Math Class Quotes & Sayings

What is the answer, Evan? Ms Granger asked.
Giraffe, I wanted to answer. It was on the tip of my tongue. Giraffe.
This was in math class, — David Levithan

Elodin proved a difficult man to find. He had an office in Hollows, but never seemed to use it. When I visited Ledgers and Lists, I discovered he only taught one class: Unlikely Maths. However, this was less than helpful in tracking him down, as according to the ledger, the time of the class was 'now' and the location was 'everywhere. — Patrick Rothfuss

I was born into a working class Irish Catholic family at the brutal bottom of the Great Depression. I suppose this early imprinting and conditioning made me a life-long radical. My education was mostly scientific, majoring in electrical engineering and applied math. Those imprints made me a life-long rationalist. I have become increasingly skeptical about, or detached from, the assumption that radicalism and rationalism are the only correct perspectives with which to view life, but they remain my favorite perspectives. — Robert Anton Wilson

In art class at school we learned how to draw tanks and soldiers opening fire at [Iranian leader Ayatollah] Khomeini and his beard. They didn't teach us the names of the flowers that grew around us in the city - wild flowers of all kinds and all colors. The math teacher used to whip the kids with his trouser belt. My father was constantly violent toward my mother for the most trivial reasons. — Hassan Blasim

So, if I'm no cheerleader of sports, why write a chapter about it? Sports do have some positive impact on society. They solve problems, such as how to get inner-city kids to spend $175 on shoes. They serve as a backdrop for some of our most memorable commercials. And they remain the one and only relevant application of math. Not only that, but we have sports to thank for most of the last century's advances in manliness. The system starts in school, where gym class separates the men from the boys. Then those men are taught to be winners, or at least, losers that hate themselves. — Stephen Colbert

You know there's always that kid in your class - and every class has one - the kid who draws all the time and is really good? That was not me. I was a lousy draftsman. But as soon as I figured out that I could make things come alive, like using the corners of my math book to make flipbooks, I was hooked. — Pete Docter

I'll be taking a two-hour after-school class twice a week for seven and a half weeks.
After those thirty hours of classroom time, which will bring me to the end of March, I'll need six hours behind the wheel.
And then and only then will I be able to drive.
I do the math in my mind as I speed home on my motorcycle from the firdt class. — Travis Thrasher

When I was growing up, I always knew I'd be in the top of my class in math, and that gave me a lot of self-confidence. — Sergey Brin

I was a giant fan of 'Whose Line Is It Anyway' in high school, and I was obsessed with Jim Carrey and cut out any picture of Jim Carrey that ever came in any kind of magazine. I put it all over my walls. At the time, I thought humor was just repeating lines from 'Ace Ventura' ad nauseum in the back of my advanced math class. — Jordan Klepper

Believe me, if Archimedes ever had the grand entrance of a girl as pretty as Gloria to look forward to, he would never have spent so much time calculating the value of Pi. He would have been baking her a Pie! If Euclid had ever beheld a vision of loveliness like the one I see walking into my anti-math class, he would have forgotten all the geometry of lines and planes, and concentrated on the sweet simplicity of soft curves. If Pythagoras had ever had a girl look at him the way Gloria's eyes fix in my direction, he would have given up his calculations on the hypotenuse of right triangles and run for the hills to pick a bouquet of wildflowers. — David Klass

Chess, I never thought that I will beat somebody on chess. I just thought that I'm too stupid to play chess, but it looks like the best in the class of math I beat him. He has in math as a result 5, I have 3 - Strange? I don't think so! — Deyth Banger

The New York Times - but the whole country gives it that weight. It's like the Asian kid in math class. Everybody in the media cheats off The New York Times. — Bill Maher

Now let's see. The class reps on the council this year are therefore Eivind and Marianne!
I looked down at the desk in front of me.
One vote.
How was that possible?
And, to cap it off, the one vote was my own.
But I was the best student in the class! At least in Norwegian! And natural and social sciences! And in math I was the second best, or perhaps the third. But, altogether, who could be better than me?
OK, Eivind won. But one vote? How was that possible?
Hadn't anyone voted for me?
There had to be a mistake somewhere.
No one? — Karl Ove Knausgard

My two Jamaican cousins ... were studying engineering. 'That's where the money is,' Mom advised ... I was to be an engineering major, despite my allergy to science and math ... Those who preceded me at CCNY include the polio vaccine discoverer, Dr. Jonas Salk ... and eight Nobel Prize winners ... In class, I stumbled through math, fumbled through physics, and did reasonably well in, and even enjoyed, geology. All I ever looked forward to was ROTC.
Autobiographical comments on his original reason for going to the City College of New York, where he shortly turned to his military career. — Colin Powell

