By The Numbers Quotes & Sayings

Mastery is not measured by the number of terrible things you eliminate from your life, but by the number of times you eliminate calling them terrible. — Neale Donald Walsch

One would be hard put to find a set of whole numbers with a more fascinating history and more elegant properties surrounded by greater depths of mystery
and more totally useless
than the perfect numbers. — Martin Gardner

As the rays of the sun, notwithstanding their velocity, injure not the eye, by reason of their minuteness, so the attacks of envy, notwithstanding their number, ought not to wound our virtue by reason of their insignificance. — Charles Caleb Colton

In the work of Ramanujan, the number 24 appears repeatedly. This is an example of what mathematicians call magic numbers, which continually appear, where we least expect them, for reasons that no one understands. Miraculously, Ramanujan's function also appears in string theory. The number 24 appearing in Ramanujan's function is also the origin of the miraculous cancellations occurring in string theory. In string theory, each of the 24 modes in the Ramanujan function corresponds to a physical vibration of the string. Whenever the string executes its complex motions in space-time by splitting and recombining, a large number of highly sophisticated mathematical identities must be satisfied. These are precisely the mathematical identities discovered by Ramanujan. (Since physicists add two more dimensions when they count the total number of vibrations appearing in a relativistic theory, this means that space-time must have 24 + 2 = 26 space-time dimensions.) — Michio Kaku

Order is important. In language classes, you'll typically learn words in thematic order because it's a comfortable way to organize classes ("Today, we're going to learn about animals!") and it's a comfortable way to learn ("Today, I learned about animals!"). But there's an unintended consequence of doing this: you get your words mixed up. I learned all of my French numbers and colors at the same time, and I still have problems remembering whether sept is six or seven, or whether jaune is yellow or green. This is borne out by the research: when you learn a bunch of similar words at once, you'll have a harder time remembering which one is which. — Gabriel Wyner

In 1872, Western Union (by then the dominant telegraph company in the United States) decided to implement a new, secure scheme to enable sums of up to $100 to be transferred between several hundred towns by telegraph. The system worked by dividing the company's network into twenty districts, each of which had its own superintendent. A telegram from the sender's office to the district superintendent confirmed that the money had been deposited; the superintendent would then send another telegram to the recipient's office authorizing the payment. Both of these messages used a code based on numbered codebooks. Each telegraph office had one of these books, with pages containing hundreds of words. But the numbers next to these words varied from office to office; only the district superintendent had copies of each office's uniquely numbered book. — Tom Standage

If parents start to fear that monsters may have been let loose in their children's bedrooms, it may be because their children are the monsters. Consider what kind of world they are growing up in. It can all end tomorrow. Material progress no longer seems as closely meshed with human evolution as it once was; the anticipated leap into the future may not take place in a time or manner that can be so easily predicted. However, by now everyone from Richard Nixon to Chairman Mao knows that the only way to force the evolutionary curve to bend your way is by throwing larger numbers at it. — Ken Hollings

What it 't to us, if taxes rise or fall,
Thanks to our fortune, we pay none at all.
Let muckworms who in dirty acres deal,
Lament those hardships which we cannot feel,
His grace who smarts, may bellow if he please,
But must I bellow too, who sit at ease?
By custom safe, the poets' numbers flow,
Free as the light and air some years ago.
No statesman e'er will find it worth his pains
To tax our labours, and excise our brains.
Burthens like these with earthly buildings bear,
No tributes laid on castles in the air. — Charles Churchill

The slightest force, when it is applied to assist and guide the natural descent of its object, operates with irresistible weight; and Jovian had the good fortune to embrace the religious opinions which were supported by the spirit of the times and the zeal and numbers of the most powerful sect. Under his reign, Christianity obtained an easy and lasting victory; and, as soon as the smile of royal patronage was withdrawn, the genius of Paganism, which had been fondly raised and cherished by the arts of Julian, sunk irrecoverably in the dust. — Edward Gibbon

But maybe that isn't possible. Maybe the mind of the majority is always the healthy mind, simply by virtue of its numbers. Maybe it's the definition of madness to believe I'm right and everyone else if wrong, to find my thoughts rational and reasonable when almost the entire world finds them damaged and flawed. — Stacey Jay

