To criticize mathematics for its abstraction is to miss the point entirely. Abstraction is what makes mathematics work. If you concentrate too closely on too limited an application of a mathematical idea, you rob the mathematician of his most important tools: analogy, generality, and simplicity. Mathematics is the ultimate in technology transfer.

Mathematics is the science of patterns, and nature exploits just about every pattern that there is.

During the past fifty years, more mathematics has been created than in all previous ages put together.

There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary numerals, and those who don't.

If our brains were simple enough for us to understand them, we'd be so simple that we couldn't.

The power of equations lies in the philosophically difficult correspondence between mathematics, a collective creation of human minds, and an external physical reality. Equations model deep patterns in the outside world. By learning to value equations, and to read the stories they tell, we can uncover vital features of the world around us.

First is first, and second is nowhere.