People are always selling the idea that people with mental illness are suffering. I think madness can be an escape. If things are not so good, you maybe want to imagine something better.
From John Forbes Nash, Jr.
In a dream it's typical not to be rational.
To some extent, people who are insane are nonconformists, and society and their family wish they would live what appear to be useful lives.
It's almost as if a demon might have passed from one host to another.
I would not dare to say that there is a direct relation between mathematics and madness, but there is no doubt that great mathematicians suffer from maniacal characteristics, delirium, and symptoms of schizophrenia.
I don't think exactly like a professional economist. I think about economics and economic ideas, but somewhat like an outsider.
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.
There are things that tend to moderate with age. Schizophrenia is somewhat like that.
I went to M.I.T. in the summer of 1951 as a 'C.L.E. Moore Instructor.' I had been an instructor at Princeton for one year after obtaining my degree in 1950. It seemed desirable more for personal and social reasons than academic ones to accept the higher-paying instructorship at M.I.T.
The ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously.
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