Compounding Quotes & Sayings

Rome is ... an impossible compounding of time, in which no century has respect for any other and all hit you in a jumble at every turn ... — Eleanor Clark

The general problem with ambitious systems is complexity. [ ... ] it is important to emphasize the value of simplicity and elegance, for complexity has a way of compounding difficulties. — Fernando J. Corbato

The miracle of compounding returns is overwhelmed by the tyranny of compounding costs. — John C. Bogle

But tormented souls have this incredible ability to recognize and approach one another, thus compounding their grief.
Why hadn't I noticed this in him? Why did I see only the superficial way he talked about politics or the pedantic way he tasted the wine? — Paulo Coelho

Investment decision should be made on the basis of the most probable compounding of after-tax net worth with minimum risk. — Warren Buffett

There is a progression from pictographic, writing the picture; to ideographic, writing the idea; and then logographic, writing the word. Chinese script began this transition between 4,500 and 8,000 years ago: signs that began as pictures came to represent meaningful units of sound. Because the basic unit was the word, thousands of distinct symbols were required. This is efficient in one way, inefficient in another. Chinese unifies an array of distinct spoken languages: people who cannot speak to one another can write to one another. It employs at least fifty thousand symbols, about six thousand commonly used and known to most literate Chinese. In swift diagrammatic strokes they encode multidimensional semantic relationships. One device is simple repetition: tree + tree + tree = forest; more abstractly, sun + moon = brightness and east + east = everywhere. The process of compounding creates surprises: grain + knife = profit; hand + eye = look. — James Gleick

Suppose that we believe that in 200 years, people would be prepared to pay a million dollars (that's in today's dollars, not inflated ones) to be able to have an unspoilt valley. Now imagine that today we can profit by cutting down the forest in the valley, which will never regrow. If we apply an annual discount rate of 5 percent, compounded exponentially, how big would that profit have to be to justify the loss of a million dollars in 2210? The answer, surprisingly, is just sixty dollars! That's all that a million dollars in 200 years is worth, at that rate of discount. Obviously, then, if we use a 5 percent discount rate, values gained one thousand years in the future scarcely count at all. This is not because of any uncertainty about whether there will be human beings or other sentient creatures inhabiting this planet at that time, but merely because of the compounding effect of the rate of return on money invested now. — Peter Singer

Quite ironically, the answer to ineffective philanthropy is more of it: the failure of philanthropy is its own success. The perceived necessity - even the indispensability - of a donor like the Gates Foundation grows in proportion to its own inability to achieve the unachievable: mitigating the very inequalities that its own presence might be inadvertently compounding. — Linsey McGoey

Don't you see, said Father, that you are confusing fiction with facts, fiction does not create facts, fiction can come from facts, it can grow out of facts by compounding, transposing, augmenting, diminishing, or altering them in any way; but you must not confuse cause and effect, you must not confuse what really happened with what the story says happened, you must not lose your grasp on reality, that way madness lies. — Rohinton Mistry

There is no way in which a simple substance could begin in the course of nature, since it cannot be formed by means of compounding. — Gottfried Leibniz

All this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us the by senses and experience. — David Hume

Whatever you want in life, do one thing every day which brings you a little closer towards attainment of your goal.
Even if it means spending a few minutes. No matter how small the effort is, if done consistently, it will start compounding and before you know it, you would have already realized your dream. — Zeeshan Raza

It is hard to think of the history of the twentieth century, including its large social movements, without bringing in the role of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Zedong. But there was a moment in time, just before an egg was fertilized, when there was a fifty-fifty chance that the embryo that became Hitler could have been a female. Compounding — Daniel Kahneman

Played out over time, the differences in growth and middle-class prosperity between countries that have decreased incentives (through increased income redistribution) and those that have not are startling. Look at the differences between Europe and the U.S.; East and West Germany; and Communist China versus Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China today. There are enormous and compounding costs to dulling incentives for entrepreneurial risk-taking with few, if any, exceptions. — Edward Conard

Our human race is affected by a chronic underestimation of the possibility of the future straying from the course initially envisioned (in addition to other biases that sometimes exert a compounding effect). To take an obvious example, think about how many people divorce. Almost all of them are acquainted with the statistic that between one-third and one-half of all marriages fail, something the parties involved did not forecast while tying the knot. Of course, "not us," because "we get along so well" (as if others tying the knot got along poorly). — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The impact of NCDs is not only affecting the urban populations but also rural poor. This is compounding the basic problem of poverty. — Marty Natalegawa

The time to save for the future is now. Thanks to compounding interest, the earlier you start putting money away for the future, the more you will save. — Alexa Von Tobel

Compounding the cost, most mapping software is processor-intense. — Robert Love

tormented souls have this incredible ability to recognize and approach one another, thus compounding their grief. — Paulo Coelho

The alternatives [to the stimulus packages] were to do nothing or, worse, effectively replicate the Premiers' Plan of 1931 when governments cut expenditure, thereby compounding the problems created by a private sector already in retreat. The result, of course, was an economic rout, appalling unemployment and a decade of negligible growth through the 1930s — Kevin Rudd

Little disciplines compounded over time make a huge difference. — Orrin Woodward

You must have the discipline and temperament to resist your impulses. Human beings have precisely the wrong instincts when it comes to the markets. If you recognise this, you can resist the urge to buy into a rally and sell into a decline. It's also helpful to remember the power of compounding. You don't need to stretch for returns to grow your capital over the course of your life. — Irving Kahn

When a physical illness or other adverse circumstance arises, humans tend to add to the problem by worrying and increasing the mental anxiety in their situation. Let's take illness as an example. We have to face the fact that life is not always perfect and that disease occasionally happens. When you fall into a painful situation or get sick, the best thing to do is to think about the greater anguish being suffered by so many of our fellow creatures. This is more productive than being concerned about one's own suffering and compounding it with worry, giving too much attention to the pain — Doug "Ten" Rose