The genius of Republican liberty, seems to demand on one side, not only that all power should be derived from the people; but, that those entrusted with it should be kept in dependence on the people, by a short duration of their appointments; and, that, even during this short period, the trust should be placed not in a few, but in a number of hands. — James Madison

Although we may face untold numbers that by their sheer mass appear to render us as little more than a speck in the face of them, a single person standing with God amidst any mass will always be an indomitable majority. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I lifted my wand, hoping she would see this as a dramatic move, not a threat. "Why once, in my bunker at Charing Cross Station, I stalked the
deadly prey known as Jelly Babies."
Neith's eyes widened. "They are dangerous?"
"Horrible," I agreed. "Oh, they seem small alone, but they always appear in great numbers. Sticky, fattening - quite deadly. There I was, alone
with only two quid and a Tube pass, beset by Jelly Babies, when ... Ah, but never mind. When the Jelly Babies come for you ... you will find out on
your own."
She lowered her bow. "Tell me. I must know how to hunt Jelly Babies."
I looked at Walt gravely. "How many months have I trained you, Walt?"
"Seven," he said. "Almost eight."
"And have I ever deemed you worthy of hunting Jelly Babies with me?"
"Uh ... no. — Rick Riordan

There are any number of models artists can use to profit off of their talent and artistry. It is not up to the state to protect them from competition. Musicians can obviously get paid for performing and having their music copied and "pirated" helps them in this respect by making them more well known, more popular. — Stephan Kinsella

Ultimately, Leibniz argued, there are only two absolutely simple concepts, God and Nothingness. From these, all other concepts may be constructed, the world, and everything within it, arising from some primordial argument between the deity and nothing whatsoever. And then, by some inscrutable incandescent insight, Leibniz came to see that what is crucial in what he had written is the alternation between God and Nothingness. And for this, the numbers 0 and 1 suffice. — David Berlinski

Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirrour of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world; by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions: they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find. His persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species. — Samuel Johnson

The instant the atmosphere is illuminated it will be filled with an infinite number of images which are produced by the various bodies and colours assembled in it. And the eye is the target, a lodestone, of these images. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Somewhere on the frontier between thought and reality exists the Discworld, a parallel time and place which might sound and smell very much like our own, but which looks completely different. Certainly it refuses to succumb to the quaint notion that universes are ruled by pure logic and the harmony of numbers. — Terry Pratchett

Ron Paul is crazy, the guardians of respectable opinion assured us. What they really meant was that Ron Paul defied traditional political categories and advanced positions outside the Clinton-to-Romney continuum. People whose minds have been formed in ideological prison camps for 12 years have learned to confine themselves within an approved range of possibilities. Tax me 35 percent or tax me 40 percent, but don't raise the possibility that taxation itself may be a moral issue rather than just a matter of numbers. Either bomb or starve that poor country, but don't tell me there might be a third option. The Fed should loosen or the Fed should tighten, but don't tell me our money supply doesn't need to be supervised by a central planner. As always, confine yourself to the three square inches of intellectual terrain the New York Times has graciously allotted to you. — Thomas E. Woods Jr.

To assess the intelligence of a committee, divide the IQ of its stupidest member by the number of members. — Robert A. Heinlein

Reliable numbers about the amount of dirty money around the world are difficult to come by. But according to an estimate by the nonprofit Global Financial Integrity group, $1 trillion vanishes from the developing world's economies every year. — Sri Mulyani Indrawati

The public's continuing ambivalence about cultural matters is all the more striking given that the political conversation on these issues has for 30 years been dominated by an aggressive, radical right-wing insurgency that has achieved an influence far out of proportion to its numbers. Its potent secret weapon has been the guilt and anxiety about desire that inform the character of Americans regardless of ideology; appealing to those largely unconscious emotions, the right has disarmed, intimidated, paralyzed its opposition. — Ellen Willis

Each electron wants the whole of three-dimensional space for its waves; so Schrodinger generously allows three dimensions for each of them. For two electrons he requires a six-dimensional sub-aether. He then successfully applies his method on the same lines as before. I think you will see now that Schrodinger has given us what seemed to be a comprehensible physical picture only to snatch it away again. His sub-aether does not exist in physical space; it is in a 'configuration space' imagined by the mathematician for the purpose of solving his problems, and imagined afresh with different numbers of dimensions according to the problem proposed. It was only an accident that in the earliest problems considered the configuration space had a close correspondence with physical space, suggesting some degree of objective reality of the waves. Schrodinger's wave mechanics is not a physical theory but a dodge - and a very good dodge too. — Arthur Stanley Eddington

