Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.
    Alfred North Whitehead
    Introduction to Mathematics (1911)

...it is certain that the real function of art is to increase our self-consciousness; to make us more aware of what we are, and therefore of what the universe in which we live really is. And since mathematics, in its own way, also performs this function, it is not only aesthetically charming but profoundly significant. It is an art, and a great art.
    John W.N. Sullivan

There is one very good reason to learn programming, but it has nothing to do with preparing for high-tech careers or with making sure one is computer literate in order to avoid being cynically manipulated by the computers of the future. The real value of learning to program can only be understood if we look at learning to program as an exercise of the intellect, as a kind of modern-day Latin that we learn to sharpen our minds.
    R. Schank

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All deep things are song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls!
    Thomas Carlyle

There's music in all things, if men had ears:
Their earth is but an echo of the spheres.
    Lord Byron

The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.
    Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it.
    John Lennon