“So, if I'm no cheerleader of sports, why write a chapter about it? Sports do have some positive impact on society. They solve problems, such as how to get inner-city kids to spend $175 on shoes. They serve as a backdrop for some of our most memorable commercials. And they remain the one and only relevant application of math. Not only that, but we have sports to thank for most of the last century's advances in manliness. The system starts in school, where gym class separates the men from the boys. Then those men are taught to be winners, or at least, losers that hate themselves.”

“[The U.S. worker] gets to appear at his least national when he is working and at his most national at leisure, with his family or in semipublic worlds of other men producing surplus manliness (e.g. via sports).”

“Have not we affections and desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?”

“Statistics show that men are interested in three things: careers, sports, and sex. That's why they love professional cheerleaders."Cal put down his fork "Well, that's sexist.""Yes i know," she said. "But it's true isn't it?""What?" Cal tried to find his place in the conversation. "Oh, the sports and sex thing? Not at all. This is the twenty-first century. We've learned how to be sensitive.""You have?""Sure," Cal said. "Otherwise we wouldn't get laid.”

“Hockey is a sport for white men. Basketball is a sport for black men. Golf is a sport for white men dressed like black pimps.”

“Solving problems isn't so much about simplifying them as it is about properly and realistically reducing them to only what's relevant. And one of the best ways to reduce a problem to only what's relevant is to throw away most of your assumptions about it.”