100+ Subtraction Quotes | InspiringQuotes.us

source: "New New Yorker Martin Amis Talks Terrorism, Pornography, Idyllic Brooklyn and American Decline". Interview with David Wallace-Wells, www.vulture.com. July 22, 2012.

topic: Writing, Way, Talent, Subtraction

A German merchant of the fifteenth century asked an eminent professor where he should send his son for a good business education. The professor responded that German universities would be sufficient to teach the boy addition and subtraction but he would have to go to Italy to learn multiplication and division. Before you smile indulgently, try multiplying or even just adding the Roman numerals CCLXIV, MDCCCIX, DCL, and MLXXXI without first translating them.

- John Allen Paulos

source: John Allen Paulos (2013). “Beyond Numeracy”, p.23, Vintage

topic: Son, Boys, Trying, Subtraction, Multiplication

I meet a man with a thousand dollars and leave him with two; that's the meaning of subtraction.

- Mae West

topic: Money, Men, Two, Subtraction

At nineteen, it seems to me, one has a right to be arrogant; time has usually not begun its stealthy and rotten subtractions. It takes away your hair and your jump-shot, according to a popular country song, but in truth it takes away a lot more than that.

- Stephen King

source: Stephen King (2016). “The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger”, p.12, Simon and Schuster

topic: Country, Song, Time, Subtraction

Perhaps nothing ud be a lesson to us if it didn't come too late. It's well we should feel as life's a reckoning we can't make twice over; there's no real making amends in this world, any more nor you can mend a wrong subtraction by doing your addition right.

- George Eliot

source: George Eliot (2016). “Complete Works Of George Eliot”, p.546, ShandonPress via PublishDrive

topic: Life, Real, Too Late, Making Amends, Subtraction

There is no division nor subtraction in the heart-arithmetic of a good mother. There are only addition and multiplication.

- Bess Streeter Aldrich

source: Bess Streeter Aldrich (1994). “A Lantern in Her Hand”, p.82, U of Nebraska Press

topic: Mother, Heart, Division, Subtraction, Multiplication

If production does not increase in Iraq in an exponential way between now and 2015, we have a very big problem, even if Saudi Arabia meets its obligations. The figures are very simple, you do not need to be an expert. It is enough to know how to do a subtraction. China will grow very quickly, India also, and even Saudi Arabia projections of the 3 Mb/day will not be enough to meet the rise of Chinese demand.

- Fatih Birol

source: Michael Broadbent (1984). “The Complete Guide to Wine Tasting and Wine Cellars”, Simon & Schuster

topic: Simple, Iraq, Chinese, Subtraction

But the best read naturalist who lends an entire and devout attention to truth, will see that there remains much to learn of his relation to the world, and that it is not to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other comparison of known quantities, but is arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, and by entire humility.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

source: Ralph Waldo Emerson (2017). “The Best Read Naturalist": Nature Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.130, University of Virginia Press

topic: Knowledge, Humility, Recovery, Subtraction

I shall argue that it is the capital stock from which we derive satisfaction, not from the additions to it (production) or the subtractions from it (consumption): that consumption, far from being a desideratum, is a deplorable property of the capital stock which necessitates the equally deplorable activity of production: and that the objective of economic policy should not be to maximize consumption or production, but rather to minimize it, i.e. to enable us to maintain our capital stock with as little consumption or production as possible.

- Kenneth E. Boulding

topic: Littles, Satisfaction, Arguing, Subtraction

The external view [of agency] forces itself on us at the same time that we resist it. One way this occurs is through the gradual erosion of what we do by the subtraction of what happens.

- Thomas Nagel

topic: Agency, Erosion, Views, Subtraction

The Difference Engine can in reality (as has been already partly explained) do nothing but add; and any other processes, not excepting those of simple subtraction, multiplication and division, can be performed by it only just to that extent in which it is possible, by judicious mathematical arrangement and artifices, to reduce them to a series of additions.