Little by little, I've reached the stage of using only a small number of forms and colors. It's not the first time that painting has been done with a very narrow range of colors. The frescoes of the tenth century are painted like this. For me, they are magnificent things. — Joan Miro

Jethro was the "priest of Midian" and the father-in-law of Moses (Exodus 3:1; 4:18). He was also called "Reuel" (Exodus 2:18) and is described as a Midianite in Numbers 10:29.
The original Midianites were probably descendants of Midian, one of Abraham's sons by Keturah (Genesis 25:1-4). The land where they lived then became known as "Midian" (Exodus 2:15). It is likely that the people who lived in the land of Midian were then all called Midianites, even if they were not descendants of Midian. For example, some descendants of Ishmael appear to be called Midianites (Genesis 37:25,28; Judges 8:24).
We don't know whether Jethro was a descendant of Midian, or whether he had some other ancestry but lived in the land of Midian.
In Judges 1:16, Jethro is described as a "Kenite" but that may not relate directly to his ancestry. The word keni in Aramaic means "smith" and it is thought that the Kenites may have been metal workers. — Rob J. Hyndman

I see Professionalism as a spreading disease of the present-day world, a sort of poly-oligarchy by which various groups (subway conductors, social workers, bricklayers) can bring things to a halt if their particular demands are not met. (Meanwhile, the irrelevance of each profession increases, in proportion to its increasing rigidity.) Such lucky groups demand more in each go-round - but meantime, the number who are permanently unemployed grows and grows. — Ted Nelson

Remember, deniers claim 90 to 100% of all Holocaust deaths are some fantasy concocted years after the war. Rest assured the only books anywhere that talk about the tiny death toll numbers deniers believe in (i.e. tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands instead of millions) are Holocaust-denying books written by anti-Semitic "historians," religious zealots or neo-Nazis. No mainstream history books ever published since 1945 mention a death toll that isn't in the millions for the Holocaust. Period. — James Morcan

Well, my lord," Noorden said. "Imagine that you hear a tapping sound somewhere outside your tent. If it repeats occasionally, with no exact set pattern, then it might be the wind blowing a loose flap against a pole. However, if it repeats with exact regularity, you know that it must be a person, beating against a pole. You'd be able to make the distinction immediately, because you've learned that nature can be repetitive in a case like that, but not exact. These numbers are the same, my lord. They're just too organized, too repetitive, to be natural. They had to have been crafted by somebody. — Brandon Sanderson

Apprenticeship assumes that knowing a trade not only comes by numbers and outlines but also by watching and inhabiting. Knowing is found in these forms, because teaching is. We teach not only by our words and assignments but also by the manner of our words and the ways we ourselves already embody the assignments we give. — Zack Eswine

In 1971, 73 percent of incoming freshmen said that it is essential or very important to "develop a meaningful philosophy of life," 37 percent to be "very well-off financially" (not well-off, note, but very well-off). By 2011, the numbers were almost reversed, 47 percent and 80 percent, respectively. — William Deresiewicz

In their lapels the insignia of lodges and service clubs, places where they can go and, by a weight of numbers of little worried men, reassure themselves that business is noble and not the curious ritualized thievery they know it is; that business men are intelligent in spite of the records of their stupidity; that they are kind and charitable in spite of the principles of sound business; that their lives are rich instead of the thin tiresome routines they know; and that a time is coming when they will not be afraid any more. — John Steinbeck

[A] military force was collected in Europe, formidable by their arms and numbers, if the generals had understood the science of command, and the soldiers the duty of obedience. — Edward Gibbon

You're unmoved by the protestations of the rabble. When they gather outside your house, massed in numbers larger than you can count, you'll laugh in their faces.'
'Shut up, Marshall,' Bradenton growled. 'Shut up.'
'Yes, that's a good one. Tell them that while they're chanting. "Shut up." That might work. Maybe they'll listen. Or maybe they'll stop talking and start throwing rocks. Did you know they played the Marseillaise near the end of the demonstration? — Courtney Milan