Berkshireis not as good as it was in terms of percentage compounding [going forward], but it's still a hell of a business. — Charlie Munger

Compounding is the 8th wonder of the world. — Albert Einstein

The magic of compounding interest is truly the eighth wonder of the world! — Albert Einstein

Pain is inevitable. It is actually a great opportunity for growth, but when we blame or fail to take responsibility for our suffering, the pain becomes stagnant, and stagnant pain can have a compounding effect if left unchecked. — Romany Malco

Leadership reveals itself in the big moments, but is forged in the small. It is the exponential and compounding product of our many incremental behaviors and actions; all of which arise out of our choices in values, beliefs & emotions. Choices all. Not a one is thrust upon us. — Christopher Babson

Because there still exists a significant pay gap, women tend to earn less than men over the course of their lifetimes. Compounding the problem, women tend to spend less time in the workforce than men. — Steve Israel

Heaven forbids, it is true, certain gratifications, but there are ways and means of compounding such matters. — Moliere

To have striven so hard, to have molded a public personality out of so amorphous an identity, to have sustained that superhuman effort only to end with every weakness disclosed and every error compounding the downfall
that was a fate of biblical proportions. Evidently the Deity would not tolerate the presumption that all can be manipulated; an object lesson of the limits of human presumption was necessary. — Henry A. Kissinger

The ideal business is one that earns very high returns on capital and that keeps using lots of capital at those high returns. That becomes a compounding machine. — Warren Buffett

Pain has an odd way of expressing itself in the acts of business. No matter how many setbacks a leader might experience, there always seems to be a new opaque watermark of endurance testing, invisibly triggered for erratic combustion in each compounding decision. Every CEO in the world knows this, yet few have the good sense to walk away from the table when their cards are hot. Why win in Act Two when a comeback in Act Three gives you a longer biography? Ego is not so much about immortality as it is about demonstrating stately resistance to nightmarish attacks in public forums. Any good smack to the head is a continuity wake up call, or at least another invitation to be interviewed by Charlie Rose. — Ken Goldstein

Doing 'White Collar,' quite often my character goes undercover, so therein lies the compounding of the imagination. I get to play Peter Burke and then someone else when Peter Burke goes undercover. — Tim DeKay

Negativity feeds on itself, thereby compounding the potentially undesirable outcomes. — Steven Redhead

The world is cruel enough without our compounding it; — Scott Lynch

The left-leaning thinking that dominates the movie business follows a common liberal instinct to deny the spiritual dimension to every problem, thereby profoundly compounding the difficulties. — Michael Medved

Money Compounding is one concept that does not hit you unless your stars are aligned — Manoj Arora

The memory was unpleasant; he'd taken an instant disliking to the man. Compounding Peter's distrust, Chase was wearing a necktie, the most incomprehensible article of clothing in the history of the world. — Justin Cronin

Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with that it's compounding a felony. — Robert Benchley

The body of man has in itself blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile; these make up the nature of this body, and through these he feels pain or enjoys health. Now he enjoys the most perfect health when these elements are duly proportioned to one another in respect of compounding, power and bulk, and when they are perfectly mingled. — Hippocrates

Like many others, I have deep misgivings about the state of education in the United States. Too many of our students fail to graduate from high school with the basic skills they will need to succeed in the 21st Century economy, much less prepared for the rigors of college and career. Although our top universities continue to rank among the best in the world, too few American students are pursuing degrees in science and technology. Compounding this problem is our failure to provide sufficient training for those already in the workforce. — Bill Gates

The book and the film [This Changes Everything] fed into each other in ways that were compounding and very exciting. The pain was shared. — Avi Lewis

Man ... is an inextricable tangle of culture and biology. And not being simple, he is not simply good; he has ... a kind of hell within him from which rise everlastingly the impulses which threaten his civilization. He has the faculty of imagining for himself more in the way of pleasure and satisfaction than he can possibly achieve. Everything that he gains he pays for in more than equal coin; compromise and the compounding with defeat constitute his best way of getting through the world. His best qualities are the result of a struggle whose outcome is tragic. Yet he is a creature of love ... — Lionel Trilling

No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States and compounding the American people into one common mass. — John Marshall

Medicine is not only a science; it is also an art. It does not consist of compounding pills and plasters; it deals with the very processes of life, which must be understood before they may be guided. — Paracelsus

When it comes to compounding, don't trust your intuition - you have no idea how powerful it is. — Manoj Arora

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Compounding Julia's irritation was the fact that Mark and Jennifer were the parents of one of Sam's friends, and thought of Jacob and Julia as their friends, and wanted to have a coffee after to "catch up." Julia liked them and, insofar as she could muster enthusiasm for extrafamilial relations, considered them friends. But she couldn't muster much. At least not until she could catch up with herself. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Beowulf stands out as a poem which makes extensive use of this kind of figurative language. There are over one thousand compounds in the poem, totalling one-third of all the words in the text. Many of these compounds are kennings. The word 'to ken' is still used in many Scottish and Northern English dialects, meaning 'to know'. Such language is a way of knowing and of expressing meanings in striking and memorable ways; it has continuities with the kinds of poetic compounding found in nearly all later poetry but especially in the Modernist texts of Gerard Manley Hopkins and James Joyce. — Ronald Carter

Power of compounding is real and is extremely important. If you understand it, you earn it; if not, you pay it. The rule for compounding is simple - the sooner you start investing, the more time your money has to grow. — Jigar Patel

Because we are always growing, life compounds and magnifies what is already in us. If you are miserable you grow in misery and if you are joyful you grow in joy. This makes self-love is the perfect soil from which to grow love. — Bryant McGill