“It was with some difficulty that I got through the multiplication tables. The fact that I recollect nothing more of those days than having learnt, in company with other boys, to call our teacher all kinds of names, would strongly suggest that my intellect must have been sluggish, and my memory raw.”
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Probable attribution
This saying is widely associated with Mahatma Gandhi, but the attribution is not supported by a reliable primary source.
Likely origin: Gandhi, An Autobiography (The Story of My Experiments with Truth) - on his early schooling and multiplication tables.
About this quote
A slow start says little about where a person ends up. Owning that your early years were unremarkable — a raw memory, a mind that lagged — takes more honesty than polishing the story, and it quietly dissolves the myth that only gifted beginnings lead anywhere worth going.
When to use it
- A kid who flunked early arithmetic grows into the accountant everyone trusts with the books.
- A late reader becomes the parent who reads aloud every night without a trace of shame.
- An employee who bombed his first year keeps at it and ends up training the newcomers.