We need more math classes, we need more science. It's the art of math and the art of science that creates all the innovation, and we have a tradition of great arts, great music. — Wynton Marsalis

What's your deal?" I asked in the hallway after class. "I know you did that."
He shrugged. "So?"
... "That was rude, Daemon. You embarrassed him." ... "And I thought using your ... stuff would draw them here?"
... "That was barley a blip on the map. That didn't even leave a trace on anyone."
He lowered his head until the edges of his dark curled brushed my cheek. I was caught between wanting to crawl into my locker or crawl into him. "Besides, I was doing you a favor."
I laughed. "And how was that doing me a favor?"
... "Studying math wasn't what he had in mind."
That was debatable, but I decided to play along ... "And what if that's the case?"
"You like Simon?" His chin jerked up, anger flashing in his emerald eyes. "You can't possibly like him."
... "Are you jealous? ... Your jealous of Simon?" I lowered my voice. "Of a human? For shame, Daemon. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Maybe Lindsay and I are best friends and we hate each other, both. Maybe I'm only one math class away from being a slut like Anna Cartullo. Maybe I am like her, deep down. Maybe we all are: just one lunch period away from eating alone in the bathroom. I wonder if it's ever really possible to know the truth about someone else, or if the best we can do is just stumble into each other, heads down, hoping to avoid collision. — Lauren Oliver

As a senior in high school my counselor recommended that I soften my science and math direction with an art course. Fortunately my high school offered a new course in B&W photography, so I opted for that instead of art, towards which I had an aversion. Composition is something that comes pretty naturally to me and I appreciate ordered chaos: the photo class turned out to be fun. — Peter Menzel

Our eyes met in the math class. How were we to know that trigonometry would lead to matrimony? — Sophie Kinsella

In ninth grade, I came up with a new form of rebellion. I hadn't been getting good grades, but I decided to get all A's without taking a book home. I didn't go to math class, because I knew enough and had read ahead, and I placed within the top 10 people in the nation on an aptitude exam. — Bill Gates

The ultimate act of cowardice is the fat-headed wrestling guy sitting behind the frail kid in math class, clipping him on the ear, saying: 'What are you going to do about that, faggot?' That is cowardice. When the bullets start flying past that jock's saucer-shaped ears, that's not cowardice. That's payback. — Doug Stanhope

Interestingly, the only class that Eric actually enjoyed in Korea was math. He noticed it on his first day of school. Something was very different about how math was taught in Korea. Something that not even Minnesota had figured out. — Amanda Ripley

In the online math class, there was almost no meaningful student/teacher or student/student interaction. To equate this type of online learning with a real-world classroom experience is a major stretch. — Ian Lamont

When I was young I liked taking tests. I happened to be good at it. Certain subjects came easily, like math. All the science stuff. I would just read the textbooks in the first few days of class. — Bill Gates

It's the way it works," she said in clipped tones. "For one rise, another must fall."
"But why? Why can't we just rise, and everybody else can stay where they are? I wouldn't care!"
"And you think I would?" Keisha demanded. She glared at me, the visibly pulled herself back. When she exhaled, her nostrils flared. "Say you've taken a math test. Or an English test, since you love books so much. And you get a hundred. You're psyched, right? 'Mom, I got a hundred! I got the highest grade in the class!'" She raised her eyebrows. "But say everybody else gets a hundred, too. Are you still as proud?"
"Of course," I said stubbornly. "I'd still have my A."
"Bullshit. You like your As because other people get Cs. Because that means you're smarted than they are. Better than they are."
"I don't think I'm better than anyone."
"Then you're and idiot. — Lauren Myracle

I was never a class clown or anything like that, but I do remember being in the first grade and my teacher, Mr. Chad, told the class one day that we were going to do some exercises. He meant math exercises, but I stood up and started doing jumping jacks. To this day, I don't know what possessed me to do that, but all my friends cracked up. — Will Ferrell

When Republicans recently charged the President with promoting 'class warfare,' he answered it was 'just math.' But it's more than math. It's a matter of morality.
Republicans have posed the deepest moral question of any society: whether we're all in it together. Their answer is we're not.
President Obama should proclaim, loudly and clearly, we are. — Robert B. Reich

