I think that quote was coined by AI researcher and robotics engineer Yacine Mahdid writing under the social handle @yacineMTB

Andrej Karpathy circulated it online and placed it at the center of his address at Sequoia Capital's AI Ascent conference in April.

The idea is very old though. There's a story of how King Ptolemy I Soter wanted to learn geometry from Euclid, but being a King, he asked for a shortcut to understanding it. Euclid replied that "there is no royal road to geometry". (A "royal road" was basically a fast road reserved for royals, such as the Persian Royal Road.)

I think it's a real quote, but from Karpathy, not Sunny T.