Multiplication Table Quotes

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.

What makes this story so remarkable is that throughout my early childhood I had ongoing learning difficulties, particularly in mathematics. I struggled to learn the multiplication table, and no matter how hard I tried, I simply couldn't remember 6 times 7 or 7 times 8.

Don't hesitate to be as revolutionary as science. Don't hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplication table.

A man may carry the whole scheme of Christian truth in his mind from boyhood to old age without the slightest effect upon his character and aims. It has had less influence than the multiplication table.

The world looks like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equation, which, turn it how you will, balances itself.

I will not vote against the truths of the multiplication table.

Keep computations to the lowest level of the multiplication table.

[T]he 47th proposition in Euclid might now be voted down with as much ease as any proposition in politics; and therefore if Lord Hawkesbury hates the abstract truths of science as much as he hates concrete truth in human affairs, now is his time for getting rid of the multiplication table, and passing a vote of censure upon the pretensions of the hypotenuse.