You can read the whole text that starts with that quote here: https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/

You can read the whole text that starts with that quote here: https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html https://www.uni-muenster.de/Physik.TP/~munsteg/arnold.html As you say, it is written in a playful and cheeky manner, but it is just a rhetorical device; the meaning is certainly very deep. Even deeper and longer, but in a similar spirit, you have this text: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/Polymath.pdf http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/Polymath.pdf It starts with a famous quote, replicating Caesar's gallic war: All mathematics is divided into three parts: cryptography (paid for by CIA, KGB and the like), hydrodynamics (supported by manufacturers of atomic submarines) and celestial mechanics (financed by military and other institutions dealing with missiles, such as NASA).