Daniel Tammet Quotes
-
I feel traveling certainly does broaden the mind. In my case certainly I feel more confident. It gives you a new perspective on the world.
→ -
The human brain is like a memory system that records every thing that happens to us and makes intelligent predictions based on those experiences.
→ -
Every culture has contributed to maths just as it has contributed to literature. It's a universal language; numbers belong to everyone.
→ -
Why learn a number like pi to so many decimal places? The answer I gave then as I do now is that pi is for me an extremely beautiful and utterly unique thing. Like the Mona Lisa or a Mozart symphony, pi is its own reason for loving it.
→ -
I recited Pi to 22,514 decimal points in five hours and nine minutes. I was able to do this because of weeks of study, aided by the unusual synaesthesic way my mind perceives numbers as complex multidimensional coloured and textured shapes.
→ -
When I was a child, my behavior was far from being what most people would label 'intelligent.' It was often limited, repetitive and anti-social. I could not do many of the things that most people take for granted, such as looking someone in the eye or deciphering a person's body language, and only acquired these skills with much effort over time.
→ -
Like works of literature, mathematical ideas help expand our circle of empathy, liberating us from the tyranny of a single, parochial point of view. Numbers, properly considered, make us better people.
→ -
I love music. I have a fondness for Chopin, and I very much like his 'Raindrop Prelude.'
→ -
When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges. That's the answer. It's mental imagery. It's like maths without having to think.
→ -
It was hard for me to find my voice because I was, for so long, absorbed in my own world.
→ -
My autism is a very mild form. It was diagnosed at the age of 25, partly because it wasn't diagnosable as a teenager (this is Asperger's syndrome, specifically). But there were certainly traits within that condition, within the autism spectrum in general, especially at the high functioning end, that I think are best looked at as pluses.
→ -
I'm inconsistent because I'm human.
→ -
My mother is not a model. She is not perfect. That awareness is part of learning to love someone. Predicting the actions of someone is an act of love. We persist, even when we get it wrong. That's the beauty of love.
→ -
There is no such thing as an average person. They really are guidelines for people to grapple with the unknown, and we can always surprise expectations.
→ -
I would play with numbers in a way that other kids would play with their friends.
→ -
Often autism is portrayed in the media as a very negative condition, as something that prevents somebody from communicating or from socializing or from being able to have any kind of normal, happy life.
→ -
Fischer, the great American chess champion, famously said, 'Chess is life.' I would say, 'Pi is life.'
→ -
We will always have more to discover, more to invent, more to understand and that's much closer to art and literature than any science.
→ -
We know next to nothing with any certainty about Pythagoras, except that he was not really called Pythagoras. The name by which he is known to us was probably a nickname bestowed by his followers. According to one source, it meant ‘He who spoke truth like an oracle’. Rather than entrust his mathematical and philosophical ideas to paper, Pythagoras is said to have expounded them before large crowds. The world’s most famous mathematician was also its first rhetorician.
→ -
Logic obviously is important. You need to be able to figure things out, to go to the end of a particular problem. But intuition is very important because it references things that logic alone cannot.
→ -
I have never played the lottery in my life and never will. Voltaire described lotteries as a tax on stupidity. More specifically, I think, on innumeracy.
→ -
I can well imagine that certain writers, even writers that we'd consider today very great writers, may not necessarily have tested highly on IQ just because of their numerical skills, or maybe they may not be very good at memory, and are not particularly good at these kinds of tests.
→ -
I thought of the infinitely many points that can divide the space between two human hearts.
→ -
Even the greatest mathematicians, the ones that we would put into our mythology of great mathematicians, had to do a great deal of leg work in order to get to the solution in the end.
→ -
I know from my own experience that there is much more to 'intelligence' than an IQ number. In fact, I hesitate to believe that any system could really reflect the complexity and uniqueness of one person's mind, or meaningfully describe the nature of his or her potential.
→ -
From 'Embracing the Wide Sky', I went to the States, to Canada and to different parts of Europe as well. I gave interviews in several languages.
→ -
No relationship is without its difficulties and this is certainly true when one or both of the persons involved has an autistic spectrum disorder. Even so, I believe what is truly essential to the success of any relationship is not so much compatibility, but love. When you love someone, virtually anything is possible.
→ -
I changed my name because it didn't fit with the way I saw myself.
→ -
Moment by moment throughout our lifetime, our brains hum with the work of making meaning: weaving together many thousands of threads of information into all manner of thoughts, feelings, memories, and ideas.
→ -
I have tried to be more flexible, but I always end up feeling more uncomfortable. Retaining a sense of control is really important. I like to do things in my own time, and in my own style, so an office with targets and bureaucracy just wouldn't work.
→
Related Authors
-
-
Dean Karnazes Author -
Simon Baron-Cohen Professor -
Tony Buzan Author -
Erik Larson Journalist -
Julia Ormond Film actress -
Hans Asperger Medical Doctor -
Catherine O'Hara Actress -
Jonathan Safran Foer Writer -
Temple Grandin Professor -
Joshua Foer Journalist -
Darold Treffert Psychiatrist -
Simonides of Ceos Lyric poet -
John Elder Robison Author -
Augusten Burroughs Writer -
Oliver Sacks Neurologist -
Tony Attwood Psychologist -
Tea Obreht Novelist -
Claire Danes Actress -
James Gleick Author