- Ada Lovelace

topic: Subtraction

If the unusual never happened there would be no difference in people and then there wouldn't be any fun in life. The game would become merely a matter of addition and subtraction. It would make of us a race of bookkeepers with plodding minds. It's the guessing that develops a man's brain power.

- Jesse Lauriston Livermore

topic: Fun, Men, Race, Subtraction, Bookkeepers

My working method has more often than not involved the subtraction of weight. I have tried to remove weight, sometimes from people, sometimes from heavenly bodies, sometimes from cities; above all I have tried to remove weight from the structure of stories and from language. . . . Maybe I was only then becoming aware of the weight, the inertia, the opacity of the world--qualities that stick to the writing from the start, unless one finds some way of evading them.

- Italo Calvino

source: "Six Memos For This Millennium" by Sam Cooney, therumpus.net. November 22, 2010.

topic: Writing, Cities, People, Subtraction, Heavenly Bodies

I have to admit that business-type thoughts do sneak into my head: I hope our customers pay us, I hope this stuff is decent, I hope we get it done on time. The little additions and subtractions that one has to do. Take sales, take costs and try to get that big positive number at the bottom.

- Bill Gates

topic: Numbers, Trying, Cost, Subtraction

The worst class of sum worked in the every-day world is cyphered by the diseased arithmeticians who are always in the rule of Subtraction as to the merits and successes of others, and never in Addition as to their own.

- Charles Dickens

topic: Class, Words Of Wisdom, World, Success Of Others, Subtraction

The going away of friends does not make the remainder more precious. It takes so much from them as there was a common link. A. B. and C. make a party. A. dies. B. not only loses A. but all A.'s part in C. C. loses A.'s part in B., and so the alphabet sickens by subtraction of interchangeables.

- Charles Lamb

topic: Friends, Party, Going Away, Subtraction

He wondered how he could ever have thought of the planets, even of the Earth, as islands of life and reality floating in a deadly void. Now with a certainty which never after deserted him, he saw the planets - as mere holes or gaps in the living heaven - excluded and rejected wastes of heavy matter and murky air, formed not by addition to, but by subtraction from, the surrounding brightness.

- C. S. Lewis

topic: Reality, Islands, Air, Subtraction, Deserted

No more Lastrygonians.” Ella fluttered down and landed next to them. “Six minus six is zero. Spears are good for subtraction, yep.

- Rick Riordan

topic: Zero, Down And, Next, Subtraction

"She can't do sums a bit!" the Queens said together, with great emphasis. "Can you do sums?" Alice said, turning suddenly on the White Queen, for she didn't like being found fault with so much. The Queen gasped and shut her eyes. "I can do Addition, if you give me time-but I can do Subtraction, under any circumstances!"

- Lewis Carroll

topic: Time, Queens, Eye, Subtraction

In an ideal world, social responsibility would be a prerequisite for design, and designers would vow to produce beautiful, useful, positive, responsible, functional, and economical things and concepts that are meaningful additions toâ€”or sometimes subtractions fromâ€”the world we live in. Indeed, design deserves such thoughtful consideration.

- Paola Antonelli

topic: Beautiful, Meaningful, Responsibility, Social Responsibility, Subtraction

we middle-aged folk have the education of life, truly; we know the multiplication table of anxieties and sorrows, the subtraction table of loss, the division table of responsibility.

- Margaret Deland

topic: Responsibility, Loss, Anxiety, Subtraction, Multiplication

"Try another Subtraction sum. Take a bone from a dog: what remains?" [asked the Red Queen] Alice considered. "The bone wouldn't remain, of course, if I took it-and the dog wouldn't remain; it would come to bite me-and I'm sure I shouldn't remain!" "Then you think nothing would remain?" said the Red Queen. "I think that's the answer." "Wrong, as usual," said the Red Queen, "the dog's temper would remain."

- Lewis Carroll

topic: Dog, Queens, Science, Bite Me, Subtraction

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