Quotes from A Beautiful Mind

Sylvia Nasar ·  461 pages

Rating: (108.8K votes)


“I've made the most important discovery of my life. It's only in the mysterious equation of love that any logic or reasons can be found.”
― Sylvia Nasar, quote from A Beautiful Mind


“A profile, a look, a voice, can capture a heart in no time at all.”
― Sylvia Nasar, quote from A Beautiful Mind


“RAND scientists tried to tell their wives that the decision whether to buy or not to buy a washing machine was an 'optimization problem'.”
― Sylvia Nasar, quote from A Beautiful Mind


“Hey Nash! You scared?'
'Terrified,mortified,petrified...stupefied by you!”
― Sylvia Nasar, quote from A Beautiful Mind


“It was like a tornado, you want to hold on to everything you have, you don't want to let anything go.”
― Sylvia Nasar, quote from A Beautiful Mind



“People look to the order of numbers when the world falls apart.”
― Sylvia Nasar, quote from A Beautiful Mind


“I thought I could save a very worthwhile person.”
― Sylvia Nasar, quote from A Beautiful Mind


“Fermat’s assertion that if n is any whole number and p any prime, then n multiplied by itself p times minus n is divisible by p.”
― Sylvia Nasar, quote from A Beautiful Mind


“...his condition in Roanoke is a strong testament that lassitude, indifference and the peculiarities of his thought were primarily the consequences of his illness and not of the early attempts to treat it.

The popular view that anti-psychotics were chemical straight jackets that suppressed clear thinking and voluntary activity seems not to be borne out in Nash's case.

If anything, the only periods when he was relatively free of hallucinations, delusions and the erosion of will were the periods following either insulin treatment or the use of anti psychotics.

In other words, rather than reducing Nash to a zombie, medication seemed to reduce zombie like behavior.”
― Sylvia Nasar, quote from A Beautiful Mind


“In The Dynamics of Creation, Anthony Storr, the British psychiatrist, contends that an individual who “fears love almost as much as he fears hatred” may turn to creative activity not only out of an impulse to experience aesthetic pleasure, or the delight of exercising an active mind, but also to defend himself against anxiety stimulated by conflicting demands for detachment and human contact.21”
― Sylvia Nasar, quote from A Beautiful Mind



“James Glass, a political scientist at the University of Maryland who has studied the delusions of schizophrenia, writes, “Delusion provides a certain, often unbreakable identity, and its absolute character can maneuver the self into an unyielding position. In this respect, it is the internal mirror of political authoritarianism, the tyrant inside the self … an internal domination as deadly as any external tyranny.”
― Sylvia Nasar, quote from A Beautiful Mind


“Der Herr Gott ist raffiniert aber Boshaft ist Er nicht,”
― Sylvia Nasar, quote from A Beautiful Mind


“Nash’s lifelong quest for meaning, control, and recognition in the context of a continuing struggle, not just in society, but in the warring impulses of his paradoxical self, was now reduced to a caricature. Just as the overconcreteness of a dream is related to the intangible themes of waking life, Nash’s search for a piece of paper, a carte d’identité, mirrored his former pursuit of mathematical insights. Yet the gulf between the two recognizably related Nashes was as great as that between Kafka, the controlling creative genius, struggling between the demands of his self-chosen vocation and ordinary life, and K, a caricature of Kafka, the helpless seeker of a piece of paper that will validate his existence, rights, and duties. Delusion is not just fantasy but compulsion. Survival, both of the self and the world, appears to be at stake. Where once he had ordered his thoughts and modulated them, he was now subject to their peremptory and insistent commands.”
― Sylvia Nasar, quote from A Beautiful Mind


“42 A few months after Nash got out, Baumecker called the Institute for Advanced Study and asked to speak to Oppenheimer about whether Nash was now sane. Oppenheimer replied, “That’s something no one on earth can tell you, doctor.”
― Sylvia Nasar, quote from A Beautiful Mind


“Among the students, the Phantom was often held up as a cautionary figure: Anybody who was too much of a grind or who lacked social graces was warned that he or she was “going to wind up like the Phantom.”10 Yet if a new student complained that having him around made him feel uncomfortable, he was immediately warned: “He was a better mathematician than you’ll ever be!”
― Sylvia Nasar, quote from A Beautiful Mind



“A profound dislike for merely absorbing knowledge and a strong compulsion to learn by doing is one of the most reliable signs of genius.”
― Sylvia Nasar, quote from A Beautiful Mind


“several studies have since shown that basic military training during peacetime can precipitate schizophrenia in men with a hitherto unsuspected vulnerability to the illness.15”
― Sylvia Nasar, quote from A Beautiful Mind


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About the author

Sylvia Nasar
Born place: in Rosenheim, Germany
Born date August 17, 1947
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Popular quotes

“For all his frustrations and his chronic sense of being overburdened. He was proud of that; he’d always felt that it was worth doing a task properly if it was worth doing at all. That was part of his problem, of course; that was why he ended up with so much to do. It was also the source of his own particular pride: he knew--and he was certain they knew that there was no one else who could handle details such as these as well as he.”
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“It has driven men to extremes, to the impious arrogance of believing they alone can comprehend the vast mysteries of Scripture, let alone the mind of God. Such people are incapable of understanding even their own minds, for they confuse their own needs, for certainty or power, with God’s voice speaking to them.”
― C.J. Sansom, quote from Revelation


“We are glad you have been ordained as the first priest of your people. Now you can help us with their problem.' Tagoona asked, 'What is a problem?' and the white man said, 'Tagoona, if I held you by your heels from a third-story window, you would have a problem.' Tagoona considered this long and carefully. Then he said, 'I do not think so. If you saved me, all would be well. If you dropped me, nothing would matter. It is you who would have the problem.”
― Margaret Craven, quote from I Heard the Owl Call My Name


“To a very great extent human history has been the story of the unequal accumulation of harvested wealth, shifting from one centre of power to another, while always expanding the four great inequalities. This is history. Nowhere, as far as I know, has there ever been a civilization or moment when the wealth of the harvests, created by all, has been equitably distributed. Power has been exerted wherever it can be, and each successful coercion has done its part to add to the general inequality, which has risen in direct proportion to the wealth gathered; for wealth and power are much the same. The possessors of the wealth in effect buy the armed power they need to enforce the growing inequality. And so the cycle continues.”
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