An extraordinary amount of arrogance is present in any claim of having been the first in inventing something.

The theory of probability is the only mathematical tool available to help map the unknown and the uncontrollable. It is fortunate that this tool, while tricky, is extraordinarily powerful and convenient.

Everybody in mathematics had given up for 100 years or 200 years the idea that you could from pictures, from looking at pictures, find new ideas. That was the case long ago in the Middle Ages, in the Renaissance, in later periods, but then mathematicians had become very abstract.

I went to the computer and tried to experiment. I introduced a very high level of experiment in very pure mathematics.

The most important thing I have done is to combine something esoteric with a practical issue that affects many people.

I was in an industrial laboratory because academia found me unsuitable

The rare scholars who are nomads-by-choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the settled disciplines.