The teacher pretended that algebra was a perfectly natural affair, to be taken for granted, whereas I didnt even know what numbers were. Mathematics classes became sheer terror and torture to me. I was so intimidated by my incomprehension that I did not dare to ask any questions. – Carl Gustav Jung

Mathematicians are like Frenchman: whatever you say to them they translate Into their own language, and forthwith it is something entirely different. – Johann von Goethe

I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret magic of numbers. – Sir Thomas Browne