Grothendieck Quotes & Sayings

I am not really doing research, just trying to cultivate myself. — Alexander Grothendieck

I believe in lust at first sight.And attraction.But not love. — Simone Elkeles

If you owe the bank $100 that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem. — J. Paul Getty

Experience is the cane of the blind. — Jacques Roumain

Among the thousand-and-one faces whereby form chooses to reveal itself to us, the one that fascinates me more than any other, and continues to fascinate me, is the structure hidden in mathematical things. — Alexander Grothendieck

MacPherson told me that my theorem can be viewed as blah blah blah Grothendieck blah blah blah, which makes it much more respectable. — Jim Propp

A different image came to me a few weeks ago.The unknown thing to be known appeared to me as some stretch of earth orhard marl, resisting penetration the sea advances insensibly insilence, nothing seems to happen, nothing moves, the water is sofar off you hardly hear it yet it finally surrounds the resistantsubstance. — Alexander Grothendieck

When something scary like this happens, it acts like a wake-up call, you know? It makes us reassess what's important in life. Our family. Our friends. The people we love. — R.J. Palacio

The question you raise, 'How can such a formulation lead to computations?' doesn't bother me in the least! Throughout my whole life as a mathematician, the possibility of making explicit, elegant computations has always come out by itself, as a byproduct of a thorough conceptual understanding of what was going on. Thus I never bothered about whether what would come out would be suitable for this or that, but just tried to understand - and it always turned out that understanding was all that mattered. — Alexander Grothendieck

The introduction of the cipher 0 or the group concept was general nonsense too, and mathematics was more or less stagnating for thousands of years because nobody was around to take such childish steps ... — Alexander Grothendieck

Discovery is the privilege of the child: the child who has no fear of being once again wrong, of looking like an idiot, of not being serious, of not doing things like everyone else. — Alexander Grothendieck

I am not a product of privilege, I am a product of opportunity. — Edward Heath

And every science, when we understand it not as an instrument of power and domination but as an adventure in knowledge pursued by our species across the ages, is nothing but this harmony, more or less vast, more or less rich from one epoch to another, which unfurls over the course of generations and centuries, by the delicate counterpoint of all the themes appearing in turn, as if summoned from the void. — Alexandre Grothendieck

Every field has its taboos. In algebraic geometry the taboos are (1) writing a draft that can be followed by anyone but two or three of one's closest friends, (2) claiming that a result has applications, (3) mentioning the word 'combinatorial,' and (4) claiming that algebraic geometry existed before Grothendieck (only some handwaving references to 'the Italians' are allowed provided they are not supported by specific references). — Gian-Carlo Rota

Reality is nothing but a collective hunch. — Lily Tomlin

Fertility is measured by offspring, not by honours. — Alexander Grothendieck