A campaign, like a brand, is not just a number of bits put together-a claim here, a pack shot there, a reason why somewhere else. If we try to produce it by the atomistic approach, we will end up with a sort of Identikit brand. It will be a perfect description of the structure of the brand, as the Identikit can describe the contours of the face. But it won't be the same thing. The brand will never come to life. — Stephen King

The Analytical Engine] might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine ... Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent. — Ada Lovelace

Although the defects of the Russian Army were notorious, although the Russian winter, not the Russian Army, had turned Napoleon back from Moscow, although it had been defeated on its own soil by the French and British in the Crimea, although the Turks in 1877 had outfought it at the siege of Plevna and only succumbed later to overwhelming numbers, although the Japanese had outfought it in Manchuria, a myth of its invincibility prevailed. — Barbara W. Tuchman

It was a common fallacy among survivors that zombies were strong. This was incorrect. The average zombie, by itself, was weak with little muscle control. The creatures were pure instinct. Whatever intelligence they had was gone with their first death, lost forever. It was their numbers that gave them strength. A strong man or woman with a weapon and their wits could easily take out ten to fifteen zombies. But behind those ten to fifteen lay fifty or a hundred more, untiring, unrelenting in their search for flesh. A human tired, a zombie didn't. This was their greatest strength. — Robert Morganbesser

4. The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life- preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgments a priori belong), are the most indispensable to us, that without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of reality with the purely IMAGINED world of the absolute and immutable, without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers, man could not live - that the renunciation of false opinions would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life. TO RECOGNISE UNTRUTH AS A CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It is perfectly evident to any logical mind that when you have got the vote, by the proper use of the vote in sufficient numbers, by combination, you can get out of any legislature whatever you want, or, if you cannot get it, you can send them about their business and choose other people who will be more attentive to your demands. — Emmeline Pankhurst

Estimates suggest that from 20 to 50 million Americans routinely, albeit illegally, smoke marijuana without the benefit of direct medical supervision. Yet, despite this long history of use and the extraordinarily high numbers of social smokers, there are simply no credible reports to suggest that consuming marijuana has caused a single death. By contrast, aspirin, a commonly used, over-the-counter medicine, causes hundreds of deaths each year. — Frances M. Young

I'm trying to remember how you tell the time by looking at the sun." -"I should leave it for a while, it's too bright to see the numbers at the moment. — Terry Pratchett

A ... difference between most system-building in the social sciences and systems of thought and classification of the natural sciences is to be seen in their evolution. In the natural sciences both theories and descriptive systems grow by adaptation to the increasing knowledge and experience of the scientists. In the social sciences, systems often issue fully formed from the mind of one man. Then they may be much discussed if they attract attention, but progressive adaptive modification as a result of the concerted efforts of great numbers of men is rare. — Lawrence Joseph Henderson

There is scarcely an occurrence in nature which, happening at a certain time, is not looked upon by some persons as a prognosticator either of good or evil. The latter are in the greatest number, so much more ingenious are we in tormenting ourselves than in discovering reasons for enjoyment in the things that surround us. — Charles Mackay

When a large number of organs of the press come to advance along the same track, their influence becomes almost irresistible in the long term, and public opinion, struck always from the same side, ends by yielding under their blows. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Moreover, the universe as a whole is infinite, for whatever is limited has an outermost edge to limit it, and such an edge is defined by something beyond. Since the universe has no edge, it has no limit; and since it lacks a limit, it is infinite and unbounded. Moreover, the universe is infinite both in the number of its atoms and in the extent of its void. — Epicurus

Amos and I called our first joint article "Belief in the Law of Small Numbers." We explained, tongue-in-cheek, that "intuitions about random sampling appear to satisfy the law of small numbers, which asserts that the law of large numbers applies to small numbers as well." We also included a strongly worded recommendation that researchers regard their "statistical intuitions with proper suspicion and replace impression formation by computation whenever possible. — Daniel Kahneman

In fact, there is no point in trying to hide from your bacteria, for they are on and around you always, in numbers you can't conceive. If you are in good health and averagely diligent about hygiene, you will have a herd of about one trillion bacteria grazing on your fleshy plains - about a hundred thousand of them on every square centimeter of skin. They are there to dine off the ten billion or so flakes of skin you shed every day, plus all the tasty oils and fortifying minerals that seep out from every pore and fissure. You are for them the ultimate food court, with the convenience of warmth and constant mobility thrown in. By way of thanks, they give you B.O. — Bill Bryson

