Charybdis Quote by Gian-Carlo Rota

We mathematicians are used to the fact that our subject is widely misunderstood, perhaps more than any other subject (except perhaps linguistics).

— Keith Devlin

Do not imagine that mathematics is harsh and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealisation of common sense.

— Lord Kelvin

I am accustomed, as a professional mathematician, to living in a sort of vacuum, surrounded by people who declare with an odd sort of…

— David Mumford

Those who condemn the supreme certainty of mathematics feed on confusion, and can never silence the contradictions of the sophistical sciences which lead to…

— Leonardo da Vinci

So long as mathematicians can impose up-and-down semantics upon students while trafficking personally in the non-up-and-down advantages of their concise statements, they can impose…

— R. Buckminster Fuller

Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.

— Lord Kelvin

“I think scientists have a valid point when they bemoan the fact that it's socially acceptable in our culture to be utterly ignorant of…

— Jennifer Ouellette

“We tend to see math and science as a steady state of facts rather than as the accumulated knowledge of linear traditions. As Korzybski…

— Douglas Rushkoff

Mathematics is a dangerous profession; an appreciable proportion of us go mad.

— John Edensor Littlewood

I feel that what mathematics needs least are pundits who issue prescriptions or guidelines for presumably less enlightened mortals.

— Armand Borel

It has become almost a cliche to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of…

— Richard Dawkins

To most outsiders, modern mathematics is unknown territory. Its borders are protected by dense thickets of technical terms; its landscapes are a mass of…

— Ivars Peterson