You can Google my name, and ... There are lots of videos that they put out online... and you can watch these. However, even that is only a substitute… - Tadashi Tokieda

I don't believe that I'm a good communicator. I believe that lots of other people are simply very bad communicators... I don't think other people are thinking. It's completely common sense. I have no intention of claiming any credit for what I do, and if you think this passionately, and if your agenda is not some of the other things I described earlier... [I]f your agenda is to share surprises and to share, if possible, some of the joy to make people understand, there are obvious things that you can do... I'm very surprised that people aren't doing it... [I]t's absolutely obvious to anybody.

[T]here are lots of things that one does which are essential, indespensable for survival and which is foundational for everything else, about which people never ask... "What's exciting about it?" What's exciting about breathing for example. ...[I]f you stop breathing, you are no longer. ...You're aware of breathing sometimes. It's not that you're completely unconcsiously invisible, but you don't ask that question. What's exciting about... living itself? Of course there are ups and downs. There are dramas in life, but people don't live because it's exciting. People live because it's natural for them and because that's what they want to do, despite everything sometimes, or in some lucky cases, because of some things. ...But people live because it's a basic and natural way of existing as humans, as indeed, biological creatures... [S]cientists, when they are unhampered and unencumbered by those dictates of sociology... where you have to publish in certain ways because you want to enhance your career, because you want to achieve some status, because you want to... ensure you have a certain standard of living and so on. If they are doing science where they do science because, almost, they have to, because that's their existence... If I lost my job... I have to be able to live somehow, but let's assume that I have some kind of income, and I have to move to and live in isolation. I think after... the initial period of being really depressed... "Why am I stuck here?" and so on, I think I'd end up doing science, because that's... who I am.

It's possible to argue... [T]here are wonderful musicians, let's talk about... western classical music... nowadays... but... compared with the time of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, composition in classical music has gone down. ...It's possible to argue that the concept and the belief in genius killed classical music composition. It's extremely... discouraging to be told, "You shouldn't compose unless you can be Beethoven." ...[T]he concept of the genius is an invention of the... German idealistic philosophers. People didn't talk about genius before, and people... simply didn't have the concept and it wasn't part of people's thinking. ...[L]ook at ...Italian Baroque composers... They didn't care about talent or genius but they're creating wonderful music... just on the spot. ...[T]hey didn't have to be tragic. They don't have to have a dramatic life. ...You just do it because you like it, and the same with mathematics.