“A straight line is not the shortest distance between two points.”

“I don't speechify. I know the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. And that's what I ask. But they get mad at the straight line. I just want to ask a tough question.”

“In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.”

“The shortest distance between two points is often unbearable.”

“Morality has got nothing to do with the politicians. Simply, because the straight line is considered by them as the longest distance between the two points.”

“The shortest distance between two people is a smile.”

“The smile is the shortest distance between two persons”

“Common to the two geometries is only the general property of one-to-one correspondence, and the rule that this correspondence determines straight lines as shortest lines as well as their relations of intersection.”

“The organization of his ideas was all wrong; I was drawn to the memory of myself -- a mere stripling of a girl -- the day I learned that the shortest distance between any two points was a great circle.”

“…by action on man all known force may be measured. Indeed, few men of science measured force in any other way. After once admitting that a straight line was the shortest distance between two points, no serious mathematician cared to deny anything that suited his convenience, and rejected no symbol, proved or unproveable, that helped him to accomplish work. The symbol was force, as a compass-needle or a triangle was force.”