"I am not at all the sort of person who attracts attention, I am an anonymous presence against an even more anonymous background. If you, reader, coul"I am not at all the sort of person who attracts attention, I am an anonymous presence against an even more anonymous background. If you, reader, couldn’t help picking me out among the people getting off the train and continued following me in my to-and-fro-ing between bar and telephone, this is simply because I am called “I� and this is the only thing you know about me, but this alone is reason enough for you to invest a part of yourself in the stranger “I”…[..].. Getting rid of the suitcase was to be the first condition for re-establishing the previous situation: previous to everything that happened afterward. This is what I mean when I say I would like to swim against the stream of time: I would like to erase the consequences of certain events and restore an initial condition. But every moment of my life brings with it an accumulation of new facts, and each of these facts brings with it its consequences; so ,ore I seek to return to the zero moment from which I set out, the further I move away from it: though all my actions are bent on erasing the consequences of previous actions and though I manage to achieve appreciable results in this erasure, enough to open my heart to hopes of immediate relief, I must, however bear in mind that my every move to erase previous events provokes a rain of new events, which complicates the situation worse than before and which I will then, in their turn, have to erase. I must calculate carefully every move so as to achieve the maximum of erasure with the minimum of complication.�...more
“No—I’m not saying that math gives you greater claim to worthiness or human dignity. I’m saying that the pursuit of math can, if grounded in human des“No—I’m not saying that math gives you greater claim to worthiness or human dignity. I’m saying that the pursuit of math can, if grounded in human desires, build aspects of character and habits of mind that will allow you to live a more fully human life and experience the best of what life has to offer. None of us is wholly virtuous; we all are works in progress with room to grow. And there are many ways to grow in virtue, not just in mathematics. But does the proper practice of mathematics build particular virtues, like the ability to think clearly and to reason well? Unequivocally yes, and it may do so in a distinctive way.�...more
“We, who have been hounded through all the rapids of life, we who have been torn loose from all roots that held us, we, always beginning anew when we “We, who have been hounded through all the rapids of life, we who have been torn loose from all roots that held us, we, always beginning anew when we have been driven to the end, we, victims and yet willing servants of unknown, mystic forces, we, for whom comfort has become a saga and security a childhood dream, we have felt the tension from pole to pole and the eternal dread of the eternal new in every fibre of our being. Every hour of our years was bound up with the world's destiny. Suffering and joyful we have lived time and history far beyond our own little existence, while they, the older generation, were confined within themselves. Therefore each one of us, even the smallest of our generation, to-day knows a thousand times more about reality than the wisest of our ancestors. But nothing was given to us: we paid the price, fully and unequivocally, for everything.�...more
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