Daily Inspiration Quote by Andrew Wiles

A mathematician doesn’t tell you to chase “big dreams” in the abstract; he tells you to pick a problem. Andrew Wiles’s line lands because it’s brutally specific, almost anti-motivational in its implied cost: if the problem matters most to you, it will also hurt the most when it resists you. That’s not a slogan, it’s a sorting mechanism. It separates people who want the glow of significance from people willing to live inside uncertainty for years.

The context does a lot of work. Wiles is the man who pursued Fermat’s Last Theorem in near-monastic secrecy, then publicly “solved” it, then watched a key gap appear, then went back into the dark and fixed it. So “always try” isn’t breezy perseverance talk; it’s a statement about identity. In his world, the meaningful problem isn’t chosen because it’s tractable. It’s chosen because it’s yours, because it organizes your attention and justifies the long, unphotogenic middle where nothing clicks.

The subtext is also a quiet rebuke to optimization culture. Don’t pick the problem with the highest expected payoff, the most funding, the clearest career ladder. Pick the one that keeps returning when you’re tired, the one you’d regret not attempting even if you fail. “Always” signals a lifetime stance: you may not solve it, you may not even get close, but the attempt is the point. In mathematics, that’s as close to a philosophy of living as you can get without leaving the page.