The best teacher that I ever had was George Booth at Brooklyn College. He died in 1995, but when I went to go give him a rating on Rate My Professors, two other professors had beat me to it! He’s dead and he has a perfect 5!
Algebra is the offer made by the devil to the mathematician. The devil says: I will give you this powerful machine, it will answer any question you like. All you need to do is give me your soul: give up geometry and you will have this marvelous machine.