Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.
WIlliam Thomson, Lord Kelvin
One I got while reading Jaynes's Probability Theory recently:
"Probability theory is nothing but common sense reduced to calculation."
-- Laplace
This is our monthly thread for collecting these little gems and pearls of wisdom, rationality-related quotes you've seen recently, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages, and which might be handy to link to in one of our discussions.