Life & Wisdom Quote by Lewis Carroll

Carroll takes the most buttoned-up symbol of Victorian certainty - arithmetic - and turns it into a hall of mirrors. On the surface, the lines offer a childlike puzzle: a “way” to multiply by ten and still end up with the original “question.” Underneath, it’s pure Carroll: logic used not to stabilize reality, but to demonstrate how easily “sense” can be engineered into nonsense.

The trick is grammatical as much as mathematical. “Answer” and “question” swap jobs: the solution doesn’t resolve the problem; it reproduces it. That reversal is the subtext of much of Carroll’s work, where institutions that promise clarity (schoolroom lessons, etiquette, even language itself) reliably generate confusion. Multiplying by ten is an emblem of the era’s faith in progress-by-scale: more computation, more industry, more empire, more certainty. Carroll’s joke is that scale can be sterile; you can enlarge a process and still go nowhere.

Context matters: Carroll was not only a fantasist but a mathematician steeped in formal reasoning. His playfulness lands because it comes from someone who knows the rules intimately enough to expose their seams. The intent isn’t anti-math; it’s anti-complacency. He’s warning, with a wink, that systems can become self-referential machines - beautiful, intricate, and ultimately circular. The “way” he hints at is less a method than a mindset: the recognition that some problems are built to keep you busy rather than get you free.