• (1) It is worth trying to accomploish the goal you set yourself; (2) it is worth setting yourself high goals
• I have repeatedly cited Pasteur’s remark, “Luck favors the prepared mind.” It both admits there is an element of luck and yet claims to a great extent it is up to you. You prepare yourself to succeed or not, as you choose, from the moment by the way you live your life
• It seems to me to be folly for you to depend solely on luck for the outcome of this one life you have to lead
• Ability comes in many forms, and on the surface the variety is great; below the surface there are many common elements
• Among the important properties to have is the belief you can do important things. If you do not work on important problems, how can you expect to do important work?
• If what you are working on is not important and not likely to lead to important things, then why are you working on it?
• Confidence in yourself, then, is an essential property. Or, if you want to, you can call it “courage.”
• The courage to continue is essetial, since great research often has long periods with no success and many discouragement
• The desire for excellence is an essential feature for doing great work
• Not that you should merely work on random things, but on small things which seem to you to have the possibility of future growth
• Working with one’s foor closed lets you get more work done per year than if you had an open door, but I have observed repeatedly that later those with the closed doors, while working just as hard as others, seem to work on slightly the wrong problems, while those who have let their door stay open get less work done but tend to work on the right problems. I suspect the open mid leads to the open door, and the open door tends to lead to the open mind; they reinforce each other
• When stuck, often inverting the problem and realizing the new formulation is better represents a significant step forward
• All these stories show that the conditions you tend to want are seldom the best ones for you—the interaction with harsh reality tends to push you into significant discoveries which otherwise you would never have thought about while doing pure research in a vacuu, of your private interests
• Now to the matter of drive. Looking around, you can easily observe that great people have a great deal of drive to do things.
• But be careful—the race is not to the one who works hardest! You need to work on the right problem at the right time and in the right way—what I have been calling “style.”
• I strongly recommend taking the time, on a regular basis, to ask the larger questions, and not stay immersed in the sea of detail where almost everyone stays almost all of the time.
• Great people can tolerate ambiguity; they can both believe and disbelieve at the same time. You must be able to believe your organization and field of research is the best there is, but also that there is muc hroom for improvement!
• Many a good idea has had to be rediscovered because it was not well presented the first time, years before!
• Change does not mean progress, but progress requires change
• Similarly, only when you have developed your abilities will you generally get the freedom to practice your expertise, whatever you choose to make it, including the expertise of “univerality,” as I did