Barry Mazur,
Context: Sometimes the mathematical anti-Platonist believes that headway is made by showing Platonism to be unsupportable by rational means, and that it is an incoherent position to take when formulated in a propositional vocabulary. It is easy enough to throw together propositional sentences. But it is a good deal more difficult to capture a Platonic disposition in a propositional formulation that is a full and honest expression of some flesh-and-blood mathematician’s view of things. There is, of course, no harm in trying—and maybe its a good exercise. But even if we cleverly came up with a proposition that is up to the task of expressing Platonism formally, the mere fact that the proposition cannot be demonstrated to be true won’t necessarily make it vanish. There are many things—some true, some false— unsupportable by rational means.
Not exactly the building, not exactly the faculty or the students or the alumni — more than all those things but also less, a paradox, an order, a mystery, a monster, an utter joy.
Source: The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002), Ch. 9, A Pedagogical Disagreement, II
“I want to believe as many true things and as few false things as possible.”
Source: The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002), Ch. 9, A Pedagogical Disagreement, II
Quoted by Winston Churchill in his Great Contemporaries (London & New York, 1937) p. 250 http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/speeches/quotations/quotes-falsely-attributed
“He knew how to say many false things that were like true sayings.”
'Only Human: On Nuremberg'
Essays and reviews, From the Land of Shadows (1982)
“If the meanings of true and false were switched, this sentence wouldn't be false.”
I Am a Strange Loop (2007) p. 68
“There are some awful things in the world, it's true, but there are also some great books.”
Source: Among Others
