The proverbial German phenomenon of the verb-at-the-end about which droll tales of absentminded professors who would begin a sentence, ramble on for an entire lecture, and then finish up by rattling off a string of verbs by which their audience, for whom the stack had long since lost its coherence, would be totally nonplussed, are told, is an excellent example of linguistic recursion.
Quotes about absentminded (4 Quotes)
It's true that I tend to daydream. I'm the same person in business as I am in music: I can be distracted and absentminded. It's my style.
Don't talk to me of your Archimedes' lever. He was an absentminded person with a mathematical imagination. Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.
The traditional mathematics professor of the popular legend is absentminded. He usually appears in public with a lost umbrella in each hand. He prefers to face the blackboard and to turn his back to the class. He writes a, he says b, he means c but it should be d. Some of his sayings are handed down from generation to generation. 'In order to solve this differential equation you look at it till a solution occurs to you.' 'This principle is so perfectly general that no particular application of it is possible.' 'Geometry is the science of correct reasoning on incorrect figures.' 'My method to overcome a difficulty is to go round it.' 'What is the difference between method and device A method is a device which you used twice.'