Even if index numbers cannot fulfill the demands that theory has to make, they can still, in spite of their fundamental shortcomings and the inexactness of the methods by which they are actually determined, perform useful workaday services for the politician. If we have no other aim in view than the comparison of points of time that lie close to one another, then the errors that are involved in every method of calculating numbers may be so far ignored as to allow us to draw certain rough conclusions from them. Thus, for example, it becomes possible to a certain extent to span the temporal gap that lies, in a period of variation in the value of money, between movements of Stock Exchange rates and movements of the purchasing power that is expressed in the prices of commodities. — Ludwig Von Mises

To minds tormented by the divine thirst, it is useless to offer the most certain knowledge of the laws of numbers and the arrangement of the universe — Etienne Gilson

The Reader may here observe the Force of Numbers, which can be successfully applied, even to those things, which one would imagine are subject to no Rules. There are very few things which we know, which are not capable of being reduc'd to a Mathematical Reasoning, and when they cannot, it's a sign our Knowledge of them is very small and confus'd; and where a mathematical reasoning can be had, it's as great folly to make use of any other, as to grope for a thing in the dark when you have a Candle standing by you. — John Arbuthnot

From the moment we are born, the world tends to have a
container already built for us to fit inside: A social security number, a gender, a race, a profession or an I.Q. I ponder if we are more defined by the container we are in, rather than
what we are inside. Would we recognize ourselves if we could expand beyond our bodies? Would we still be able to exist if we were authentically un-contained? — Paige Bradley

It's a great battle, and it really is a battle, and there are people from all walks of life, you know, never judge anybody at the table: A man can be the greatest poker player and he might know all the numbers, but he might get beaten by a really savvy kid who works in a grocery store; and that's what's so great about this game. — James Woods

That's all baseball is, is numbers; it's run by numbers, averages, percentage and odds. Managers make their decisions based on the numbers. — Rollie Fingers

This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. — Jacob Bronowski

Economists get very uncomfortable when you talk about virtue and vice. It doesn't lend itself to a lot of columns with numbers. But I would argue that there are big virtue effects in economics. I would say that the spreading of double-entry bookkeeping by the Monk, Fra Luce de Pacioli, was a big virtue effect in economics. It made business more controllable, and it made it more honest. — Charlie Munger

Firstly, being a local councillor, he was probably a cunt! A real 'book-waving-starch-underpants-wearing-precedent - quoting-sub-section-paragraph-thee-looking-up' sort of arsehole who lived his life by the numbers and reported his neighbours if they so much as tried to put up a bird-table without planning permission. — Danny King

The computer focuses ruthlessly on things that can be represented in numbers. In so doing, it seduces people into thinking that other aspects of knowledge are either unreal or unimportant. The computer treats reason as an instrument for achieving things, not for contemplating things. It narrows dramatically what we know and intended by reason. — George Friedman

Inevitably, this is how Christianity has come to be understood by a great many good people who have no better instruction in it than they receive from ranters and politicians. Under such circumstances, it is only to their credit that they reject it. Though I am not competent to judge in such matters, it would not surprise me at all to learn in any ultimate reckoning that these "Nones" as they are called, for the box they check when asked their religion, are better Christians than the Christians. But they have not been given the chance even to reject the beautiful, generous heritage that might otherwise have come to them. The learned and uncantankerous traditions seem, as I have said, to have fallen silent, to have retreated within their walls to dabble in feckless innovation and to watch their numbers dwindle. — Marilynne Robinson

For weeks I read round the clock. I entered the warp of the world of the imagination. Chapter numbers became the enumerations by which I measured hours. — Sam Wazan

It was so easy to decide their fate, when they were nothing more than numbers on the sheets, presented to us for a signature by our adjutants. Now they were real people, with broken lives, torn families, and memories which would haunt them for the rest of their lives. — Ellie Midwood

Battles lost not alone because of superior numbers and failing ammunition and stores, but because of generals who should not have been generals, who were generals not through training in contemporary methods or aptitude for learning them, but by the divine right to say 'Go there' conferred upon them by an absolute caste system — William Faulkner

