Yquotes.com

 

It is a lucky thing that newspaper reporters do not attend these meetings. If they did, they would see how little our activities are related to the real needs of society.
--
L. E. Dickson, during a discussion period that followed the presentation of a paper at a meeting of the American Mathematical Society, where he criticized the choice of the paper’s topic. Fifteen minutes later he presented a paper of his own outlining a proof that every sufficiently large integer can be written as a sum of, not 1140 tenth powers (the best previous result), but 1046 tenth powers.
--
Source: Howard Eves in Return to Mathematical Circles

 

Leonard Eugene Dickson

» Leonard Eugene Dickson - all quotes »

Similar quotes

 

And that, apart from a flurry of sensational newspaper reports which exposed him as a fraud, then trumpeted him as the real thing so that they could have another round of exposing him as a fraud again and then trumpeting him as the real thing again, until they got bored and found a nice juicy snooker player to harass instead, was that.

 

Douglas Adams

 

Propaganda must be total. The propagandist must utilize all of the technical means at his disposal — the press, radio, TV, movies, posters, meetings, door-to-door canvassing. Modern propaganda must utilize all of these media. There is no propaganda as long as one makes use, in sporadic fashion and at random, of a newspaper article here, a poster or a radio program there, organizes a few meetings and lectures, writes a few slogans on walls: that is not propaganda.

 

Jacques Ellul

 

I'm totally aware of how lucky I am. I have health, family, children. I do work that gives me total joy and allows me to make a living, and maybe, if I'm lucky enough, I'll feel I've fulfilled a little bit of service to society because I brought other people some laughter.

 

Martin Short

 

I feel a conscious attempt to be more and more related to society. That’s what’s important to me as a person. I’m not going to let other people make all the changes; and if you do that, you can’t curt yourself of.. ..I’m only against the most obvious things, like wars and stuff like that. I don’t have any particular concept about an utopian way things should be. I have a prejudice or a bias, it is that there shouldn’t be any particular way. Being a complex human organ, we are capable of a variety; we can do so much. The big fear is that we don’t do enough with our senses, with our activities, with our areas of consideration; and these have got to get bigger year after year.

 

Robert Rauschenberg

 

Reality is so dull, Alan thought. Any mistake in one’s perception of it is inevitably more interesting than the real thing, and lucky are those who remain uninformed of their error.

 

Amanda Filipacchi