Numerals Quotes

• It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to the west, such gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all numerals and the decimal system.

  Will Durant

  Philosophy, India, Chess

  "The Case for India". Book by Will Durant, 1930.

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• Numerals are images of amounts. But the amounts they represent are real.

  Roy H. Williams

  Real, Economy, Amount

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• She doesn't understand the concept of Roman numerals. She thought we just fought in world war eleven.

  Joan Rivers

  Funny, War, Stupid

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• Object-oriented design is the roman numerals of computing.

  Rob Pike

  Roman Numerals, Design, Computing

  Comment in comp.os.plan9, groups.google.com. 2004.

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• Programming graphics in X is like finding the square root of PI using Roman numerals.

  Henry Spencer

  Roman Numerals, Roots, Squares

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• To divide a cube into two other cubes, a fourth power, or in general any power whatever into two powers of the same denomination above the second is impossible, and I have assuredly found an admirable proof of this, but the margin is too narrow to contain it.

  Pierre de Fermat

  Math, Science, Power

  Scribbled note in the margins of his copy of Diophantus's Arithmetica. He did not live to provide the promised proof, and the conjecture became famous as Fermat's Last Theorem. In 1993 Andrew Wiles, a British mathematician, claimed to have discovered the proof.

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• A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the Battle of Waterloo.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Book, Eye, Eight

  Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “A Man Without a Country”, p.133, Seven Stories Press

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• Beginning 'Beloved' with numerals rather than spelled out numbers, it was my intention to give the house an identity separate from the street or even the city.

  Toni Morrison

  Cities, Numbers, Giving

  "Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature". "Michigan Quarterly Review", Volume 28, No. 1, Winter 1989.

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• The only thing that it is advisable to know in any language is the numerals; and even there, you can do a lot with the fingers.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Language, Fingers, Knows

  Evelyn Waugh (1983). “The Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh”, Methuen

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• One is hard pressed to think of universal customs that man has successfully established on earth. There is one, however, of which he can boast the universal adoption of the Hindu-Arabic numerals to record numbers. In this we perhaps have man's unique worldwide victory of an idea.

  Howard Whitley Eves

  Math, Men, Thinking

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• The physical five oranges goes up the ladder to the picture of the five oranges which goes up to the representation of the five oranges as a numeral. This points in the direction of a definition of abstraction: when we abstract we voluntarily ignore details of a context, so that we can accomplish a goal.

  Dan Meyer

  Education, Math, Orange

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• How do you write zero in Roman numerals?

  George Carlin

  Zero, Writing, Roman Numerals

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• There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary numerals, and those who don't.

  Ian Stewart

  People, World, Linux

  Ian Stewart (2010). “Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities”, p.89, Profile Books

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• I've been playing the game so long that my handicap is in Roman numerals.

  Bob Hope

  Golf, Roman Numerals, Games

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• Man is a rational animal—so at least I have been told. … Aristotle, so far as I know, was the first man to proclaim explicitly that man is a rational animal. His reason for this view was … that some people can do sums. … It is in virtue of the intellect that man is a rational animal. The intellect is shown in various ways, but most emphatically by mastery of arithmetic. The Greek system of numerals was very bad, so that the multiplication table was quite difficult, and complicated calculations could only be made by very clever people.

  Bertrand Russell

  Clever, Animal, Men

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• 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

  Son, Boys, Roman Numerals

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

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• Standard mathematics has recently been rendered obsolete by the discovery that for years we have been writing the numeral five backward. This has led to reevaluation of counting as a method of getting from one to ten. Students are taught advanced concepts of Boolean algebra, and formerly unsolvable equations are dealt with by threats of reprisals.

  Woody Allen

  Education, Writing, Science

  Woody Allen (2007). “The Insanity Defense: The Complete Prose”, Random House Incorporated

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• It's the Roman numeral for 10. 5/5/89 is my birthday: 5 plus 5 is 10, and this is my tenth year since I got into music. 'X' is the 24th letter in the alphabet, and I will turn 24 when this album comes out. 'X' is also a metaphor, as in 'ex-girlfriend': it implies you're progressing and moving on in life, not holding on to the past and your old ways.

  Chris Brown

  Girlfriend, Moving, Past

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• I have no statistics to prove it, but I'm sure the American workplace will be adversely affected on Monday, the day after XXIV. The game will be the focus of conversation, and distractions happy and sad will be the order of the day, not to mention millions of hangovers. I wouldn't buy a toaster or a parachute manufactured the day after Super Bowl XXIV. You cannot engender such torrid anticipation for an event so great that it requires Roman numerals as a suffix, then expect there to be no social repercussions at its end.

  Robert Klein

  Monday, Hangover, Order

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• Do you think Arabs are dumb? They gave us our numbers. Try doing long division with Roman numerals.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Thinking, Roman Numerals, Numbers

  "A Man Without a Country". Essay collection by Kurt Vonnegut, September 15, 2005.

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