Lao Tzu Quotes

I can't read a computer screen and never use a calculator. It's all in my head and by hand.

I can do lightning mathematics quicker than somebody can do them on a calculator.

I'd rather have a pencil and paper and do all my own calculations rather than rely on a machine. And I'll do most calculations in double digit multiples as quick as the machine.

I'm so smart. I am good at doing math really quickly in my head.

Speaking of human computers, there is a guy named Art Benjamin, he's a human calculator. He says it's a skill he learned as a kid. Now he's a math professor at Harvey Mudd. He can find the square root of a six digit number in a few seconds. Practice.

I cannot transfer my abilities to anyone, but I can think of quicker ways with which to help people develop numerical aptitude.

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

The Fidasians are so expert in keeping their accounts, that they easily reckon as exact, and as quick by memory, as we can do with pen and ink

I was rather foolish in saying that I did not like arithmetic and to learn figures when I did - I was not thinking quite what I was about. The sums can be done better, if I tried, than they are.

I am very bad with numbers.

Without numerical fluency, in the part of life most of us inhibit, you are like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.

"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!"

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.

Those who have a natural talent for calculation are generally quick-witted at every other kind of knowledge; and even the dull, if they have had an arithmetical training, although they may derive no other advantage from it, always become much quicker than they would have been.

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.

I still have to count on my hands! I'll be in a restaurant doing a tip and I'll be like, 'What's 20% of this?'

It is astonishing with what facility the African brokers reckon up the exchange of European goods for slaves. One of these brokers has perhaps ten slaves to sell, and for each of these he demands ten different articles. He reduces them immediately by the head to bars, coppers, ounces ... and immediately strikes the balance. The European, on the other hand, takes his pen, and with great deliberation, and with all the advantage of the arithmetick and letters, begins to estimate also. He is so unfortunate often, as to make a mistake; but he no sooner errs, than he is detected by this man of inferiour capacity, whom he can neither deceive in the name or quality of his goods, nor in the balance of his account.

Thomas Fuller, known as the Virginia Calculator, was stolen from his native Africa at the age of fourteen and sold to a planter. When he was about seventy years old, 'two gentlemen, natives of Pennsylvania, viz., William Hartshorne and Samuel Coates, men of probity and respectable characters, having heard, in traveling through the neighborhood in which the slave lived, of his extraordinary powers in arithmetic, sent for him and had their curiosity sufficiently gratified by the answers which he gave to the following questions: First, Upon being asked how many seconds there were in a year and a half, he answered in about two minutes, 47,304,000. Second: On being asked how many seconds a man has lived who is 70 years, 17 days and 12 hours old, he answered in a minute and a half 2,210,500,800. One of the gentlemen who employed himself with his pen in making these calculations told him he was wrong, and the sum was not so great as he had said—upon which the old man hastily replied: stop, master, you forget the leap year. On adding the amount of the seconds of the leap years the amount of the whole in both their sums agreed exactly.

Mathematics seems to endow one with something like a new sense.

I do think in numbers. My mind works that way.

I never have used computers or calculators. I've always been able to figure out in my head, far before my opposition has, in negotiating for acquisitions, where we need to be and where the numbers are and how we could get the best sight of the bargain, without having to resort to accountants or assistants or financial experts.

Numbers have always come easy to me.

Music helps immensely with math skills, and math skills help immensely with music skills.

When I was little, I carried a book of times tables around everywhere and always tried to get the best score. I like the fact that you don't need any tools, only your head. I also enjoy rules and, with maths, you are either right or wrong.

When you're out shopping, try to calculate the discount of something in the sales, or work out how much a bill in a restaurant will come to. Your brain is just like any other muscle - you have to train it to make it work faster.