In the era of networks only, I cannot tell you the number of shows that we don't know about that did not survive. They got canceled. But there are a few that survived by accident, because they didn't have anything else to do, and they stayed with it. — Henry Blodget

Real life issues are not mathematical equations. We're not calculators crunching numbers. We're humans sorting through complex, multi-layered issues, and we're doing so while enduring the (sometimes profound) personal effects of our conclusions. While we want to be reasonable, we are inexorably pulled in the direction of our oldest mental habits and by our deepest life-impacting needs. We're repelled by those ideas which can jeopardize our comfort, safety, and happiness. We can try to be fair, but all the while we are fighting against our needs and fears. There are things we don't want to be true (or false). Our lives are built on certain beliefs which, if disproved, could wreck us. These are the truths that we 'can't handle'. — Daniel Ionson

I have no ideas, myself! Not a one! there's nothing more vulgar, more common, more disgusting than ideas! libraries are loaded with them! and every sidewalk cafe! ... the impotent are bloated with ideas! ... they dazzle youth with ideas! they play the pimp! ... and youth is ever ready, as you know, Professor, to gobble up anything, to go OOH! and AAH! by the numbers! How those pimps have an easy job of it! the passionate years of youth are spent getting a hard on and gargling ideeaas! ... philosophies, if you prefer! ... yes sir, philosophies! youth loves sham just as young dogs love those sticks, like bones, that we throw and they run after! they race forward, yipping away, wasting their time, that's the main thing! — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Sensible Catholics have for generations been ignoring the views on contraception held by reactionary old men in the Vatican, but alas, since it is the business of all religious doctrines to keep their votaries in a state of intellectual infancy (how else do they keep absurdities seeming credible?), insufficient numbers of Catholics have been able to be sensible. — A.C. Grayling

Sproul. These were discussed in a number of ways by groups of delegates from the Advisory Board and in various partial and plenary sessions at the summit. Furthermore, written comments were solicited and received in considerable numbers. A Draft Committee composed of Drs. Clowney, — R.C. Sproul

Falling little wind, it was five before I could form my line, or distinguish any of the enemy's motions; and could not judge at all of their force, more than by numbers, which were seventeen, and thirteen appeared large. — John Byng

But maybe it's only been a brief separation that feels like years. Like a solo car ride that takes all night but feels like a lifetime. Watching all those highway dashes flying by at seventy miles an hour, your eyes becoming lazy slits and your mind wandering over the memory of a whole lifetime-past and future, childhood memories to thoughts of your own death-until the numbers on the dashboard clock do not mean anything more. And then the sun comes up and you get to your destination and the ride becomes the thing that is no longer real, because that surreal feeling has vanished and time has become meaningful again. — Matthew Quick

What we experience in various and specific milieux, I have noted, is often caused by structural changes. Accordingly, to understand the changes of many personal milieux we are required to look beyond them. And the number and variety of such structural changes increase as the institutions within which we live become more embracing and more intricately connected with one another. To be aware of the idea of social structure and to use it with sensibility is to be capable of tracing such linkages among a great variety of milieux. To be able to do that is to possess the sociological imagination — C. Wright Mills

These numbers are staggering, in fact incomprehensible. By all accounts, we are dealing with the greatest health crisis in human history. — Nelson Mandela

One moment it was a calculating machine, attempting dispassionately to keep up with the gouts of data. And then awash in those gouts, something metal twitched and a patter of valves sounded that had not been instructed by those numbers. A loop of data was self-generated by the analytical engine. The processor reflected on its creation in a hiss of high-pressure steam. One moment it was a calculating machine. The next, it thought. — China Mieville

Now it's full night, clear, moonless and filled with stars, which are not eternal as was once thought, which are not where we think they are. If they were sounds, they would be echoes, of something that happened millions of years ago: a word made of numbers. Echoes of light, shining out of the midst of nothing. It's old light, and there's not much of it. But it's enough to see by. — Margaret Atwood

In the absence of a widely practiced and capable attention to our use of the land, to the land-use economies, and to the natural sources of our life, we have a national, or global, economy consisting entirely of capital (rated at monetary value), minimal labor ("jobs," merely numbered, and the numbers always liable to reduction by technology), information (infinite perhaps, but never sufficient), marketing (seduction of the gullible), and consumption (conversion of goods into waste or poison). And so we have lost patriotism in the old sense of love for one's country, and have replaced it with an ignorant, hard-hearted military-industrial nationalism that devours the country. Under — Wendell Berry

