University Of Cambridge Alumni

"Another project which keeps the Bourbaki name alive is the Seminaire Nicolas Bourbaki, which is a series of seminars, about 12–20 per year, on contemporary mathematics started in 1948. It is considered an honour to be invited to give a seminary in this seminar in this series; the only Indian to figure in the seminar so far is Harish Chandra, who gave a talk in the 1957–58 series and, apparently, thus lost the chance of winning the Fields medal in 1958! (Siegel was the chairman of the Fields medal committee in the ICM 1958!)"

"I have often pondered over the roles of knowledge or experience, on the one hand, and imagination or intuition, on the other, in the process of discovery. I believe that there is a certain fundamental conflict between the two, and knowledge, by advocating caution, tends to inhibit the flight of imagination. Therefore, a certain naiveté, unburdened by conventional wisdom, can sometimes be a positive asset."

"Europe is not really even a geographic entity; it is separated from Asia only at one point, the Bosphorus, by a small stretch of water. North of that there is continuity over the russians steppes, a complete terrestrial flow. I suggest that is also true of culture, and indeed of social organization. Indeed Europe has never been purely isolated, purely Christian. Instead of Christian Europe, one has to see the continent as penetrated by the three world religions that originated in the Near East and which indeed had a common mythology or sacred text; in order of arrival these were Judaism, Christianity and Islam. (...) All have equal entitlements to be present, and in this general ('objective') sense none can be considered only as the Other; they are part of Europe, part of our heritage."

"Whereas in Western countries the constitution merely had to guarantee the rights of a pre-existing civil society and culture, in Russia it also had to create these. It had to educate society - and the state itself - into the values and ideas of liberal constitutionalism."

"In a remark made in 1932 to Otto Wagener, one of the party’s economic experts, Hitler observed that the business bourgeoisie “know nothing except their profit. ‘Fatherland’ is only a word for them.”"

"It has been estimated that about one-fifth of Nazi voters and members were drawn from the manual work-force. After 1933 the number of workers in the Nazi Party went up, a product of opportunism perhaps as much as conviction."

"Some big businessmen did contribute to the Nazi election funds but German capitalism cannot be regarded, on the evidence, as having collectively brought fascism to power in any direct sense. Fascism in Germany was a mass movement brought to power through collusion with a bankrupt but traditional elite, not as the puppet of big business."

"The [Nazi] regime was also able to use the state-owned multi-nationals as a ‘battering ram’ for entering economies that were not occupied territory."

"Göring industrial empire represented, in this sense, one of the major steps towards restricting private industrial capitalism and substituting a ‘völkisch’, state-run industrial economy."

"In the long run the [Nazi] movement was moving to a position in which the economic New Order would be controlled by the Party through a bureaucratic apparatus staffed by technical experts and dominated by political interests, not unlike the system that had already been built up in the Soviet Union."

"Nazi political hegemony in the end prevented German capitalists from acting as capitalists."

"Historians now debate whether Britain had a ‘managed economy’ by 1939, the very term—die gelenkte wirtschaft—adopted by German economists in the 1930s to describe the Nazi economy."

"Industry was regarded entirely instrumentally by party, state and military, in terms of its ability to provide the sinews of war… The business community was characterized by a defensive opportunism in the face of state power."

"The outcome [of the Nazi economy] was a command economy, governed by military priorities, but run by a coalition of state officials, soldiers, party hacks and industrial technocrats."

"When the regime wanted additional industrial capacity or resources for the military economy which the private sector could not provide, it was created (or conquered) by the state… during the Third Reich state ownership expanded into the productive sectors, based on the strategic industries, aviation, aluminum, synthetic oil and rubber, chemicals, iron and steel, and army equipment. Government finances for state-owned enterprises rose from RM 4,000m in 1933 to RM 16,000m 10 years later; the capital assets of state-owned industry doubled during the same period; the number of state-owned firms topped 500."

"During the years that followed, Hitler and the Nazi movement were anything but the tools of German big business."

"Indeed, many businessmen seem on the evidence to have been wary of the closet anti-capitalism of the rank-and-file Nazis."

"[T]here could be no guarantee in a free market that the interests of race or state as Hitler defined them would take priority over the interests of businessmen or consumers. After 1933 the role of the state in regulating and directing economic life increased sharply, first in order to encourage economic revival, then to divert economic resources to the growth of German military power… [which] led, in an unplanned, incremental way, to the establishment of a kind of command economy."

"Hitler was ‘an enemy of free-market economics’ and a ‘reluctant dirigiste.’"

"Truth can never suffer from argument and inquiry; but may be essentally injured by the tyrannous interference of her pretended advocates. Impede her energies by the pains and penalties of law, and, like the Fame of Virgil, she will creep along the ground, diminutive in stature, and shrunk with apprehension: give free scope to all her tendencies, and she will soon collect her might, dilate herself to the fullness of her dimensions, and reach the stars."

"The picture of law triumphant and justice prostrate, is not, I am aware, without admirers. To me it is a sorry spectacle. The spirit of justice does not reside in formalities, or words, nor is the triumph of its administration to be found in successfully picking a way between the pitfalls of technicality. After all, the law is, or ought to be, but the handmaid of justice, and inflexibility, which is the most becoming robe of the latter, often serves to render the former grotesque. But any real inroad upon the rights and opportunities for defence of a person charged with a breach of the law, whereby the certainty of justice might be imperilled, I conceive to be a matter of the highest moment."

