction. — Gian-Carlo Rota

Our faith in Mathematics is not likely to wane if we openly acknowledge that the personalities of even the greatest mathematicians may be as flawed as those of anyone else. — Gian-Carlo Rota

The advice we give others is the advice that we ourselves need. — Gian-Carlo Rota

Mathematics is the study of analogies between analogies. All science is. Scientists want to show that things that don't look alike are really the same. That is one of their innermost Freudian motivations. In fact, that is what we mean by understanding. — Gian-Carlo Rota

Are mathematical ideas invented or discovered? This question has been repeatedly posed by philosophers through the ages and will probably be with us forever. — Gian-Carlo Rota

They were empowered and fulfilled. They dated occasionally but were just as happy living the feminist dream of a professional woman not answerable to any man. Do what they wanted to, go where they wanted to and spend indecent amount of money on clothes and shoes, it was all good. There were not slaves to diets, shaving hairy legs, waxing eyebrows, dying their roots, endless showers, applying tons of make-up and trying to be domestic goddesses. They could slum around in leisure suits and runners reading Cosmo with a fag in their mouth and a cup of coffee in their hands. There could be slummy mummies or tidy queens or takeaway junkies it all depended on their daily rota and social live. Good, freedom was definitely good. One husband in a lifetime was enough for them — Annette J. Dunlea

The apex of mathematical achievement occurs when two or more fields which were thought to be entirely unrelated turn out to be closely intertwined. Mathematicians have never decided whether they should feel excited or upset by such events. — Gian-Carlo Rota

Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, 'How did he do it? He must be a genius! — Gian-Carlo Rota

Making mathematics accessible to the educated layman, while keeping high scientific standards, has always been considered a treacherous navigation between the Scylla of professional contempt and the Charybdis of public misunderstanding. — Gian-Carlo Rota

Rota's personality is compatible with mine. — Stanislaw Ulam

[In mathematics] There are two kinds of mistakes. There are fatal mistakes that destroy a theory, but there are also contingent ones, which are useful in testing the stability of a theory. — Gian-Carlo Rota

[Lord Horror] was so unique and radical, I expected to go to prison for it. I always thought that if you wrote a truly dangerous book -- something dangerous would happen to you. Which is one reason there are so few really dangerous books around. Publishers play at promoting dangerous books, whether they're Serpent's Tail or Penguin. All you get is a book vetted by committee, never anything radically imaginative or offensive that will take your fucking head off. Ironically, I think it would do other authors a power of good if they had to account for their books by going to prison -- there are far too many bad books being published! — David Britton

We often hear that mathematics consists mainly of 'proving theorems.' Is a writer's job mainly that of 'writing sentences? — Gian-Carlo Rota

God created infinity, and man, unable to understand infinity, had to invent finite sets. — Gian-Carlo Rota

The lack of real contact between mathematics and biology is either a tragedy, a scandal or a challenge, it is hard to decide which. — Gian-Carlo Rota

In this book, I want to share with you some extraordinary observations that I have made in my 50 years in dentistry. I believe these experiences made me a better dentist and played a significant role in my evolution as a human being. — James E. Rota

Running overtime is the one unforgivable error a lecturer can make. After fifty minutes (one microcentury as von Neumann used to say) everybody's attention will turn elsewhere. — Gian-Carlo Rota

Mathematicians also make terrible salesmen. Physicists can discover the same thing as a mathematician and say 'We've discovered a great new law of nature. Give us a billion dollars.' And if it doesn't change the world, then they say, 'There's an even deeper thing. Give us another billion dollars.' — Gian-Carlo Rota

The progress of mathematics can be viewed as progress from the infinite to the finite. — Gian-Carlo Rota