John Allen Paulos famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security
-- John Allen Paulos

#Inspirational #Success #Knowing
In listening to stories we tend to suspend disbelief in order to be entertained, whereas in evaluating statistics we generally have an opposite inclination to suspend belief in order not to be beguiled.
-- John Allen Paulos

#Order #Opposites #Listening
Mathematics is no more computation than typing is literature.
-- John Allen Paulos

#Math #Literature #Typing
How many pizzas are consumed each year in the United States? How many words have you spoken in your life? How many different peoples names appear in the New York Times each year? How many watermelons would fit inside the U.S. Capital building? What is the volume of all the human blood in the world?
-- John Allen Paulos

#New York #Blood #Years
The simple equations that generate the convoluted Mandelbrot fractal have been called the wittiest remarks ever made.
-- John Allen Paulos

#Simple #Mathematics #Made
Mathematicians are a bit like the laconic Vermonter who, when asked if he's lived in the state his whole life, replies, "Not yet."
-- John Allen Paulos

#Mathematics #States #Laconic
I think, therefore I laugh.
-- John Allen Paulos

#Knowledge #Math #Thinking
Data, data everywhere, but not a thought to think.
-- John Allen Paulos

#Thinking #Data
In the stock market... You can be right for the wrong reasons or wrong for the right reasons.
-- John Allen Paulos

#Reason
One must give up the fantasy of a perspicacious gunslinger/investor outwitting the market.
-- John Allen Paulos

#Giving Up #Fantasy #Outwitting
The Internet is the world's largest library. It's just that all the books are on the floor.
-- John Allen Paulos

#Book #Library #World
Certainty a strange Ferris wheel of a statement!
-- John Allen Paulos

#Ferris Wheels #Wheels #Strange
The fashion pages have always baffled me. In my opinion, the articles appear to be full of gobbledygook as to make the astrology column seem factual by comparison.
-- John Allen Paulos

#Fashion #Clothes #Astrology
A German merchant of the fifteenth century asked an eminent professor where he should send his son for a good business education. The professor responded that German universities would be sufficient to teach the boy addition and subtraction but he would have to go to Italy to learn multiplication and division. Before you smile indulgently, try multiplying or even just adding the Roman numerals CCLXIV, MDCCCIX, DCL, and MLXXXI without first translating them.
-- John Allen Paulos

#Son #Boys #Trying

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