“Mathematicians have, according to Wright, been "unreasonably successful" in finding applications to apparently useless theorems, and often years after the theorems were first discovered.”

“A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems”

“It is an unfortunate fact that proofs can be very misleading. Proofs exist to establish once and for all, according to very high standards, that certain mathematical statements are irrefutable facts. What is unfortunate about this is that a proof, in spite of the fact that it is perfectly correct, does not in any way have to be enlightening. Thus, mathematicians, and mathematics students, are faced with two problems: the generation of proofs, and the generation of internal enlightenment. To understand a theorem requires enlightenment. If one has enlightenment, one knows in one's soul why a particular theorem must be true.”

“In mathematics, in place of characters, you have variables or unknowns. If I'm trying to plot a theorem, I try to imagine these variables interacting with each other. The boundary of their interaction is the theorem.”

“Theorem: Consider the set of all sets that have never been considered. Hey! They're all gone!! Oh, well, never mind...”

“You can learn to find unknowns in equations, draw equidistant lines and demonstrate theorems, but in real life there's nothing to position, calculate, or guess.”