The problem of numbers can only be dealt with by recognizing that people have a fundamental right to economic security. If you provide them with economic and environmental security, the population will stabilize itself. — Vandana Shiva

A quantified family would be upper middle class. Likely working in big tech," said Theodore. "Their employers would have required it." Piece by piece, the projectors filled in the available data on the house, including on the kitchen wall, a large screen of blurred graphs, smudged letters and numbers, all in motion. "This is the hearth," he said. "The data flickering at the heart of the family. Location, activity, well-being." He squinted at the screen. "Can you bring this into resolution? — Matthew De Abaitua

Whenever it is necessary that one of several conflicting opinions should prevail and when one would have to be made to prevail by force if need be, it is less wasteful to determine which has the stronger support by counting numbers than by fighting. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

As damaging as the obsessive emphasis on testing often proves to be for kids in general, I believe that the effects are still more harmful in those schools in which the resources available to help the children learn the skills that will be measured by these tests are fewest, the scores they get are predictably the lowest, and the strategies resorted to by principals in order to escape the odium attaching to a disappointing set of numbers tend to be the most severe. — Jonathan Kozol

Remember, these chemicals control our feelings. That's why we can actually feel the weight of responsibility when others commit time and energy to support us. We want them to feel that the sacrifices they made for us were worth it. We don't want to let them down. We want to make them proud. And if we are the ones giving the support, we feel an equal sense of responsibility. We want to do right by them so that they can accomplish all that they set out to do. It is because of serotonin that we can't feel a sense of accountability to numbers; we can only feel accountable to people. This — Simon Sinek

One of the enduring myths of campaign analysis is that you can actually count the number of 'undecided' voters by asking voters if they are undecided or not. Sometimes, significant numbers of voters actually change their minds. — Jeff Greenfield

Ladies are always of great use to the party they espouse, and never fail to win over numbers to it. Lovers, according to Sir William Petty's computation, make at least the third part of sensible men of the British nation; and it has been an uncontroverted maxim in all ages, that though a husband is sometimes a stubborn sort of a creature, a lover is always at the devotion of his mistress. By this means, it lies in the power of every fine woman, to secure at least half a dozen able-bodied men to his Majesty's service. — Joseph Addison

The injury which may possibly be done by defeating a few good laws, will be amply compensated by the advantage of preventing a number of bad ones. — Alexander Hamilton

By rejecting the authority of the individual and replacing it by the numbers of some momentary mob, the parliamentary principle of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle of Nature ... — Adolf Hitler

On a good team there are no superstars. There are great players who show they are great players by being able to play with others as a team. They have the ability to be superstars, but if they fit into a good team, they make sacrifices, they do things necessary to help the team win. What the numbers are in salaries or statistics don't matter; how they play together does. — Red Holzman

The cities, which had been the bearers of culture, were especially hard hit; substantial citizens, in large numbers, fled to escape the tax-collector. It was not till after the death of Plotinus that order was re-established and the Empire temporarily saved by the vigorous measures of Diocletian and Constantine. Of all this there is no mention in the works of Plotinus. He turned aside from the spectacle of ruin and misery in the actual world, to contemplate an eternal world of goodness and beauty. In this he was in harmony with all the most serious men of his age. To all of them, Christians and pagans alike, the world of practical affairs seemed to offer no hope, and only the Other World seemed worthy of allegiance. To the Christian, the Other World was the Kingdom of — Bertrand Russell

How vivid is the suffering of the few when the people are few and how the suffering of nameless millions in two world wars is blurred over by numbers. — Edwin Way Teale

Tobacco is the second most dangerous drug available to our culture. Number one is alcohol follow by many pharmacy pills. So no, marijuana is not more dangerous then tobacco. — Steven Machat

In this hour of all-but-universal darkness one cheering gleam appears: within the fold of conservative Christianity there are to be found increasing numbers of persons whose religious lives are marked by a growing hunger after God Himself. They are eager for spiritual realities and will not be put off with words, nor will they be content with correct "interpretations" of truth. They are athirst for God, and they will not be satisfied till they have drunk deep at the Fountain of Living Water. — A.W. Tozer

