Quotes from A Beautiful Mind

“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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“Ludzie w życiu się spotykają, gawędzą, dyskutują, spierają nie uświadamiając sobie, że mówią do siebie z daleka, każdy z obserwatorium ustawionym w innym punkcie czasu.”
― Milan Kundera, quote from The Festival of Insignificance

“What a pessimist you are!" exclaimed Candide.
"That is because I know what life is," said Martin.”
― Voltaire, quote from Candide: or, Optimism

“Right now universes are being created, thrown together and destroyed the world over. Seven billion souls, each preoccupied with their own unique reality, each with a head full of memories, plans, learned knowledge and accumulated trivia; birthdays, telephone numbers, bus routes, passwords. Each one with somewhere to go, something they need to get done. They all have birth certificates and shoe sizes. Every single one has a story.”
― Graeme Cameron, quote from Normal

“باران می آمد و روی شیروانی ترانه می نواخت: ترانه ای که اگه آدم اون رو شب، در امنِ آغوش او گوش کنه زیباترین ترانۀ دنیاست. هر قدر باد شدیدتر باشه و بارون تند تر بیاد بازوهاش محکمتر دورت فشرده میشه و تو توی بغلش راحت تری و دیگه از هیچ چیز نمی ترسی. دست کم این احساس منه. تمام عمرم صدای بارون روی شیروانی رو تنها شنیدم. بارون دوست نداره کسی تنها ترانه اش رو گوش بده. من ناکامیش رو خوب حس می کنم”
― Romain Gary, quote from The Ski Bum

“Теперь уже всякий частный человек считает в лице своем оскорбленным все общество”
― Nikolai Gogol, quote from The Overcoat

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About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.