Arithmetic Quotes - Page 2

• We have the most crude accounting tools. It's tragic because our accounts and our national arithmetic doesn't tell us the things that we need to know.

  Susan George

  Needs, Tools, Tragic

  9 Copy quote

• I am coming more and more to the conviction that the necessity of our geometry cannot be demonstrated, at least neither by, nor for, the human intellect. . . Geometry should be ranked, not with arithmetic, which is purely aprioristic, but with mechanics.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Math, Science, Mechanic

  "Solid Shape". Book by Jan J. Koenderink, 1990.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• This is a tricky domain because, unlike simple arithmetic, to solve a calculus problem - and in particular to perform integration - you have to be smart about which integration technique should be used: integration by partial fractions, integration by parts, and so on.

  Marvin Minsky

  Smart, Simple, Technique

  "AL's Legacy: 2001's Computer As Dream and Reality". Book by David G. Stork (p. 15), February 6, 1998.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was always looking ahead. I used to do all kinds of things for entertainment. When I was young, we had no radio, no TV. We were 30 miles from the public library, out in the sticks in Western Kansas, and so I'd do arithmetic exercises.

  Clyde Tombaugh

  Exercise, Kansas, Library

  17 Copy quote

• Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.

  John von Neumann

  Witty, Powerful, Humorous

  "Various techniques used in connection with random digits" by John von Neumann in "Monte Carlo Method" edited by A.S. Householder, G.E. Forsythe and H.H. Germond, 1951.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• No man acquires property without acquiring with it a little arithmetic also.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Littles, Property

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.82

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Reeling and Writhing of course, to begin with,' the Mock Turtle replied, 'and the different branches of arithmetic-ambition, distraction, uglification, and derision.

  Lewis Carroll

  Education, Ambition, Turtles

  Lewis Carroll (1992). “Alice in Wonderland”, p.116, Wordsworth Editions

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The desire to economize time and mental effort in arithmetical computations, and to eliminate human liability to error is probably as old as the science of arithmetic itself.

  Howard Aiken

  Errors, Effort, Desire

  "Proposed Automatic Calculating Machine". Paper by Howard H. Aiken, dl.acm.org. 1937.

  57 Copy quote

  Show source

• That arithmetic is the basest of all mental activities is proved by the fact that it is the only one that can be accomplished by a machine.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Machines, Facts, Accomplished

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2015). “Essays of Schopenhauer”, p.145, Sheba Blake Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Obvious is the most dangerous word in mathematics.

  Eric Temple Bell

  Knowledge, Math, Science

  Eric Temple Bell (1938). “The queen of the sciences”

  47 Copy quote

  Show source

• Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.

  C. S. Lewis

  People, Evil, Knows

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.120, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Plato

  Plato, Math, Men

  11 Copy quote

• If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.

  John von Neumann

  Believe, Math, Simple

  John von Neumann's remarks as keynote speaker at the first national meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery (1947) as quoted in "Archaeology of computers: Reminiscences, 1945-1947" by Franz L. Alt, Communications of the ACM, Volume 15, Issue 7, special issue: Twenty-fifth anniversary of the Association for Computing Machinery (p. 694), July 1972.

  267 Copy quote

  Show source

• If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. [...] The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.

  Bertrand Russell

  Thinking, Differences, Finding Yourself

  "Unpopular Essays". Book by Bertrand Russell, p. 116, 1950.

  171 Copy quote

  Show source

• I always thought that I was okay with arithmetic.

  Erskine Bowles

  Okay

  8 Copy quote

• Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.

  Claude Debussy

  Music, Beauty, Art

  "Greatness: Who Makes History and Why". Book by Dean Keith Simonton, May 20, 1994.

  43 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mathematics is the queen of the sciences.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Queens, Math, Mathematics

  "Gauss zum Gedächtniss". Book by Wolfgang Sartorius von Waltershausen, 1856.

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is not the job of mathematicians... to do correct arithmetical operations. It is the job of bank accountants.

  Samuil Shatunovsky

  Jobs, Math, Operations

  13 Copy quote

• Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky - or the answer is wrong and you have to start over and try again and see how it comes out this time.

  Carl Sandburg

  Nice, Math, Blue

  Carl Sandburg, Frances Schoonmaker Bolin (1995). “Carl Sandburg”, p.17, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity and the great ease which it has lent to computations put our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions; and we shall appreciate the grandeur of the achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity.

  Pierre-Simon Laplace

  Education, Appreciation, Mean

  "Return to Mathematical Circles". Book by Howard Eves, 1988.

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• A great part of its theories derives an additional charm from the peculiarity that important propositions, with the impress of simplicity on them, are often easily discovered by induction, and yet are of so profound a character that we cannot find the demonstrations till after many vain attempts; and even then, when we do succeed, it is often by some tedious and artificial process, while the simple methods may long remain concealed.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Success, Character, Simple

  "Mathematical Circles Adieu". Book by Howard W. Eves, 1977.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Crystals grew inside rock like arithmetic flowers. They lengthened and spread, added plane to plane in an awed and perfect obedience to an absolute geometry that even stones - maybe only the stones - understood.

  Annie Dillard

  Fear, Flower, Rocks

  35 Copy quote

• [T]he different branches of Arithmetic - Ambition [G]eometry is not true, it is advantageous.

  Henri Poincare

  Ambition, Math, Different

  7 Copy quote

• Any one who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin. For, as has been pointed out several times, there is no such thing as a random number - there are only methods to produce random numbers, and a strict arithmetic procedure of course is not such a method.

  John von Neumann

  Numbers, Sin, States

  "Various techniques used in connection with random digits" by John von Neumann in "Monte Carlo Method" edited by A.S. Householder, G.E. Forsythe and H.H. Germond, 1951.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Arithmetic has a very great and elevating effect, compelling the soul to reason about abstract number, and rebelling against the introduction of visible or tngible objects into the argument.

  Plato

  Plato, Numbers, Soul

  Plato, Julius A. Sigler (1997). “Education: Ends and Means”, p.24, University Press of America

  9 Copy quote

  Show source