12 Quotes by Ben Orlin

Creativity is what happens when a mind encounters an obstacle. It’s the human process of finding a way through, over, around, or beneath. No obstacle, no creativity.

If you ditch the rulebook, you lose the grace. Even the wacky, avant-garde, convention-defying arts—experimental film, expressionist painting, professional wrestling—draw their power from playing against the limitations of the chosen medium.

All the world's a differential equation, and the men and women are merely variables.

Reality is a lovely starting point, but the coolest destinations lie far beyond it.

History is the sum of the people living it.

There are two kinds of people in life: those who like crude dualities and those who do not.

Math is a weave of many threads: the formal and the intuitive, the simple and the profound, the momentary and the eternal. Love the thread you love. But never mistake it for the tapestry.

Mathematics can instruct us on how to optimize. But what to optimize—that remains a question for humans.

It is a funny paradox of design: utility breeds beauty. There is elegance in efficiency, a visual pleasure in things that just barely work.