Can Mathematics Be Fun?

Here's an accidental collection of quotes that may be relevant to the common singling out of mathematics as a hard and ennoying subject/occupation.

Edna Ferber:

Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!

G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology, Cambridge University Press.

... musical incapacity is recognized (no doubt rightly) as mildly discreditable, whereas most people are so frightened of the name of mathematics that they are ready, quite unaffectedly, to exaggerate their own mathematical stupidity.

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