Subtraction Quotes

No more Lastrygonians.” Ella fluttered down and landed next to them. "Six minus six is zero. Spears are good for subtraction, yep. (Rick Riordan)
Politics is human beings; it's addition rather than subtraction. View quote
Donald Rumsfeld
If one adds anything small or great to the queen of virtues, piety, or on the other hand takes something from it, in either case he will change and transform its nature. Addition will beget superstition and subtraction will beget impiety. View quote
Philo
A man has one hundred dollars and you leave him with two dollars, that's subtraction. View quote
Mae West
I have throughout introduced the Integral Calculus in connexion with the Differential Calculus.... Is it always proper to learn every branch of a direct subject before anything connected with the inverse relation is considered? If so why are not multiplication and involution in arithmetic made to follow addition and precede subtraction? The portion of the Integral Calculus, which properly belongs to any given portion of the Differential Calculus increases its power a hundred-fold... View quote
Augustus De Morgan
Experience has convinced me that the proper way of teaching is to bring together that which is simple from all quarters, and, if I may use such a phrase, to draw upon the surface of the subject a proper mean between the line of closest connexion and the line of easiest deduction. This was the method followed by Euclid, who, fortunately for us, never dreamed of a geometry of triangles, as distinguished from a geometry of circles, or a separate application of the arithmetics of addition and subtraction; but made one help out the other as he best could. View quote
Augustus De Morgan
Had my life increased, or merely added to itself? There had been addition and subtraction in my life, but how much multiplication? View quote
Julian Barnes
No operation of addition or subtraction gives rise to diversity, but all are equally related to their pair of Terms, or Elements. View quote
Johannes Kepler
As for negative numbers... most mathematicians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did not accept them... In the fifteenth century Nicolas Chuquet and, in the sixteenth, Stifel both spoke of negative numbers as absurd numbers. ...Descartes accepted them, in part. ...he had shown that, given an equation, one can obtain another whose roots are larger than the original one by any given quantity. Thus an equation with negative roots could be transformed into one with positive roots. Since we can turn false roots into real roots, Descartes was willing to accept negative numbers. Pascal regarded the subtraction of 4 from zero as utter nonsense. View quote
Morris Kline
One of the first algebraists to accept negative numbers was... placed negative numbers on a par with positive numbers and gave both roots of a quadratic equation, even when both were negative. Both Girard and Harriot used the minus sign for the operation of subtraction and for negative numbers. View quote
Morris Kline
Remember that algebra, with all its deep and intricate problems, is nothing but a development of the four fundamental operations of arithmetic. Everyone who understands the meaning of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division holds the key to all algebraic problems. (Richard von Mises)
It's all very Italian (and decidedly un-American): to insist that doing the right thing is the most pleasurable thing, and that the act of consumption might be an act of addition rather than subtraction. View quote
Michael Pollan
I meet a man with a thousand dollars and leave him with two; that's the meaning of subtraction. View quote
Mae West
I have throughout introduced the Integral Calculus in connexion with the Differential Calculus. ...Is it always proper to learn every branch of a direct subject before anything connected with the inverse relation is considered? If so why are not multiplication and involution in arithmetic made to follow addition and precede subtraction? View quote
Augustus De Morgan
The Christian sees the Church as the Body of Christ, as the vessel that guards with absolute integrity the deposit of faith, as the faithful Spouse who communicates without addition or subtraction all that Christ entrusted. View quote
Pope Francis
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. View quote
Charles Dickens
Napier also invented a calculating device known as Napier's bones in 1617 and made common use of decimal multiplications and divisions. The device itself does not use logarithms, but rather is a convenient tool to reduce multiplication and division to a sequence of simple addition and subtraction operations. The method employed by Napier's bones was based on Arab mathematics and Fibonacci's Liber Abaci. View quote
John Napier