No one had ever told her this basic fact: not everyone got to be loved. It was like those stupid bell curves they'd had to study in math class. There was the big, swollen, happy middle, a whale lump full of blissful couples and families eating around a big dining room table and laughing. And then, at the tapered ends, there were the abnormal people, the weirdos and freaks, and zeros like her. — Lauren Oliver

Just a girl in my math class"
"Just a girl, huh?"
Gabriel glared at him. "Just a girl."
Chris smiled. "So was Becca. — Brigid Kemmerer

Too bad relationships weren't math problems with precise answers. They were essay questions in a philosophy class, and they came down to judgement. — Lauren Blakely

Mace had to be six foot three, had the prerequisite Nightingale Investigation Team killer bod; black hair, jade eyes and a jaw so square, it could be used in math class. — Kristen Ashley

How in the world did I ever find you?"
Mackenzie Winters
"Math class."
Brandon Knight — Bella Jeanisse

Children are coming to school with trauma, everyday trauma, that they live under: violence in the homes, alcoholism in the community, unemployment that's 80 percent, not just during the recession. We need to help treat that before they can even go sit in a class and learn about math. — Denise Juneau

MY FRIEND: SO DO YOU TAKE A FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASS?
ME: SURE DO HAVE BEEN FOR THE LAST 13 YEARS.
MY FRIEND: COOL WHAT LANGUAGE?
ME: MATH. — KanyaACoffman

I had one class in the morning, the mysteriously named "Further Maths". It was two hours long and so deeply frightening that I think I went into a trance. — Maureen Johnson

One of my first experiences with the space program was with the memorial that was built for the Challenger. When I was in 7th grade my entire class spent the entire school year preparing to launch a spaceship all together. We all had our different jobs that we had to learn how to do, we learned the math that you needed, we learned the practical skills that you needed, and I thought that was really cool. So I think that if you can take a tragedy and find the gold in it and turn it into something positive, that's great. — Jonathan Nolan

I had authority issues. In my defense, my math teacher had it coming. She'd made me write one hundred on the black board, so I wrote one, zero, zero in words since one hundred consisted of those numbers. Because she hadn't been specific in her instructions,she'd berated me for being a smart aleck. The whole class had laughed at me. The next morning, they had to cut her out of her chair. — Kate Evangelista

I'm skipping, but Cam doesn't have a class until this afternoon, so he's a good boy."
"And your a bad boy?"
"Oh, I'm a bad, bad boy."
"Yeah, as in bad at spelling, math, english, cleaning up after yourself, talking to people, and I could go on. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

What if at school you had to take an art class in which you were only taught how to pain a fence? What if you were never shown the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci and Picasso? Would that make you appreciate art? Would you want to learn more about it? I doubt it ... Of course this sounds ridiculous, but this is how math is taught. — Edward Frenkel

English teacher: Sam, form a sentence using the word aftermath. Sam: 'I always feel sleepy after math class.' *** — Various

In Korea, math moved fluidly. When the teacher asked questions, the kids answered as if math were a language that they knew by heart. As in Tom's class in Poland, calculators weren't allowed, so kids had learned mental tricks to manipulate numbers quickly. — Amanda Ripley

I used to get so worked up about this or that boy, or who was passing notes in math class. All that stuff seems so far away now, ever since Real Life came along and punched me in the face. — M. Verano

We, however, have all kinds of different ideas about what happiness is. Some must go bungee jumping to experience a rush of joy, while others find bliss staying home. Some are happy in a concert hall, listening to classical music, while children on a playground could be music to the ears of others. Some people experience elation when they solve a complicated equation, while for others a cancelled math class is a happy childhood memory. — Haim Shapira

Well I was about to be expelled from school, I had been arrested and a teacher said: "Why don't you try acting, instead of distracting the class? Why don't you use your comic talent for something more productive?" My maths teacher suggested I do comedy and I decided to have a go. I pursued it after that. I was about 17. — John Leguizamo

Hundreds,' Joe says. 'Hundreds and hundreds. But then again, I'm old.'
So old, Jesus was in your math class,' I say. I crack myself up. — Deb Caletti

Math was always hard for me, but my dad would come up with ways of making it fun. I remember playing 'Number Munchers' on our old Mac ... That counts as math class, right? — Seth Numrich

Math is made for idiots, here is what is the proccess in math class. The teacher show you few exercises, show you the formula, show you the way, say everything about the exercises and then she tell you to solve problems. So as for me the proccess is REPEAT! — Deyth Banger

