John Allen Paulos Quotes

Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security

The Internet is the world's largest library. It's just that all the books are on the floor.

When asked why he doesn't believe in astrology, the logician Raymond Smullyan responds that he's a Gemini and Geminis never believe in astrology.

Mathematics is no more computation than typing is literature.

Data, data everywhere, but not a thought to think.

Certainty a strange Ferris wheel of a statement!

Mathematicians are a bit like the laconic Vermonter who, when asked if he's lived in the state his whole life, replies, "Not yet."

I think, therefore I laugh.

Innumeracy and pseudoscience are often associated, in part because of the ease with which mathematical certainty can be invoked, to bludgeon the innumerate into a dumb acquiescence.

Uncertainty would be the only certainty there's, and realizing how to stay with insecurity could be the only protection

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.

So many see themselves as aggrieved; so few see themselves as aggrievers.

Defined broadly enough, mathematics encompasses everything.

The only bit of logic-based public bathroom humor I know is: the difference between men and women is that between the statement [P and not Q] and the statement [Q and not P].

The simple equations that generate the convoluted Mandelbrot fractal have been called the wittiest remarks ever made.

In the stock market... You can be right for the wrong reasons or wrong for the right reasons.

The once-surprising existence of non-Euclidean models of Euclid's first four axioms can be seen as a sort of mathematical joke.

One must give up the fantasy of a perspicacious gunslinger/investor outwitting the market.