Terence Tao Quotes

There is something so arbitrary about prizes.

Forget about Nobel prizes; they aren't really very important.

It is well known that the Nobel Committees bring world opinion to a focus, and that fact still further enhances the prestige attaching to the Prizes.

I mean, the competition is really created by the buzz around the Emmys. It's a totally subjective thing.

And yet the Nobel Prizes, in singling out individuals, have done a great deal of good in pointing up to the world as a whole and setting forth clearly goals for achievement.

Adding an Olympic medal to everything that I have already accomplished would be so huge for me.

Everyone says, 'It's just an honor to be nominated,' but that's so not true. You want to win.

Awards are meaningless to me, and I have nothing but disdain for anyone who actively campaigns to get one.

The high esteem in which the Nobel Prizes are held is undoubtedly due to the conscientious way in which the Committees have discharged a heavy responsibility.

I'm not interested in awards. I never have been. I don't think they are important. Don't get me wrong, if somebody gives me a prize, I thank them as gratefully as I know how, because it's very nice to be given a prize. But I don't think that awards ought to be sought.

Ultimately the Emmys are a popularity contest.

I think that no matter whether you're Quentin Tarantino or any other kind of a rebel, or whatever, everyone who makes movies still wants to win an Academy Award, because it's like the Pulitzer Prize or the Congressional Medal of Honor.

I've won some pretty cool things in my life and I have a lot of great titles.

Winning an Oscar ain't about performance. There's a lot of politics involved.

I'm not going to turn down an Oscar, but I'm not strategizing for one.

I don't have a sense of entitlement or that I deserve this. You'd be surprised at the lack of competition between nominees - I think a lot of it's imposed from the outside. Can I have my champagne now?

If you're at an award ceremony, you're against your mates.

Prize lists are out, and you're not on them? Nature of the world - means nothing. Prizes are a lottery.

Awards are only a publicity gimmick.

I'd rather have 10 Super Bowl trophies and no MVPs.

The great thing with film is that it doesn't have an ego. It's just a film. Everybody that makes them has an ego, and the problem with awards and stuff like that is that it always affects the egos, and everyone gets stained by it in some way. And that can be fine and very innocent, but it can be horrible as well.

The Nobel Peace Prize is not very important, the ones that count are the scientific and literary prizes

You don't do a play to compete for an award. This was the argument I always had over the Oscars. I didn't win them. They were given to me. All I did was 2 films. People always say the analogy is Olympic gold medals.

I think there's a lot of factors that go into the whole awards thing. I've never been that big a fan of it.

Awards are for young people. They just are.