“In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing.”
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Love
As stated in "The Poet Himself" http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F01E6D81539F937A35753C1A967948260 by Paul Fussell, in The New York Times (4 October 1981), these lines were a "math mnemonic" which Auden "had to memorize as a child."
Misattributed
“In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two minus one equals nothing.”
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Love
Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->
On the Simpsons, Troy McClure
Rules of Enragement (2003)
Source: In the Shadow of Olympus: The Emergence of Macedon (1990), p. 84
“Incompetence plus incompetence equals incompetence”
Source: The Peter Principle (1969), p. 107 (The Mathematics of Incompetence)
Source: My Years with General Motors, 1963, p. 48-49