People (or students) do not have shortcomings, only uniquenesses. The goal of a good teacher is to turn these uniquenesses into advantages.

My life may be encapsulated by one of Graham Greene's "entertainments" titles: 'Loser Takes All'. Since I was thrown out of highschool for political reasons, I was free to study on my own and develop my own ways of thinking.

... The approach of von Neumann and Connes to the use of non-commutative algebra in physics is naive, the situation is much more complicated.

If you understand something, you understand that it is obvious.

One of the reasons we don't do as well as we should is that we are all over-taught.

The older I get, the more I believe that at the bottom of most deep mathematical problems there is a combinatorial problem.

I used to say: "Everything is Representation Theory". Now I say: "Nothing is Representation Theory".