Mathematics is not a language, it's an adventure

To do mathematics is to engage in an act of discovery and conjecture, intuition and inspiration; to be in a state of confusion − not because it makes no sense to you, but because you gave it sense and you still don't understand what your creation is up to.

[Math] curriculum is obsessed with jargon and nomenclature seemingly for no other purpose than to provide teachers with something to test the students on.

There is nothing as dreamy and poetic, nothing as radical, subversive, and psychedelic, as mathematics.

Mathematicians enjoy thinking about the simplest possible things, and the simplest possible things are imaginary.

No mathematician in the world would bother making these senseless distinctions: 2 1/2 is a "mixed number " while 5/2 is an "improper fraction." They're EQUAL for crying out loud. They are the exact same numbers and have the exact same properties. Who uses such words outside of fourth grade?

If I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child's natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn't possibly do as good a job as is currently being done-I simply wouldn't have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.