# Quote — David Berlinski, A Tour of the Calculus

> A mathematical argument, once understood, is in its capacity to compel belief a miracle of enlightened life.

- Author: [David Berlinski](https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-berlinski.md)
- Book: [A Tour of the Calculus](https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-berlinski/a-tour-of-the-calculus.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Berlinski#A_Tour_of_the_Calculus_(1995)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-berlinski/a-tour-of-the-calculus/a-mathematical-argument

## More from this book

> In the twelfth century, for example, Bhāskara demonstrated correctly that + = an achievement, I might add, utterly beyond the collective intellectual power, say, of the English department at Duke University. (It is pleasant to imagine members of the department sitting together in a long lecture hall, Marxists to one side, deconstructionists to the other, abusing one another roundly as they grapple with the problem.)

p. 38 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-berlinski/a-tour-of-the-calculus/in-the-twelfth.md)

> I have written this book in isolation, hardly talking to a soul, but unoppressed as well by campus codes or creeds, free to say what I want and when I want. It is a measure of the degradation that has overtaken American academic life that I should feel obliged to boast of such circumstances.

p. 313 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-berlinski/a-tour-of-the-calculus/i-have-written.md)

> Stepping forward, I step back, the two steps, one forward and one back, canceling one another so that after they have been completed, I am where I started, having done something but accomplished little, a useful metaphor for a great many activities in life.

p. 220 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/david-berlinski/a-tour-of-the-calculus/stepping-forward-i-step.md)