Isaac Diemer

“In testing primality of very large numbers chosen at random, the chance of stumbling upon a value that fools the Fermat test is less than the chance that cosmic radiation will cause the computer to make an error in carrying out a “correct” algorithm. Considering an algorithm to be inadequate for the first reason but not for the second illustrates the difference between mathematics and engineering.”

— SICP

“If you emphasize the things you sacrifice over the things you accomplish, perhaps you're too focused on one part of the work equation.”

— Matt Might

“The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.”

— B.F. Skinner

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity”

— Thoreau

“I can negate everything... except this desire for unity, this longing to solve, this need for clarity and cohesion.”

— Albert Camus

“There is no question that if the world had to be divided into the “poetic dreamers” and the “rational thinkers” most people would place mathematicians in the latter category. Nevertheless, the fact is that there is nothing as dreamy and poetic, nothing as radical, subversive, and psychedelic, as mathematics. It is every bit as mind blowing as cosmology or physics (mathematicians conceived of black holes long before astronomers actually found any), and allows more freedom of expression than poetry, art, or music (which depend heavily on properties of the physical universe). Mathematics is the purest of the arts, as well as the most misunderstood.”

— Paul Lockhart