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It is a testimony to the power of education that classical mechanics could operate for so long under a mistaken conception. Teaching and research concentrated on integrable systems, each feeding the other, until in the end we had no longer the tools nor the interest for studying nonintegrable systems.

— Ivar Ekeland The Best of All Possible Worlds (2006)

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More quotes by Ivar Ekeland

We do not discover mathematical truths; we remember them from our passages through this world outside our own.

The Best of All Possible Worlds (2006)

If there is a God, he has left no tracks in the laws of physics; or if he has, he has covered them up very well.

The Best of All Possible Worlds (2006)

An equilibrium is not always an optimum; it might not even be good. This may be the most important discovery of game theory.

The Best of All Possible Worlds (2006)

The world is full, at every scale, and every scale ignores the higher and lower ones.

The Best of All Possible Worlds (2006)

The social world is not driven by natural laws and randomness alone, as the physical world is, but also by human wills.

The Best of All Possible Worlds (2006)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ivar Ekeland (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.