Demographics need not be destiny. The waning West became what it is not by out-breeding the undeveloped world. We were once great not because of huge numbers, but due to human capital people of superior ideas and abilities, capable of innovation, exploration, science, philosophy. — Ilana Mercer

The people who are filing for bankruptcy in increasing numbers every year, it's not the poorest. It's not the people at the economic fringes. It's people who worked hard and played by the rules. — Elizabeth Warren

I remember one occasion when I tried to add a little seasoning to a review, but I wasn't allowed to. The paper was by Dorothy Maharam, and it was a perfectly sound contribution to abstract measure theory. The domains of the underlying measures were not sets but elements of more general Boolean algebras, and their range consisted not of positive numbers but of certain abstract equivalence classes. My proposed first sentence was: "The author discusses valueless measures in pointless spaces." — Paul Halmos

In their armor they were all the same, and that was the point, he understood. But he took pleasure in the moments when he could see their variety and diversity - those moments when he could glimpse the people beneath the armor and see them as more than just faceless, nameless soldiers identified by letters and numbers and nothing more. — Greg Rucka

To ensure that we are leading with our feet firmly planted on the soil of what is, we must live by the seven commandments of current reality:
Thou shalt not pretend.
Though shalt not turn a blind eye.
Thou shalt not exaggerate.
Thou shalt not shoot the bearer of bad news.
Thou shalt not hide behind the numbers.
Thou shalt not ignore constructive criticism.
Thou shalt not isolate thyself.
Attempting to lead while turning a blind eye to reality is like treading water: It can only go on for so long, eventually you will sink. As a next generation leader, be willing to face the truth regardless of how painful it might be. And if you don't like what you see, change it. — Andy Stanley

In a democracy the majority of citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority ... and that oppression of the majority will extend to far great number, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre. Under a cruel prince they have the plaudits of the people to animate their generous constancy under their sufferings; but those who are subjected to wrong under multitudes are deprived of all external consolation: they seem deserted by mankind, overpowered by a conspiracy of their whole species. — Edmund Burke

I wish that one would be persuaded that psychological experiments, especially those on the complex functions, are not improved [by large studies]; the statistical method gives only mediocre results; some recent examples demonstrate that. The American authors, who love to do things big, often publish experiments that have been conducted on hundreds and thousands of people; they instinctively obey the prejudice that the persuasiveness of a work is proportional to the number of observations. This is only an illusion. — Alfred Binet

Seychelles said at U.N. climate talks. The report was bound to sharpen disputes in Lima over who pays the bills for the impacts of global warming, whose primary cause is the burning of coal, oil and gas but which also includes deforestation. It has long been the thorniest issue at the U.N. negotiations, now in their 20th round. Rich countries have pledged to help the developing world convert to clean energy and adapt to shifts in global weather that are already adversely affecting crops, human health and economies. But poor countries say they're not seeing enough cash. Projecting the annual costs that poor countries will face by 2050 just to adapt, the United Nations Environment Program report deemed the previous estimate of $70 billion to $100 billion "a significant underestimate." It had been based on 2010 World Bank numbers. — Anonymous

Between 1870 and 1905 Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) tried repeatedly, and at long intervals, to write (or dictate) his autobiography, always shelving the manuscript before he had made much progress. By 1905 he had accumulated some thirty or forty of these false starts - manuscripts that were essentially experiments, drafts of episodes and chapters; many of these have survived in the Mark Twain Papers and two other libraries. To some of these manuscripts he went so far as to assign chapter numbers that placed them early or late in a narrative which he never filled in, let alone completed. None dealt with more than brief snatches of his life story. — Mark Twain

Aesthetics - rather than reason - shapes our thought processes. First comes aesthetics, then logic. 'Thinking in Numbers' is not about an attempt to impress the reader but to include the reader, draw the reader in, by explaining my experiences - the beauty I feel in a prime number, for example. — Daniel Tammet

Judge not by the number, but by the weight. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

I felt guilty because I was upset by the loss of one friend when the Old Man had lost nearly everyone he loved. Loss, I soon learned from him, is not measured in numbers. It's not comparative. It's in here. I'm touching my chest now. — Michele Young-Stone

People apply for a job, are asked to work for three or four weeks on probation and are then told to go and are replaced by colleagues. There are shops even in the West End [of London] using large numbers of totally unpaid staff on a permanent basis. — Jeremy Corbyn