As human beings, we always expect everyday change to happen slowly and steadily, and for there to be some relationship between cause and effect.

If you are going to do something truly innovative, you have to be someone who does not value social approval. You can't need social approval to go forward. Otherwise, how would you ever do the thing that you are doing?

Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.

Father: 'Anything but journalism.' I rebelled.

Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning. Once it does, it becomes the kind of thing that makes you grab your wife around the waist and dance a jig.

Emotion is contagious.

We sometimes think of being good at mathematics as an innate ability. You either have "it" or you don't. But to Schoenfeld, it's not so much ability as attitude. You master mathematics if you are willing to try.