Terence Tao Quotes

Relying on intelligence alone to pull things off at the last minute may work for a while, but generally speaking at the graduate level or higher it doesn't. One needs to do a serious amount of reading and writing, and not just thinking, in order to get anywhere serious in mathematics.

Understand the problem. What kind of problem is it? There are three main types of problems:
‘Show that ...’ or ‘Evaluate ...’ questions, in which a certain statement has to be proved true, or a certain expression has to be worked out;
‘Find a...’ or ‘Find all...’ questions, which requires one to find something (or everything) that satisfies certain requirements;
‘Is there a ...’ questions, which either require you to prove a statement or provide a counterexample (and thus is one of the previous two types of problem).

The objective in mathematics is not to obtain the highest ranking, the highest score, or the highest number of prizes and awards; instead, it is to increase understanding of mathematics (both for yourself, and for your colleagues and students), and to contribute to its development and applications.