"There is no doubt whatever that as far as common law is concerned, the Courts in this country have been bound, most of them, by inflexible rules handed down in great measure from the time of the Plantagenets, and until certain modern statutes were passed there was no possibility of altering or improving them."

"Mankind naturally give evidence to the constituted Courts, and reputation is incurably damaged by their decisions, whether erroneous or not."

"Every Court has the power to vary its own orders which are drawn up mechanically in the registry or in the office of the Court—to vary them in such a way as to carry out its own meaning, and where language has been used which is doubtful, to make it plain. I think that power is inherent in every Court. Speaking of the Courts with which I have been more familiar all my life, the Common Law Courts, I have no doubt that that can be done, and I should have no doubt that it could also be done by the Court of Chancery."

"The emigres often work as a Trojan horse, lobbying on your behalf. They use external opportunities to succeed prodigiously in different occupations. And they can bring their skills and funds home to assist the country in its economic takeoff."

"The rule is this: that wherever there is a decision of a Court of concurrent jurisdiction, the other Courts will adopt that as the basis of their decision, provided it can be appealed from. If it cannot be appealed from, then they will exercise their own judgment."

"In criminal cases you always begin by proving the corpus delicti, and then connect the prisoner with it."

"Judges are philologists of the highest order."

"I remember Lord Eldon saying to counsel, " You have told us how far the cases have gone, will you now tell us where they are to stop?" I think it is now time that we should say where the cases are to stop."

"You have no right, for the purpose of justifying a libel, to inquire into a man's life and opinions."

"You need not cite cases that are familiar."

"In a perfectly new case—a case altogether primae impressionis—I think the Judges are bound to hold fast to the principles of the common law—to remember the maxim, "Salus reipublicae suprema lex," and if the condition be really in principle against the public good, to pronounce it in their judgment void."

"The Crown cannot ever be prejudiced by the misconduct or negligence of any of its officers."

"Circumstantial evidence only raises a probability."

"Arguments from the American statute are not of much force, because Englishmen are not bound to know it."

"International law, like the moral law, is part of the law of England, but only to the extent that the Courts will not help those that break it."

"I wanted to find out why Shelley could write better-sounding poetry than I."

"The International Phonetic Association is like the Episcopal church. One can hold almost any theoretical position as long as one gets the symbols right."

"He did extensive linguistic fieldwork on a scale it had not been done before, and when he brought it back from the field he found ways to use sophisticated laboratory equipment to analyze his recordings."

"My immediate answer was, 'I don't have a singing butler and three maids who sing, but I will tell you what I can as an assistant professor.'"

"[It's] not our decision to make. It's up to the people themselves."

"It was really [David] Whitteridge who taught me to be a scientist."

"Algebra is the offer made by the devil to the mathematician. The devil says: `I will give you this powerful machine, it will answer any question you like. All you need to do is give me your soul: give up geometry and you will have this marvellous machine.'"

"This 'Hodge conjecture' has by now achieved a considerable status, almost on a par with the Riemann hypothesis or the Poincaré conjecture."

"My own supervisor, William Hodge, the creator of the fertile theory of harmonic forms, was not a genius like Ramanujan but resembled Lefschetz."

"I always want to try to understand why things work. I’m not interested in getting a formula without knowing what it means. I always try to dig behind the scenes, so if I have a formula, I understand why it’s there. And understanding is a very difficult notion. People think mathematics begins when you write down a theorem followed by a proof. That’s not the beginning, that’s the end. For me the creative place in mathematics comes before you start to put things down on paper, before you try to write a formula. You picture various things, you turn them over in your mind. You’re trying to create, just as a musician is trying to create music, or a poet. There are no rules laid down. You have to do it your own way. But at the end, just as a composer has to put it down on paper, you have to write things down. But the most important stage is understanding. A proof by itself doesn’t give you understanding. You can have a long proof and no idea at the end of why it works. But to understand why it works, you have to have a kind of gut reaction to the thing. You’ve got to feel it."

"It is important to recognise that comparison is not a method or even an academic technique; rather, it is a discursive strategy. There are a few important points to bear in mind when one wants to make a comparison. First of all, one has to decide, in any given work, whether one is mainly after similarities or differences. It is very difficult, for example, to say, let alone prove, that Japan and China or Korea are basically similar or basically different. Either case could be made, depending on one’s angle of vision, one’s framework, and the conclusions towards which one intends to move. (In the jingoist years on the eve of the First World War, when Germans and Frenchmen were encouraged to hate each other, the great Austro-Marxist theoretician Otto Bauer enjoyed baiting both sides by saying that contemporary Parisians and Berliners had far more in common than either had with their respective medieval ancestors.) Here I have tried, as perhaps offering a useful example, to show how the comparative works I wrote between the early 1970s and the 2000s reflected, in their real difference, changing perspectives, framings and (political) intentions."

"We are none of us infallible—not even the youngest of us."

"[Leibniz] has this ... "that nothing happens without a reason why it should be so...""

"He is Archimedes, Mick Jagger, Salvador Dalí, and Richard Feynman, all rolled into one. He is one of the greatest living mathematicians, with a sly sense of humour, a polymath’s promiscuous curiosity, and a compulsion to explain everything about the world to everyone in it."