We're constantly judging and grading other parents, just to make sure that they aren't any better than us. I'm as guilty as anyone. I see some lady hand her kid a Nintendo DS at the supermarket and I instantly downgrade that lady to Shitty Parent status. I feel pressure to live up to a parental ideal that no one probably has ever achieved. I feel pressure to raise a group of human beings that will help America kick the shit out of Finland and South Korea in the world math rankings. I feel pressure to shield my kids from the trillion pages of hentai donkey porn out there on the Internet. I feel pressure to make the insane amounts of money needed for a supposedly 'middle-class' upbringing for the kids, an upbringing that includes a house and college tuition and health care and so many other expenses that you have to be a multimillionaire to afford it. PRESSURE PRESSURE PRESSURE. — Drew Magary

This is not class warfare
it's math. — Barack Obama

Someone has to be the worst ninja in the class. That's just basic math. — Jenny Lawson

Taking pity on me, Carissa kept her voice low. "You were calling out for Daemon."I dropped my face in my hands and moaned. "Oh, God."
Lesa giggled. "It was kind of cute."
A minute before the tardy bell rang, I felt an all-too-familiar warmth on my neck and glanced up. Daemon swaggered into class. Textbook-less as usual. He had a notebook, but I don't think he ever wrote anything in it. I was beginning to suspect our math teacher was an alien, because how else would Daemon get away with not doing a damn thing in class? He passed by without so much as a look.
I twisted around in my chair. "I need to talk to you."
He slid into his desk chair. "Okay."
"In private," I whispered.
His expression didn't change as he leaned back in his chair. "Meet me in the library at lunch. No one really goes in there. You know, with all those books and stuff. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

I was the runt of my class. So I got away with the whole 'Oh, he's so cute' thing. I was in upper division math courses, so I would have junior and senior girls in my class, and they'd just sit behind me and play with my hair. I didn't mind that so much. — Justin Lee

With the threat of failure looming, students with the growth mindset set instead mobilized their resources for learning. They told us that they, too, sometimes felt overwhelmed, but their response was to dig in and do what it takes. They were like George Danzig. Who? George Danzig was a graduate student in math at Berkeley. One day, as usual, he rushed in late to his math class and quickly copied the two homework problems from the blackboard. When he later went to do them, he found them very difficult, and it took him several days of hard work to crack them open and solve them. They turned out not to be homework problems at all. They were two famous math problems that had never been solved. — Carol S. Dweck

The only way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics. — Paul Halmos

If other people thought art was important, then it would be required to graduate. But no, I don't have to take art. I do have to take math, which is just a waste of time because the numbers get all switched up in my brain, plus, calculators exist for a reason. I do have to take history, which is basically memorizing tariff acts till your brain bleeds. I do have to take four years of gym class with a bunch of jerks who punch me if they don't like what I say. But art? Optional. Even though art and music and literature and all that are what make us human. Algebra doesn't make us human. Games don't make us human. — Laura Ruby

We walked the rest of the way to math class in silence, but it was the best kind of silence. It was the not-talking kind of silence, the kind that so few people seemed to understand." -Suzy — Ali Benjamin

In college, you had to worry about that math class or this exam that's coming up on Tuesday, but not in the professionals. You eat, sleep, and do everything related to your craft - and your craft is football. You can be at it from sunup to sundown. — Cam Newton

When I was in high school, I was in a special math class. I was infatuated with physics, particularly nuclear physics, Einstein, and the Big Bang. I read a lot about black holes. And partly because I'm so lazy I thought you could do all this just by looking at the sky and thinking up universes. It didn't seem like hard work when I was a kid, so I enrolled in this class. — Aleksandar Hemon

That better not be what I think it is," Joe mumbled in the dark.
It was. "It's not. Jeez, woman, someone's paranoid. It's my pocket light," he said, wincing. Ah, he was only human after all. It wasn't the first time she got him hard nor would it be the last time. The physical discomfort was a small price to pay to have her in his arms.
"Well, then your flashlight is growing. Jeez, Eric, put a leash on that thing before it stabs me!" she teased.
"But it likes you," he pouted.
She giggled. "I seem to remember a certain tenth grade math class where it liked standing up in front of the entire class."
He sucked in a breath. "Hey, that traumatized me! — R.L. Mathewson

