A while back I saw posted on someone's office door a statement attributed to some famous person, saying that it is an instance of the callousness of youth to think that a theorem is trivial because its proof is trivial.

I don't remember who said that, and the person whose door it was posted on didn't remember either.

This leads to two questions:

(1) Who was it? And where do I find it in print---something citable? (Let's call that one question.)

(2) What are examples of nontrivial theorems whose proofs are trivial? Here's a wild guess: let's say for example a theorem of Euclidean geometry has a trivial proof but doesn't hold in non-Euclidean spaces and its holding or not in a particular space has far-reaching consequences not all of which will be understood within the next 200 years. Could that be an example of what this was about? Or am I just missing the point?

A while back I saw posted on someone's office door a statement attributed to some famous person, saying that it is an instance of the callousness of youth to think that a theorem is trivial because its proof is trivial.

I don't remember who said that, and the person whose door it was posted on didn't remember either.

This leads to two questions:

1. Who was it? And where do I find it in print—something citable? (Let's call that one question.)

2. What are examples of nontrivial theorems whose proofs are trivial? Here's a wild guess: let's say for example a theorem of Euclidean geometry has a trivial proof but doesn't hold in non-Euclidean spaces and its holding or not in a particular space has far-reaching consequences not all of which will be understood within the next 200 years. Could that be an example of what this was about? Or am I just missing the point?

A while back I saw posted on someone's office door a statement attributed to some famous person, saying that it is an instance of the callousness of youth to think that a theorem is trivial because its proof is trivial.

I don't remember who said that, and the person whose door it was posted on didn't remember either.

This least to two questions:

(1) Who was it? And where do I find it in print---something citable? (Let's call that one question.)

(2) What are examples of nontrivial theorems whose proofs are trivial? Here's a wild guess: let's say for example a theorem of Euclidean geometry has a trivial proof but doesn't hold in non-Euclidean spaces and its holding or not in a particular space has far-reaching consequences not all of which will be understood within the next 200 years. Could that be an example of what this was about? Or am I just missing the point?

A while back I saw posted on someone's office door a statement attributed to some famous person, saying that it is an instance of the callousness of youth to think that a theorem is trivial because its proof is trivial.

I don't remember who said that, and the person whose door it was posted on didn't remember either.

This leads to two questions:

(1) Who was it? And where do I find it in print---something citable? (Let's call that one question.)

(2) What are examples of nontrivial theorems whose proofs are trivial? Here's a wild guess: let's say for example a theorem of Euclidean geometry has a trivial proof but doesn't hold in non-Euclidean spaces and its holding or not in a particular space has far-reaching consequences not all of which will be understood within the next 200 years. Could that be an example of what this was about? Or am I just missing the point?