Explore "On the Hatred of Numbers" by Hilaire Belloc on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I knew a man once who was the head of his college and very famous as a scholar; because, although he had no learning, he was very kind and witty. But this man had one thing upon which he never jested, and that was his hatred (which he pretended to be a contempt) of numbers.
He would say, not as a curiosity, still less as an apology, that he was quite incapable of "doing sums"; and as I met him in early youth the example has influenced the whole of my life. I have known all my life what I think many people do not know, or at least not many people of those engaged in exposition, that a large part of educated people feel thus about numbers. They neglect them, or hate them, or despise them, and in any case cannot and will not deal with them.