The entropy of a system is related to the number of indistinguishable rearrangements of its constituents, but properly speaking is not equal to the number itself. The relationship is expressed by a mathematical operation called a logarithm; don't be put off if this brings back bad memories of high school math class. In our coin example, it simply means that you pick out the exponent in the number of rearrangements-that is, the entropy is defined as 1,000 rather than 2^1000. — Brian Greene

Had a girl in this class," Corcoran said. "She was a horrible math student in fifth grade. She cried every Saturday when we did remedial stuff. Huge tears and tears." At the memory, Corcoran got a little emotional himself. He looked down. "She just e-mailed us a couple weeks ago. She's in college now. She's an accounting major. — Malcolm Gladwell

Ask a kid who's struggling in math if he likes being in a mixed-level class, and he'll tell you he feels like a moron. Ask the math genius if he likes being in a mixed-level class, and he'll tell you he's sick of doing all the work during group projects. Sometimes, it's better to sort like with like. — Jodi Picoult

Ask your child for information in a gentle, nonjudgmental way, with specific, clear questions. Instead of "How was your day?" try "What did you do in math class today?" Instead of "Do you like your teacher?" ask "What do you like about your teacher?" Or "What do you not like so much?" Let her take her time to answer. Try to avoid asking, in the overly bright voice of parents everywhere, "Did you have fun in school today?!" She'll sense how important it is that the answer be yes. — Susan Cain

School is a terrible place, I have decided. There is nothing good about it except for math class. Everything else is a total waste of time. As I mentioned before I have done a lot of reading about prisons, and I notice that they always describe them as painted in very dull colors, and my school is also painted in these kinds of colors, with greenish lockers and brownish walls and grayish floors. Actually they recently fixed up one wing of the school, and now that part of the school is just the opposite - all the colors are really bright, with bright red and yellow lockers and blue doors and shiny white floors that are already all scuffed up. It's funny because I thought the other colors were terrible but these are much worse, because they make it seem like it's normal to be happy there when it isn't. — Dara Horn

I was very disruptive. I was horrible. I didn't learn like all the other kids. I had to sometimes take my tests out in the hallways because I couldn't focus. But, my teachers would come see me in the plays and were like 'I don't understand how you can focus and be in the moment in a play and you go into math class and you can't focus.' — Eliza Coupe

[Benjamin Peirce's] lectures were not easy to follow. They were never carefully prepared. The work with which he rapidly covered the blackboard was very illegible, marred with frequent erasures, and not infrequent mistakes (he worked too fast for accuracy). He was always ready to digress from the straight path and explore some sidetrack that had suddenly attracted his attention, but which was likely to have led nowhere when the college bell announced the close of the hour and we filed out, leaving him abstractedly staring at his work, still with chalk and eraser in his hands, entirely oblivious of his departing class. — William Elwood Byerly

It's kind of hard to rally around a math class. — Bear Bryant

Rachel bit her lip. I hope you're right. I'm a little worried. What if someone asks what's on the next math test and I start spouting a prophecy in the middle of geometry class? The Pythagorean theorem shall be problem two ... Gods, that would be embarrassing. — Rick Riordan

In an era of weaponized sensitivity, participation in public discourse is growing so perilous, so fraught with the danger of being caught out for using the wrong word or failing to uphold the latest orthodoxy in relation to disability, sexual orientation, economic class, race or ethnicity, that many are apt to bow out. Perhaps intimidating their elders into silence is the intention of the identity-politics cabal - and maybe my generation should retreat to our living rooms and let the young people tear one another apart over who seemed to imply that Asians are good at math. — Lionel Shriver

People are always saying these things about how there's no need to read literature anymore-that it won't help the world. Everyone should apparently learn to speak Mandarin, and learn how to write code for computers. More young people should go into STEM fields: science, technology, engineering, and math. And that all sounds to be true and reasonable. But you can't say that what you learn in English class doesn't matter. That great writing doesn't make a difference. I'm different. It's hard to put into words, but it's true. Words matter. — Meg Wolitzer

Deep practice, however, doesn't obey the same math. Spending more time is effective - but only if you're still in the sweet spot at the edge of your capabilities, attentively building and honing circuits. What's more, there seems to be a universal limit for how much deep practice human beings can do in a day. Ericsson's research shows that most world-class experts - including pianists, chess players, novelists, and athletes - practice between three and five hours a day, no matter what skill they pursue. — Daniel Coyle

Remember those old math questions you had in algebra class? Where water is entering a container at a certain rate and leaving at a different rate and you need to figure out when it'll be empty? Well, that concept is critical to the "Mark Watney doesn't die" project I'm working on. — Andy Weir