“Mathematicians themselves set up standards of generality and elegance in their exposition which are a bar to understand.”

— Kenneth E. Boulding

Source: 1940s, Economic Analysis, 1941, p. 236 (rev. ed. 1948) cited in: G.C. Harcourt, C. Sardoni (1992) On Political Economists and Modern Political Economy. Vol 4. p. 197

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Kenneth E. Boulding 163

British-American economist 1910–1993

George Frederick James Temple (1901–1992) British mathematician

100 Years of Mathematics: a Personal Viewpoint (1981)

“Standards should not be forced down from above but rather set by the production workers themselves.”

Taiichi Ohno (1912–1990) Japanese businessman and engineer

“This elegant generalization is mathematically very appealing; but physics means facing facts. You should take up case by case.”

Kariamanickam Srinivasa Krishnan (1898–1961) Indian physicist

One should not value elegant math above physical facts. As quoted by [Sundaram, R., 1998, December 10, K. S. Krishnan—the complete physicist, Current Science, 75, 11, 1263-1265]

“It is not, however, the unfamiliarity or strangeness of a work or of a composer's manner that is a bar to understanding, but rather the disappearance of the familiar, the ongoing disappointment of the expectations and hopes fostered by the musical tradition in which we have grown up.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994), Ch. 1 : The Frontiers of Nonsense

“In a newsagent’s he picked up a copy of the Standard, and hesitated by the chocolate, looking at the low-fat version he had trained himself to pretend he liked but suddenly hungry for a real bar, which with guilty devil-may-care he took and paid for.”

China Miéville book Go Between

Go Between (p. 129)
Short Fiction, Looking for Jake (2005)

“I set myself high standards on the pitch and know I have not always lived up to them this season”

Rio Ferdinand (1978) English association football player

Rio Ferdinand on standardshttp://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_6-10-2005_pg10_5]

“Set the bar high and believe in what you believe.”

Vladimer Botsvadze

“It is with Bernhard Riemann's work that we finally have the mathematical glasses to explore such worlds of the mind. And now my journey through the abstract world of 20th century mathematics has revealed that maths is the true language that the universe is written in. They key to understanding the world around us. Mathematicians aren't motivated by money and material gain, or even by practical applications of their work. For us it's the glory of solving one of the great unsolved problems that have outwitted previous generations of mathematicians. David Hilbert was right; it’s the unsolved problems of mathematics which make it a living subject. Which obsess each new generation of mathematicians. Despite all the things we've discovered over the last 7 millennia, there are still many things we don't understand. And its Hilbert’s call of "We must know, we will know" which drives mathematics.”

Marcus du Sautoy (1965) British professor of mathematics

Conclusion in BBC's The Story of Maths, episode 4

“If critics say your work stinks it's because they want it to stink and they can make it stink by scaring you into conformity with their comfortable little standards. Standards so low that they can no longer bee considered 'dangerous' but set in place in their compartmental understandings.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

This appears not to be a Kerouac quote. It has not been found in any of Kerouac's published work.
Misattributed

“I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least. And by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

White House Correspondents' Association Dinner (2006)

“Mathematicians themselves set up standards of generality and elegance in their exposition which are a bar to understand.”

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Kenneth E. Boulding 163

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