Quotes

• "You can't use vectors when you are drawing diagrams on your oiled body after a bath" - 1995
• "So I'm just going to say the same thing with my hands tied behind my back" - 1995
• "The dog is going to start it's walk from that post" - 1995
• "So that's a dog that's asleep; let sleeping dogs lie" - 1995
• "Aslong as you stay close to your mother you know what left and right are" - 1995
• "I have the moral duty to show you this is a topology" - 1995
• "You might think the notation curly B is set up as to be balls" - 1995
• "... to check whether n is prime, you only have to check whether it has a prime factor < = 121" - 1995
• "The probability of this is very small, but it is virtually certain to happen" - 1995
• "I'm philosophizing, not doing anything sensible" - 1995
• "I'm crossing my legs when it comes to abstract algebra" - 1995
• "One looks quite big and fat" - 1995
• "What's in books is a list of what's not interesting" - 1995
• "There are millions of proofs of Fermat's Last Theorem" - 1995
• "12 = 28-14-4+ 1" - 1995
• "I'll just leave the exercise as an exercise" - 1995
• "This is real, not algebra" - 1995
• "...a fun bit of combinatorics and number theory" - 1995
• "All good things in life have an end, except a sausage which has two" - 1995
• "A circle has no end. Therefore, it's not good." - 1995
• "This will do you a lot of good in this life and the life to come" - 1995
• "This is an elementary calculation,but I got in a muddle" - 1995
• "Sometimes lectures go really, really badly" - 1995
• "So f takes this point and spreads it out all over this line rather like al-Qaedas just hit it - and then the inverse function sort of sweeps the debris up and puts it back on the point. [Algebraic Geometry] " - 2003
• "I have a beautiful proof of this, however I appear to have left the piece of paper on my desk." - 2004
• "..pulling a rabbit out of a hat and examining it very carefully and saying, yes, it is a rabbit .." - 2003
• "..keeps professors of algebra in employment but has no practical purpose .." - 2003
• "..so insubstantial it may not be convincing, but it is rigorous .." - 2003
• "..it's pure pedantry but I do it anyway .." - 2003
• "..makes it trival to divide everything into half-sized mouthfuls.." - 2003
• "..I think it's backslash hook leftarrow in TeX .. " - 2003
• "When something in mathematics has three or four names, that means it's important." - 2006
• "We're in this complicated abstract mess where we don't understand anything that's going on." - 2006
• "If you don't understand what you are doing, sit down, have a cup of tea, and consider the case n=2." - 2006
• "A line is not linear! [It's affine linear, obviously.]" - 2006
• "My definition of affine space, it's confusing. I get confused by it sometimes." - 2006
• "Saying it's obvious is an immensely powerful tool in mathematics." - 2006