Quotes about hedgehogs (9 Quotes)



    Gel'fand amazed me by talking of mathematics as though it were poetry. He once said about a long paper bristling with formulas that it contained the vague beginnings of an idea which could only hint at and which he had never managed to bring out more clearly. I had always thought of mathematics as being much more straightforward a formula is a formula, and an algebra is an algebra, but Gel'fand found hedgehogs lurking in the rows of his spectral sequences.

    There exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision... and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory... The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes.

    But they'll nor pinch,
    Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i' th' mire,
    Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark
    Out of my way, unless he bid 'em; but
    For every trifle are they set upon me;
    Sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me,
    And after bite me; then like hedgehogs which
    Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount
    Their pricks at my footfall; sometime am I
    All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues
    Do hiss me into madness.






    I would like a question answered today, said Tiffany. Provided it's not the one about how you get baby hedgehogs, said the man. No, said Tiffany patiently. It's about zoology. Zoology eh That's a big word, isn't it. No, actually it isn't, said Tiffany. Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short.



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