Mathematics/Quotes

Black Mage: 2 + 2 = 4

Fighter: You can't transform numbers into other numbers like that. It'd just go on forever. That's like Witchcraft!

—8-Bit Theater

You know, I don't think math is a science. I think its a religion. All these equations are like miracles, you take two numbers and when you add them they magically become a new number! And no one can say how it happens. You either believe in it or you don't.

The whole book is full of things that have to be accepted on faith! It's a religion!

—Calvin

Calvin: I'm not going to do my math homework. Look at these unsolved problems. Here's a number in mortal combat with another. One of them is going to get subtracted. But why? What will be left of him? If I answered these, it would kill the suspense. It would resolve the conflict and turn intriguing possibilities into boring old facts.
Hobbes: I never really thought about the literary possibilities of maths.

Calvin: I prefer to savor the mystery.

—another from Calvin and Hobbes

I always had a much easier time learning math when it was being applied to a problem whose answer I was interested in — that meant something to me, and I could picture. You say “There’s a 5-meter ball rolling down an inclined plane with this many degrees and that has this rotational inertia. Figure out how quickly it’ll accelerate.” That sounds boring to me. But if you ask, “Could Indiana Jones really have outrun that boulder?” It’s the same problem

—Randall Munroe, in conversation with Alvin Powell, The Harvard Gazette

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