Quotes from Terence Tao

If I don't understand something properly, every single component, it really bugs me.

I always liked situations where there were very clear rules of what to do.

Most students who take math classes aren't going to be mathematicians. They're going to be engineers, statisticians - in many ways, that's the more important mission of math education.

If I experiment enough, I get a deeper understanding.

For me, I guess the main motivation is the satisfaction of finally understanding some tricky mathematical concept or phenomenon and then explaining it to others.

Mathematical problems, or puzzles, are important to real mathematics (like solving real-life problems), just as fables, stories and anecdotes are important to the young in understanding real life

I often don't know what I'll be working on next year or a year from now. There is often a chance meeting, or something that I worked on 10 years ago suddenly becomes important again.

When I was growing up, I knew I wanted to be a mathematician, but I had no idea what that entailed.

Research sometimes feels like an ongoing TV series in which some amazing revelations have already been made, but there are still plenty of cliff-hangers and unresolved plotlines that you want to see resolved. But unlike TV, we have to do the work ourselves to figure out what happens next.

I was never very good at school with... humanities... anything which was more a matter of opinion.

I enjoy a good meal, a good vacation, or a good movie, much as anyone else would.

I remember having this vague idea that what mathematicians did was that some authority, someone, gave them problems to solve, and they just sort of solved them.

I don't like accepting things at face value.

I recall being fascinated by numbers even at age three and viewed their manipulation as a kind of game.

Education is a complex, multifaceted, and painstaking process, and being gifted does not make this less so.