You have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable if you want to make progress in mathematics.
A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.
Thinking is the highest action.
The only way to understand history is to live it.
Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot.