- To say that math is important because it is useful is like saying that children are important because we can train them to do spiritually meaningless labor in order to increase corporate profits. Or is that in fact what we are saying?
- Beauty is deeper than just what you look at in a picture. You could fancy what you like, but as a woman my mother always raised us to believe in ourselves. I’m very grateful for the fact that my mother brought me up that way.
- Teaching is not about information. It’s about having an honest intellectual relationship with your students.
- I don’t feel that I belong anywhere. Or rather, if there’s a place I belong, I don’t feel I’m there.
- Why don’t we want our children to learn to do mathematics? Is it that we don’t trust them, that we think it’s too hard? We seem to feel that they are capable of making arguments and coming to their own conclusions about Napoleon. Why not about triangles?
- Mental acuity of any kind comes from solving problems yourself, not from being told how to solve them.
- I don’t see how it’s doing society any good to have so many members walking around with vague memories of algebraic formulas and geometric diagrams and clear memories of hating them.
- I think I would have been a reasonably good lawyer. I have a faculty for making sense of mountains of information.
- Mathematicians enjoy thinking about the simplest possible things, and the simplest possible things are imaginary.
- I’ve been doing nineteen hours a day on London, nothing else, I mean this has been my whole life, and writing has been put on one side, and if I’m privileged enough to be the Mayor of this city, then I will not write again.
10 inspirational john milton quotes on success
