James Newman Quotes

The higher arithmetic presents us with an inexhaustible store of interesting truths - of truths, too, which are not isolated, but stand in a close internal connection, and between which, as our knowledge increases, we are continually discovering new and sometimes wholly unexpected ties.

I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which however the margin is not large enough to contain.

I can show you that the art of calculation has to do with odd and even numbers in their numerical relations to themselves and to each other.

That was the wonderful thing about Ramanujan. He discovered so much, and yet he left so much more in his garden for other people to discover.

Walt Disney, of all people, did a good job of describing his own netony. "People who have worked with me say I am 'innocence in action,'" he wrote. "They say I have the innocence and unselfconsciousness of a child. Maybe I have. I still look at the world with uncontaminated wonder."

No fact is so simple that it is not harder to believe than to doubt at the first presentation. Equally, there is nothing so mighty or so marvelous that the wonder it evokes does not tend to diminish in time.

Let yourself be enchanted in small ways.

Srinivasa Ramanujan was the strangest man in all of mathematics, probably in the entire history of science. He has been compared to a bursting supernova, illuminating the darkest, most profound corners of mathematics, before being tragically struck down by tuberculosis at the age of 33, like Riemann before him. Working in total isolation from the main currents of his field, he was able to rederive 100 years' worth of Western mathematics on his own. The tragedy of his life is that much of his work was wasted rediscovering known mathematics.

To the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sun is really a sun; to the humble man, and to the humble man alone, the sea is really a sea.

may my heart always be open to little birds who are the secrets of living

The best teacher is not the one who knows most but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and wonderful.

The greatest lessons to be learned about life, love, purpose, meaning, and priority are to be learned from children.

All results of the profoundest mathematical investigation must ultimately be expressible in the simple form of properties of the integers.

I wish to explore the beauty of everyday environments; in troubled times it is especially important to be aware of beauty and wonder.

Oh, earth, you're too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

That was such a wonderful time, even in its strangeness and sadness-and life isn't the same now. It's wonderful, but it isn't the same.

Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions of the world, than I when I was a child.

I wonder how much it would take to buy a soap bubble, if there were only one in the world.

Every scene, even the commonest, is wonderful, if only one can detach oneself, casting off all memory of use and custom and behold it, as it were, for the first time.

look for a lovely thing and you will find it, it is not far, it never will be far

How lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.

Get close to grass and you’ll see a star.

If we spend our days waiting for fabulous roses we could miss the beauty and wonder of the tiny forget-me-nots that are all around us.