John Forbes Nash, Jr. Quotations

I was on the mathematics faculty at M.I.T. from 1951 through until I resigned in the spring of 1959.

It's almost as if a demon might have passed from one host to another.

I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists. However, this is not entirely a matter of joy as if someone returned from physical disability to good physical health.

As a graduate student I studied mathematics fairly broadly, and I was fortunate enough, besides developing the idea which led to 'Non-Cooperative Games,' also to make a nice discovery relating to manifolds and real algebraic varieties.

I know that if I could really understand mental illness, then it would be appropriate to make a big career shift. I would become a therapist and a leader in terms of mental illness. But I'm not in the position.

You don't have to be a mathematician to have a feel for numbers.

I later spent... five to eight months in hospitals in New Jersey, always on an involuntary basis, and always attempting a legal argument for release.

Though I had success in my research both when I was mad and when I was not, eventually I felt that my work would be better respected if I thought and acted like a 'normal' person.

To some extent, people who are insane are nonconformists, and society and their family wish they would live what appear to be useful lives.

In madness, I thought I was the most important person in the world.