The Great Quotes thread

[Bill Ryan]

You are disturbing me. I am picking mushrooms.

Grigori Perelman, Russian mathematician

~~~

In 2002, Perelman proved the Poincaré Conjecture, a longstanding major unsolved problem in mathematics.

He was awarded the Fields Medal, the mathematical equivalent of the Nobel Prize, but he declined to accept it. He was also awarded a million dollars for his achievement. But he declined that as well, choosing instead to take care of his aging mother in a small apartment.

His statement "You are disturbing me. I am picking mushrooms" was a reply to a journalist who had tried to speak to him after writing a book about him titled Genius and the Mathematical Breakthrough of the Century.

[rgray222]

There are a couple of different versions of this, I like them all

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek,”
by Joseph Campbell

“The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding”
by Dipen Parmar

“The treasure you seek is in the work you’re avoiding”
by Jim Kwik

[Raskolnikov]

Always bringing it to the next level. What a great story and quote Bill. I've always held a deep distrust for organizations that give prizes and honors, as if it were a lever of control used to invert the pure artistic drive to create or discover a new scientific or mathematical breakthrough into the more economic and superficial drive to receive a reward and/or honors, honor being something that can only be conferred by another, as Sartre (political affiliations aside) said in 1964 when refusing his Nobel Prize in Literature,

"I don’t see that it makes any point that someone in the Swedish academy just decides that this work is noble enough to receive a prize — I’ve already gotten the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding a thing out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it — those are the real things. The honors are unreal to me. I don’t believe in honors."

Loved yours too rgray222. You could almost start a new thread focusing on great quotes that say the same thing or have a similar message. I'm sure there are thousands of very profound quotes in all fields of endeavor that are expressed slightly differently from various cultures around the world.

Here's another from Joseph Campbell that sounded like the spiritual version of the Matrix red pill moment:

“If you see that the Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth while others do not see it, the End of the World has come for you. For the world as it was for you has indeed ended.”

[Raskolnikov]

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."

Napoleon Bonaparte

[noxon medem]

" Life is what keeps us all from dying .. "