When I was in Cambridge reading mathematics, I went to Amsterdam for the International Mathematics Congress. There I saw M.C. Escher's fascinating work. That inspired me to try my hand at drawing such impossibilities.
Interpretation
Roger Penrose reflects on how M.C. Escher's artwork inspired him to explore creativity through drawing.
In this quote, Roger Penrose shares a personal experience where attending an international congress exposed him to M.C. Escher's artistic creations, which are known for their paradoxical and impossible structures. This encounter sparked Penrose's interest in the realm of art and mathematics, demonstrating how inspiration can lead to attempts at creativity and innovation in one's own work.
In practice
In a speech about innovation, one could quote Penrose to emphasize the importance of seeking inspiration from different fields.
Some people take the view that the universe is simply there, and it runs along - it's a bit as though it just sort of computes, and we happen by accident to find ourselves in this thing. I don't think that's a very fruitful or helpful way of looking at the universe.
Consciousness ... is the phenomenon whereby the universe's very existence is made known.
Some years ago, I wrote a book called the Emperor’s New Mind and that book was describing a point of view I had about consciousness and why it was not something that comes about from complicated calculations.
I believe there is something going on in a conscious being, which includes many animals, as well as ourselves, that is not a computational activity. And to be conscious at all is not a quality that a computer as such will ever possess - no matter how complicated, no matter how well it plays chess or any of these things.
Some people take the view that we happen by accident. I think that there is something much deeper, of which we have very little inkling at the moment.
The image of Stephen Hawking - who has died aged 76 - in his motorised wheelchair, with head contorted slightly to one side and hands crossed over to work the controls, caught the public imagination as a true symbol of the triumph of mind over matter.
The one thing a writer has to have is a pencil and some paper. That's enough, so long as she knows that she and she alone is in charge of that pencil, and responsible, she and she alone, for what it writes on that paper.
I grew up when one of America's greatest black playwrights, August Wilson, was writing about life in Pittsburgh, but I never saw myself in any of his straight-male plays. And then I see 'Angels,' which was so honest and painful, and it had this black drag queen in it, Belize, with a big heart. I finally had a character to relate to.
The things we truly love, the things forming the basis and roots of our being, are generally things we never look at. A huge piece of carpeting, empty and naked plains, silent and uninterrupted stretches with nothing to alter the homogeneity of their continuity. I love wide, homogenous worlds, unstaked, unlimited like the sea, like high snows, deserts, and steppes.
One must act in painting as in life, directly.
There is the music of Heaven in all things.
I could paint for a hundred years, a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing.
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