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The fashion pages have always puzzled me. In my smugly ignorant view, the articles appear to be so full of fluff and nonsense as to make the astrology columns seem insightful by comparison.

— John Allen Paulos A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995)

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More quotes by John Allen Paulos

Any bit of nonsense can be computerized—astrology, biorhythms, the I Ching—but that doesn’t make the nonsense any more valid.

Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988)

There’s always enough random success to justify almost anything to someone who wants to believe.

Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988)

In general, any differences between two groups will always be greatly accentuated at the extremes.

A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995)

Even the most superficial of a newspaper reveals an important aspect of human psychology: our preoccupation with the short term.

A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper (1995)

Appreciating humor—even recognizing it—requires human skills of the highest order (level?); no computer comes close to having them.

Mathematics and Humor: A Study of the Logic of Humor (1980)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Allen Paulos (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.