Perhaps, then, there is a more correct (although less poetic) alternate phrasing: If you never go off on tangents, there's no need to create derivatives. > On Mon, 19 Jan 2004, Mark A Mandel wrote: > > >On Mon, 19 Jan 2004, David Silberstein wrote: > > > ># Never go off on tangents, which are lines that intersect a curve at > ># only 1 point and were discovered by Euclid, who lived in the 6th > ># Century, which was an era dominated by the Goths, who lived in what > ># we now know as Poland... > > > >Euclid. fl circa 300 B.C. > > -- Merriam-Webster OnLine > > I think part of the humour of that quote is that it gets some of the > information very wrong. The line fails to interect the curve at any > point, as it were. > > ># > >#OTOH: > ># > ># If you never go off on tangents, you keep going around in circles. > > > >Nitpicks aside, I *do* like that! > > > > It's also amusing, but of course, pedantically speaking, the curves > that lines can be tangents to need not be circles at all. > >