Reality is always more fantastic than fiction.

The Langlands program is a vision of how mathematics could be unified in a single framework.

The most successful modern states are those that have been able to combine a strong state with the rule of law and democratic accountability.

A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else. Men’s happiness or misery is most part of their own making. He, whose mind directs not wisely, will never take the right way; and he, whose body is crazy and feeble, will never be able to advance in it.