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I love that quote, but Lamport actually says in the Specifying Systems book that he got it from Dick Guindon.

I mention this purely in the interest of pedantry.

I had a professor who gave me another favorite quote of mine: "It's worth being pedantic at least twice in your life"

I think the ideas are related.

I'm stealing that quote, it's so good. I'm always surprised how ideas that sounded wonderful in my head turn into garbage when written down.

An actual quote from Lamport: "mathematics is nature's way to show you how lousy your writing is".

It's layered on top of a quote of Guindon he uses in a book about TLA+ in order to make a point for using math to formally specify systems

A previous HN discussion on the subject from a decade ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=993253