Thanks to John Criswell, Forest Godfrey, John Godson, Ted Grant, Brandon Justinger, Jamie Krauss, Sara McLaughlin, Brica Pulsipher, Deneb Pulsipher, John Schmitt, Pat Schwemmer, Ryan Steffen, Jake Timmons, a student who wished to remain anonymous, and of course Mr. Watson for their assistance in creating this invaluable list of 78 quotes.
New quotes as of 11/30/97 are near the end.
"That's right, Myrtle!"
or... "That's right, Virginia!"
"Stomp three times and an orangutan will jump out of my closet and hit you over the head with a wiffle bat."
or... "There's a monkey in my closet that's going to come out and hit you with a wiffle bat."
or... "I should hit you over the head with a wiffle bat."
"At home in my closet I have a matrix, and it happens to be a 2x3 matrix..." or... "I've got a purple regular polygon in my closet..."
"du/dx!"
"When you go home tonight and you're sitting around the table with mom & dad having milk and cookies, tell them that..."
or... "Go home, pull out some milk and cookies, and do some geometry."
"I give homework to keep you kids off the streets on Friday night."
"I'm from a big city, and I don't trust people."
"I have a right triangle in my back pocket and it happens to be..."
"You people have got to get your ducks lined up!"
"In my warrior days, I would have..."
"Teacher jumps over three desks and strangles student."
"Let's do it the Cowboy Way."
"Let's do it the Super Slick way - the S^2 way."
"We can do this quicker than scat."
"You're walkin' down mainstreet and on the sidewalk you see a right triangle..."
"Now, don't get a big stone and go down to Silver Creek."
or... "If you see me down at Silver Creek tonight with a big stone, you know
why."
"Let's tricky-track over here and try this one."
"Let's slippy-slide down to number 3..."
"...Just sittin' around the campfire like the old boys, doing some geometry..."
"You'd be borderline dim-witty if you did it that way."
"Now it's Katie close the door."
"He's going to do you dirt on the test."
"It's kinda like pouring water out of a boot with the instructions on the heel."
"...runnin' around like a head with the chicken chopped off..."
"Stay out of Black Snake Country..."
or... "Beware of the compass-eating black snakes."
"If you ever do prove [...anything impossible...] call me up and we can go talk to the ol' walrus."
"You're getting excited."
"To that we politely say 'Bunk!'"
"What's the square root of I don't give a rip squared?"
"Frog!"
or... "Fish!"
"You don't want people to think you're from Berlin, do you?"
"The kids from Whitefish Bay could tell you..."
"This is good stuff...right up there with marriage and first child!"
"You wrap a wet noodle around the unit circle. Each point on the noodle maps to a point on the circle...it's the wrapping function - the Big W function!"
"Today you're going to become a differentiator - you're going to be in the top 1% of all Americans!"
"But you say, what has that got to do with the price of rhubarb?"
or... "What has that got to do with the price of coffee?"
"You kids have to do your homework! You say, 'But I gotta go frog hunting!' Well, I don't know what to say to that...I guess frog hunting's important..."
"The amount of studying is inversely proportional to the amount of dandelions in the grass."
"This is a big day in your life!"
"It'll be bingo bango bongo!"
"It'll be like shootin' fish in a barrel."
"We're going to have some fun tomorrow!"
(Translation: We're going to have a quiz tomorrow.)
The number at which L(x) = 1 is "widdle e."
"This is a scaggy ol' quadrilateral."
"If it's not a relative min and it's not a relative max, then it's a Sister Sue, because it's boring. To be fair, we called it a Brother Bob last year."
"Close your books, close your notes...this is free information."
"We're talkin' B.C. - Before Calculators! How are you going to multiply?"
"Euclid is King."
"Jeez!"
"They should change that law, shouldn't they? They should allow teachers to shoot one student per month."
"I have the chalk - I can do what I want."
"If you ever have to do some studying, go to the math section of the library. There will be no one there."
"That's a corker!"
"I betcha a nickel that..."
"You're standin on the corner spittin' through your teeth and someone comes up to you and asks, 'What's the hypotenuse of a right triangle with legs of 3 and 4?'"
"Could you build a pigshed to New Orleans with Euclidean geometry?"
"Whatever turns your crank."
"You say, 'We want to try some.' Sure. Turn to page something-or-other."
Right before giving a test:
"We didn't do so well on the last quiz, so I went to the doctor and he gave me some pills. These pills will help us do well on the test. I've got it written up on the board there:red for e anxiety
Take the pill that will help you do well on the test. [Gets out a dish of M&M's.] "They even have an M on them for Math!" [Walks around the room holding out the dish for each person to take one. He gets to Kerek Swanson; Kerek doesn't take one and instead says:] "I think you're just trying to do me dirt!"
yellow for time anxiety
green for word problem anxiety
brown for total math breakdown
"You're in downtown Ripon and you see two lines on the cement and they're cut by a transversal. Someone comes up to you and says, 'Are the lines parallel?'"
"Go down to Ace and ask the Hardy Hardware Man for a handful of lines."
"It's my job to confuse you."
"Did you use your arm as a straight edge?"
Of course there's always Mr. Watson's ruler, Trusty Rusty.
"I'll see you at my ninth hour seminar."
"Neato Cambito!"
"The POWER of
the POINT!"
"HHOOOOOOOOO! Break out the cider 'n' doughnuts!"
"The centroid of the triange is the center of gravity. NOT the
orthocenter. Ain't that right? If you go down to the wood shop and cut a
triange out of wood and try to balance it on the orthocenter, it'll fall
right over like a crippled brother."
"We call this point of the triangle the incenter. It's the place to be."
"Now, I don't usually tell students about this, but I'm feelin' real
close to you all, now that we've been together for a whole quarter now.
You see, I have a dream. Yup. I want to start a cowboy hat store. That's
right. I'll call it, 'Watson's Cowboy Hat Store.' Now wouldn't it just
be finer than fine if you and your buddies could all go to the
volleyball tournament in Neenah wearin' orange and black cowboy hats?
And all the people from Neenah could come wearin' red and white ones?
And all the Berlin folks could go wearin' black and yellow ones? Doesn't
that just wind your clock? Well, here's my problem, see. I want to make
it so that WCHS, or, Watson's Cowboy Hat Store, is EQUIDISTANT,
Wha'd he say? EQUIDISTANT from Neenah, Ripon, and Berlin..."
"Now say I was going to build a memorial statue out in the parking lot
of the honourable Mr. [Student]. I'd have to make every part of the
statue relative in size, or similar to the Genuine Article, Mr.
[Student]..."
STUDENT: "So, is the test going to have more constructions on it, or
more proofs?" MR. WATSON: "Yup."
"Have a nice weekend. And say no. The devil's out there."
"Now, the devil tempts you to look in the back of the book..."
"You'll be hurtin' fer certain!"
"Are you cruisin' for a bruisin'?"