Volume 6 · The Unfinished Syllabus · Essay 273
Thinking in Vectors
There are ideas that shout. Thinking in Vectors is not one of them. It waits quietly until the day you need it.
Strip it to the floor and you find an old instruction: look carefully, judge slowly, act decently. The new name exists because the old instruction keeps being forgotten.
In every examination hall there are two kinds of silence: the silence of those who prepared, and the silence of those who are preparing excuses. The room can hear the difference.
Learning is the one wealth that survives every partition of fortune. And when you forget it — you will — the world will remind you. It is a faithful tutor.