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Fun Stuff

Lecturer Quotes

Over the years the lecturers here at Warwick have delivered one great lecture after another, sometimes they even find the time to say something funny. WMS presents to you some of the best quotes from our favourite lecturers.

At the bottom of the page you'll find more fun stuff!
Or view this page in alphabetical order.

Got a funny quote? Go to the contact page and let us know!

  • Colin Rourke

    • "Oh *$@! three M's" - 1993
    • "Student: "what's that word there?" Colin Rourke: "what?...ah that's 'thru' it means through...I'll write it out in full" [writes 'trough']" - 1993
    • "Sorry, I have deliberately made that complicated by using words you understand" - 1994
    • "I'm no good with numbers. [said in his first lecture to first year undergraduates]" - 1994
    • "Size doesn't matter" - 1994
    • "An example of a geometry that is not Euclidean is non-Euclidean geometry" - 1994
    • "This is very easy to draw, if you're not drunk" - 1994
    • "It almost looks right" - 1994
    • "I'm bound to make a mistake" - 1994
    • "It should come out" - 1994
    • "You forget which finger is which" - 1994
    • "[In the middle of a proof] HELP!" - 1994
    • "Let's try and devise a notation that means something" - 1994
    • "I don't like square roots" - 1994
    • "...so I can't go wrong" - 1994
    • "It's gone wrong" - 1994
    • "There's a bit of fiddling around here" - 1994
    • "Your imagination is better than my drawing" - 1994
    • "It amazes me how the lights flash when you turn the motors on and off" - 1994
    • "Hyperbolic flower beds tend to go outside the garden" - 1994
    • "It's very interesting what curves you can get when you let things slide around on stuff" - 1994
    • "I had to distort it in order to make it plausible" - 1994
    • "Those are straight lines, I've just drawn them curvy" - 1994
    • "I did it right, but I got it very bad" - 1994
    • "Let's draw it over here because it's much more suggestive" - 1994
    • "This is non-examinable in the sense that I won't set any questions on it" - 1994
    • "Infinity is down here somewhere [pointing to the bottom of the blackboard]" - 1994
    • "A horrible piece of algebra ... that is just a few lines long" - 1994
    • "Once you've got the equation of the tangent, you can see it's a tangent" - 1994
    • "It's sort of clear,if you do it right" - 1994
    • "Think of sets as being like a door. They are either open or closed. Oh no, wait. A door can be ajar." - 2000
    • "All proofs are by contradiction... [shortly followed by:] Wait, that's not true. It's amazing the stupid things you say when you're stood up here." - 2004
    • "All of you look confused... am I speaking Chinese? [Then after realising that the entire first four rows consisted of people from China:] Oh wait, thats a silly thing to say in a roomful of Chinese people. Am I speaking Russian? Gosh I hope there are no Russians in here!" - 2005
    • "[When nobody offered an answer to one of his questions, he shouted] You are all so thick!" - 2005
    • "They should ban nine o'clock lectures, though of course then they would have to ban ten o'clock lectures by induction." - 2005
    • "This proof is morally the same as one you have already seen." - 2005
    • "It's supposed to look like a curly T, but it looks more like a bow tie with a silly leg on it." - 2005
    • "And I'm going to use green chalk for this, can you see green at the back? [No answer]. Well I'd better not use green; if I use green you can't even hear me!" - 2005
    • "I'm running on automatic, and automatic has just gone wrong." - 2005
    • "My shoelaces just won't stay done up today...Maybe the chalk lubricates them, they always seem to come undone when I'm lecturing." - 2005
    • "Since we can't decide on a statement, let's go for a proof [of the statement that hasn't been decided on]." - 2005
    • "I'm going to push the proof of that one under the carpet." - 2005
    • "Why does the red chalk always go missing first? It must be red shift." - 2009

  • David Rand

    • "Let's forget about real things for a moment." - 1995

  • Lasse Rempe

    • "I suppose in this case I will give you a calculation which is correct." - 2005
    • "This is the last time we will see explicit anything." - 2005

  • Valeriy Slastikov

    • "Hilbert spaces are probably the best functional spaces you can get in your life." - 2005

  • Rudolf Romer

    • "I'm sorry, I'm waving a knife around because I don't have a pointing stick. Am I scaring you?" - 2005
    • "We are no longer in the business of pretending to be Moses" - 2007
    • "If nothing happens, then clearly nothing happens" - 2007

Other Bits

A selection of links to other fun bits: