The Arithmetic Quotes

You can find sorrow in the arithmetic, and you can find a bittersweet hope. ~ David Levithan

Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light. ~ Claude Debussy

What will that mean to each of you? It will mean that those of you who might have lived to be seventy-one must die at seventy. Some of you who might have lived to be eighty-six must cough up your ghost at eighty-five. That's a great age. A year more or less doesn't sound like much. When the time comes, boys, you may regret. But, you will be able to say, this year I spent well, I gave for Pip, I made a loan of life for sweet Pipkin, the fairest apple that ever almost fell too early off the harvest tree. Some of you at forty-nine must cross life off at forty-eight. Some at fifty-five must lay them down to Forever's Sleep at fifty-four. Do you catch the whole thing intact now, boys? Do you add the figures? Is the arithmetic plain? A year! Who will bid three hundred and sixty-five entire days from out his own soul, to get old Pipkin back? Think, boys. Silence. Then, speak. ~ Ray Bradbury

Under the dominion of an idea, which possesses the minds of multitudes, as civil freedom, or the religious sentiment, the power ofpersons are no longer subjects of calculation. A nation of men unanimously bent on freedom, or conquest, can easily confound the arithmetic of statists, and achieve extravagant actions, out of all proportion to their means; as, the Greeks, the Saracens, the Swiss, the Americans, and the French have done. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If men had known how to permeate the soul with mathematics in the right way in the arithmetic lessons during these past years, we should not now have Bolshevism in Eastern Europe. ~ Rudolf Steiner

In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

This is part of what we disdain about sweeteners, the fact that we can taste without consequences. Our capitalist ethos loves a certain kind of inscription - insisting we can read tallies of sloth and discipline inscribed across the body itself - and artificial sweeteners threaten this legibility. They offer a way to cheat the arithmetic of indulgence and bodily consequence, just like sentimentality offers feeling without the price of complication. ~ Leslie Jamison

The analysis of variance is not a mathematical theorem, but rather a convenient method of arranging the arithmetic. ~ Ronald Fisher

Contemporaries of Alexander Hamilton noticed his conspicuous sense of self-possession, his unique combination of serenity and energy. ~ Joseph J. Ellis

The loony legacy of money was that the arithmetic by which things were measured had become more valuable than the things themselves. ~ Tom Robbins

God looks not at the oratory of your prayers, how elegant they may be; nor at the geometry of your prayers, how long they may be; nor at the arithmetic of your prayers, how many they may be; not at logic of your prayers, how methodical they may be; but the sincerity of them he looks at. ~ Thomas Brooks

The arithmetic makes it plain that inflation is a far more devastating tax than anything that has been enacted by our legislature. The inflation tax has a fantastic ability to simply consume capital. It makes no difference to a widow with her saving in a 5 percent passbook account whether she pays 100 percent income tax on her interest income during a period of zero inflation, or pays no income taxes during years of 5 percent inflation. Either way, she is 'taxed' in a manner that leave her no real income whatsoever. Any money she spends comes right out of capital. She would find outrageous a 120 percent income tax, but doesn't seem to notice that 5 percent inflation is the economic equivalent. ~ Warren Buffett

We had better want the consequences of what we believe or disbelieve, because the consequences will come! . . .

But how can a society set priorities if there are no basic standards? Are we to make our calculations using only the arithmetic of appetite? . . .

The basic strands which have bound us together socially have begun to fray, and some of them have snapped. Even more pressure is then placed upon the remaining strands. The fact that the giving way is gradual will not prevent it from becoming total. . . .

Given the tremendous asset that the family is, we must do all we can within constitutional constraints to protect it from predatory things like homosexuality and pornography. . . .

Our whole republic rests upon the notion of "obedience to the unenforceable," upon a tremendous emphasis on inner controls through self-discipline. . . .

Different beliefs do make for different behaviors; what we think does affect our actions; concepts do have consequences. . . .

Once society loses its capacity to declare that some things are wrong per se, then it finds itself forever building temporary defenses, revising rationales, drawing new lines - but forever falling back and losing its nerve. A society which permits anything will eventually lose everything!

Take away a consciousness of eternity and see how differently time is spent.

Take away an acknowledgement of divine design in the structure of li ~ Neal A. Maxwell

The secret truth of 'Celebrity Apprentice' is that it isn't very hard ... 'Celebrity Apprentice' is easy like junior high is easy. All the arithmetic, the creative writing and the history are super simple, but like junior high, you do that easy work surrounded by people who are full-tilt, hormone-raging bug nutty. ~ Penn Jillette

Apparently, in the realm of higher animals, it takes 2 to make 1. The arithmetic of this mystery seems to suggest 1 + 1 = 1. ~ Roscoe Webster

Reason: The arithmetic of the emotions. ~ Elbert Hubbard

Why do you assume it's something you've done, and something you can undo at will? I'm not some arithmetic problem just waiting for you to show your work properly, Locke. Did ~ Scott Lynch

Boolean Arithmetic ~ Noam Nisan

Before a kid learns how to use a computer that can solve mathematical problems, he or she should know how to do arithmetic without a computer. ~ Andy Rooney

Boswell: But, Sir is it not somewhat singular that you should happen to have Cocker's Arithmetic about you on your journey? Dr. Johnson: Why, Sir if you are to have but one book with you upon a journey, let it be a book of science. When you read through a book of entertainment, you know it, and it can do no more for you; but a book of science is inexhaustible. ~ James Boswell

Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either. ~ C.S. Lewis

He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense. ~ John McCarthy

Preliminary accounting, banking and surveying (known as arithmetic, algebra and geometry). ~ Alan Watts

There still remain three studies suitable for free man. Arithmetic is one of them. ~ Plato

I meet so many people who are intimidated by arithmetic. ~ Bill Nye

Self-regulation can be taught to many kids who cycle between frantic activity and immobility. In addition to reading, writing, and arithmetic, all kids need to learn self-awareness, self-regulation, and communication as part of their core curriculum. Just as we teach history and geography, we need to teach children how their brains and bodies work. For adults and children alike, being in control of ourselves requires becoming familiar with our inner world and accurately identifying what scares, upsets, or delights us. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Many who have had an opportunity of knowing any more about mathematics confuse it with arithmetic, and consider it an arid science. In reality, however, it is a science which requires a great amount of imagination. ~ Sofia Kovalevskaya

Charity does not like arithmetic; selfishness worships it. ~ Mason Cooley

Very possible! Possible, indeed. Maybe even probable, which, as you know if you study your arithmetic,can happen more often than possible. In other words, probable is more possible than possible. - Bubo ~ Kathryn Lasky

What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736. ~ Jonathan Swift

Golf is a lot of walking, broken up by disappointment and bad arithmetic. ~ Earl Wilson

Will you please translate your prices hereafter? I don't add too well in plain American, I haven't a prayer in ever mastering bilingual arithmetic. ~ Helene Huff

If arithmetic overflow is a fatal error, some fascist pig with a read-only mind is trying to enforce machine independence. ~ Bill Gosper

Our schools have a doubly hard task, not just improving reading, writing and arithmetic but entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity. ~ Ken Robinson

My father was one-eighth Cherokee indian and my mother was quarter-blood Cherokee. I never got far enough in arithmetic to figure out how much injun that made me, but there's nothing of which I am more proud than my Cherokee blood. ~ Will Rogers

Bill Frindall has done a bit of mental arithmetic with a calculator ~ John Arlott

people have managed to marry without arithmetic ~ Geoffrey Chaucer

Your 90MHz Pentium won't have any trouble doing arithmetic (except for certain divisions). ~ Paul Dilascia

Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. ~ Bertrand Russell

God does arithmetic. ~ Carl Friedrich Gauss

Reading and writing, arithmetic and grammar do not constitute education, any more than a knife, fork and spoon constitute a dinner. ~ John Lubbock

If he drinks one hundred dollars a day--and he can--he's got one hundred days to drink. It's just an arithmetic operation, simple logic. ~ John O'Brien

Schools are really bad now. Schools are not only bad in reading, writing and arithmetic, they're worse in cultural aspects, like in music and art. They don't teach you anything. ~ John Kricfalusi

No, I couldn't do it, I couldn't do it! Granted, granted that there is no flaw in all that reasoning, that all that I have concluded this last month is clear as day, true as arithmetic ... . My God! Anyway I couldn't bring myself to it! I couldn't do it, I couldn't do it! Why, why then am I still ... ? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Eternity is a depth which no geometry can measure, no arithmetic calculate, no imagination conceive, no rhetoric describe. ~ Hannah More

A simple problem of arithmetic: there are far more ambitions than there are grand destinies available. ~ Alain De Botton

By all means, have you give great attention to your arithmetic, as its advantages are so many and important. ~ Dorothea Dix

Belief is no substitute for arithmetic. ~ Henry Spencer

It seems to me, that if statesmen had a little more arithmetic, or were accustomed to calculation, wars would be much less frequent. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Tis no extravagant arithmetic to say, that for every ten jokes, thou hast got an hundred enemies; and till thou hast gone on, and raised a swarm of wasps about thine ears, and art half stung to death by them, thou wilt never be convinced it is so. ~ Laurence Sterne