Borislava Grkovic

“What can I say? Mathematics is a way not to be wrong, but it isn't a way not to be wrong about everything. (Sorry, no refunds!) Wrongness is like original sin; we are born to it and it remains always with us, and constant vigilance is necessary if we mean to restrict its sphere of influence over our actions. There is real danger that, by strengthening our abilities to analyze some questions mathematically, we acquire a general confidence in our beliefs, which extends unjustifiably to those things we're still wrong about. We become like those pious people who, over time, accumulate a sense of their own virtuousness so powerful as to make them believe the bad things they do are virtuous too.

I'll do my best to resist the temptation. But watch me carefully.”
― Jordan Ellenberg, How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking

“Math, like meditation, puts you in direct contact with the universe, which is bigger than you, was here before you, and will be here after you.”
― Jordan Ellenberg, How Not To Be Wrong: The Hidden Maths of Everyday

“It's not wrong to say Hilbert was a genius. But it's more right to say that what Hilbert accomplished was genius. Genius is a thing that happens, not a kind of person.”
― Jordan Ellenberg, How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking

“If you’ve ever run an experiment, you know scientific truth doesn’t pop out of the clouds blowing a flaming trumpet at you. Data is messy, and inference is hard.”
― Jordan Ellenberg, How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking