“Mental acuity of any kind comes from solving problems yourself, not from being told how to solve them.”
― A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form
― A Mathematician's Lament: How School Cheats Us Out of Our Most Fascinating and Imaginative Art Form
“People who pride themselves on their "complexity" and deride others for being "simplistic" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.”
― Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays
― Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays
“New scientific ideas never spring from a communal body, however organized, but rather from the head of an individually inspired researcher who struggles with his problems in lonely thought and unites all his thought on one single point which is his whole world for the moment.”
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“What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
― Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series
― Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series
Corey’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Corey’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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