Top 35 John Allen Paulos Quotes
#1. 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
#2. A term meant to convey a person's inability to make sense of the numbers that run their lives.
Douglas R. Hofstadter
#3. The once-surprising existence of non-Euclidean models of Euclid's first four axioms can be seen as a sort of mathematical joke.
John Allen Paulos
#4. Uncertainty would be the only certainty there's, and realizing how to stay with insecurity could be the only protection
John Allen Paulos
#5. There is something inhuman and vaguely pornographic about statistics ... Pornography, on the other hand, with its loosely bound sequences of storyless sexual couplings often has the feel of a statistical survey.
John Allen Paulos
#6. 'Among Friends' was really well written and had strong characters, and while all the elements were there to make it a great genre film, it also left room for me to put a creative flair on it that wasn't your typical slasher or psychological thriller.
Danielle Harris
#7. We ourselves are co-called non-linear dynamical systems ... I don't feel quite so pathetic when I interrupt a project to check on some obscure web site or newsgroup or derive an iota of cheer by getting rid of pocketful of change.
John Allen Paulos
#8. One must give up the fantasy of a perspicacious gunslinger/investor
outwitting the market.
John Allen Paulos
#9. The biggest fool to hit the big time and all I've got to do is act naturally.
Buck Owens
#10. 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
#11. Sometimes our arms are so full with the burdens we carry that it hinders our view of the load those around us are staggering beneath.
Richard Paul Evans
#12. Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.
John Allen Paulos
#13. I sometimes think it would be beneficial if people thought of each other as "historical factorials." Thus, (Myrtle!) would be understood not just as present-day Myrtle but as the product of all her past experiences.
John Allen Paulos
#16. Two kinds of people always lie about their ages: actresses and Latin American pitchers.
Jess Walter
#17. 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].
John Allen Paulos
#18. PIGMY, n. One of a tribe of very small men found by ancient travelers in many parts of the world, but by modern in Central Africa only. The Pigmies are so called to distinguish them from the bulkier Caucasians - who are Hogmies.
Ambrose Bierce
#19. 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
#20. The simple equations that generate the convoluted Mandelbrot fractal have been called the wittiest remarks ever made.
John Allen Paulos
#21. The reading of great books has been a life-altering activity to me and, for better or worse, brought me singing and language-obsessed to that country where I make my living. Except for teaching, I've had no other ambition in life than to write books that mattered.
Pat Conroy
#22. So many see themselves as aggrieved; so few see themselves as aggrievers.
John Allen Paulos
#23. The nuclear weapons on board just one of our Trident submarines contain eight times the firepower expended in all of World War II.
John Allen Paulos
#24. In his novels from beginning to end, Dickens is making the same point always: that to the English governing classes the people they govern are not real.
Edmund Wilson
#25. I'd like to know why sociologists can't decide whether movie sex and violence has any effect on children, but there's a universal consensus that even a glimpse of a Camel will force children to become lifelong smokers.
Jonah Goldberg
#26. 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.
John Allen Paulos
#27. For example, knowing that it takes only about eleven and a half days for a million seconds to tick away, whereas almost thirty-two years are required for a billion seconds to pass, gives one a better grasp of the relative magnitudes of these two common numbers.
John Allen Paulos
#28. 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
#29. The Internet is the world's largest library. It's just that all the books are on the floor.
John Allen Paulos
#31. In the stock market ... You can be right for the wrong reasons or wrong for the right reasons.
John Allen Paulos
#33. 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.
John Allen Paulos
#34. For many, the point of marriage isn't so much to be in love as to stop having to think of love.
Alain De Botton
#35. Lack of emotion causes lack of progress and lack of motivation.
Tony Robbins
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
