“Musicians play their instruments, I play the orchestra.” – Seiji Ozawa by way of Steve Jobs by way of Aaron Sorkin

“I don’t want to be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me.” – “Frank Costello” by way of William Monahan by way of Martin Scorsese

I think humans have a deeply rooted inner sense of how much our destiny lies within our own hands, subject to our own will. That’s in some part a matter of intelligence, surely, but as social animals it’s also dependent on a dynamic set of emotional, historical, economic, political structures and our ability to navigate them, much of which is likely not directly aligned with success in mathematics or French.