Explore Quotes on Teaching

For me it remains an open question whether [this work] pertains to the realm of mathematics or to that of art.

By keenly confronting the enigmas that surround us, and by considering and analyzing the observations that I had made, I ended up in the domain of mathematics. Although I am absolutely without training in the exact sciences, I often seem to have more in common with mathematicians than with my fellow artists.

Geometry is the foundation of all painting.

It will be another million years, at least, before we understand the primes.

Indeed, nowadays no electrical engineer could get along without complex numbers, and neither could anyone working in aerodynamics or fluid dynamics.

Though the structures and patterns of mathematics reflect the structure of, and resonate in, the human mind every bit as much as do the structures and patterns of music, human beings have developed no mathematical equivalent to a pair of ears. Mathematics can only be "seen" with the "eyes of the mind". It is as if we had no sense of hearing, so that only someone able to sight read music would be able to appreciate its patterns and harmonies.

I have discovered such wonderful things that I was amazed... Out of nothing I have created a strange new universe.

The life of a mathematician is dominated by an insatiable curiosity, a desire bordering on passion to solve the problems he is studying.

The title which I most covet is that of teacher. The writing of a research paper and the teaching of freshman calculus, and everything in between, falls under this rubric. Happy is the person who comes to understand something and then gets to explain it.

Mathematics is one of the deepest and most powerful expressions of pure human reason, and, at the same time, the most fundamental resource for description and analysis of the experiential world.

Pedagogy, like language itself, can either liberate or imprison ideas, inspire of suffocate constructive thinking.

Somebody came up to me after a talk I had given, and say, "You make mathematics seem like fun." I was inspired to reply, "If it isn't fun, why do it?"

I have no interest in teaching writers how to sell. I want to teach them how to write. If the process is sound, the product will take care of itself, and sales are likely to follow.

The truth of the matter is that about 99 percent of teaching is making the students feel interestedin the material. Then the other 1 percent has to do with your methods. And that's not just true of languages. It's true of every subject.

Ultimately, you must forget about technique. The further you progress, the fewer teachings there are. The Great Path is really NO PATH.

She's French, so she's teaching them French, and their previous nanny was Spanish, so they're fluent in Spanish.

The little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one set of catchwords to the girls and another to the boys.

When a new writer defends his "style," the teacher smiles (or cringes) because real style isn't an artifice. Real style - voice - arrives on its own, as an extension of a writer's character. When style is done self-consciously and purposefully it becomes affectation, and as transparent as any affectation - an English accent on an old college chum from New Jersey, for example.

I can only gesture at what makes a story good.

O Lord, may I never want to look good. O Jesus, may I always read it all: out loud and the very way it should be. May I never look at the other findings until I have come to my own true conclusions: May I care for the least of the young: and become aware of the one poem that each may have written; may I be aware of what each thing is, delighted with form, and wary of the false comparison; may I never use the word "brilliant."

Decision by democratic majority vote is a fine form of government, but it's a stinking way to create.