Clergyman's

The moment when the scientists became engineers was a historical turning point.
- Ivar Ekeland

In the struggle for life, or in the struggle for power, there is no reason why their victory would make the world better than it was. There is no invisible hand guiding these processes, dealing out victory to the most deserving.
Chance is their leader.
- Ivar Ekeland

An equilibrium is not always an optimum; it might not even be good. This may be the most important discovery of game theory.
- Ivar Ekeland

We do not discover mathematical truths; we remember them from our passages through this world outside our own.
- Ivar Ekeland

It is a testimony to the power of education that classical mechanics could operate for so long under a mistaken conception. Teaching and research concentrated on integrable systems, each feeding the other, until in the end we had no longer the tools nor the interest for studying nonintegrable systems.
- Ivar Ekeland

Power is no linger seen as inheriting its legitimacy from some divine authority; it is a mere convention which we adhere to because we are born and educated into it, and because we see others conform to it. Its strength lies in the fact that we believe that others believe in it: power is no more than the illusion of power. The exercise of power is a constant fight to keep up appearances.
- Ivar Ekeland