Nelson S.

“It was a sunny day, and Einstein merrily played with the telescope’s dials and instruments. Elsa came along as well, and it was explained to her that the equipment was used to determine the scope and shape of the universe. She reportedly replied, “Well, my husband does that on the back of an old envelope.”
― Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe

“While his school was closed due to an outbreak of plague in 1666–67, twenty-five-year-old Isaac Newton showed his professor, Isaac Barrow, what research he was conducting in his spare time. Barrow immediately gave up his job as a professor and became a student of Newton. What a noble gesture. What ethical behavior. When was the last time you heard of a professor vacating his post in favor of a better candidate? And when was the last time you read about a CEO clearing out his desk when he realized that one of his twenty thousand employees could do a better job?”
― Rolf Dobelli, The Art of Thinking Clearly: The International Bestseller That Improves Decision Making and Counters Faulty Reasoning with Research-Backed Good Sense

“I have always believed that scientific research is another domain where a form of optimism is essential to success: I have yet to meet a successful scientist who lacks the ability to exaggerate the importance of what he or she is doing, and I believe that someone who lacks a delusional sense of significance will wilt in the face of repeated experiences of multiple small failures and rare successes, the fate of most researchers.”
― Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

“There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer's time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer's time isn't worth the paper he is not writing anything on.”
― E.B. White, One Man's Meat