Fewest Quotes & Sayings

Genes which allow females to be less inhibited leave fewer copies of themselves than genes which persuade them to remain highly selective. Among males, the best strategy is exactly the opposite one. The maximum advantage goes to those males with the fewest inhibitions. "Love 'em and leave 'em" is not so much a nasty peice of male chauvinist piggery as an accurate reflection of biological reality. — Lyall Watson

categorical imperative that it is with you. You think first of getting the biggest possible output in the shortest possible time. We think first of human beings and their satisfactions. Changing jobs doesn't make for the biggest output in the fewest days. But most people like it better than doing one kind of job all their lives. If it's a choice between mechanical efficiency and human satisfaction, we choose satisfaction. — Aldous Huxley

My purpose in going to Walden Pond
was not to live cheaply
nor to live dearly there
but to transact some private business,
with the fewest obstacles ...
It's a good place for business ...
it offers advantages
which it may not be good policy to divulge. — Henry David Thoreau

Women can always put things in fewest words. Except when it's blowing up; and then they lengthens it out. — Charles Dickens

Sometimes the saddest stories take the fewest words. — Karen Thompson Walker

Football is a game of errors. The team that makes the fewest errors in a game usually wins. — Paul Brown

Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy, is the best bred man in company. — Jonathan Swift

Both were aware that wealth is a relative thing, and that the positively rich are not those who have the largest possessions but those who have the fewest vain or selfish desires to gratify. — Susan Ferrier

I know positively - yes Rieux I can say I know the world inside out as no one on earth is free from it. And I know too that we must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in careless moment we breathe in somebody's face and fasten the infection on him. What's natural is the microbe. All the rest- health integrity purity if you like - is a product of the human will of vigilance that must never falter. The good man the man who infects hardly anyone is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention. And it needs tremendous will-power a never ending tension of the mind to avoid such lapses. Yes Rieux it's a wearying business being plague-stricken. But it's still more wearying to refuse to be it. That's why everybody in the world today looks so tired everyone is more or less sick of plague. But that is also why some of us who want to get the plague out of their systems feel such desperate weariness a weariness from which nothing remains to set us free except death. — Albert Camus

Good men have the fewest fears. He has but one great fear who fears to do wrong; he has a thousand who has overcome it. — Christian Nestell Bovee

The freest among you are often those with the fewest possessions. — Donald J. Amodeo

It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them. Generally, also, a downright fact may be told in a plain way; and we want downright facts at present more than anything else. — John Ruskin

Governors and legislators wanted the hostiles held in check and the bandits hung, but they wanted it all to be done with the fewest possible men on the cheapest possible horses. It irritated Call and infuriated Augustus. — Larry McMurtry

The ambition of every good cook must be to make something very good with the fewest possible ingredients. — Urbain Dubois

Is biology destiny? And the answer is yes, sometimes it is. Women who have the fewest choices of all exercise their right to abortion the most. — Sallie Tisdale

Which class is happiest, the rich, the middle class or the poor? A very successful executive of a large organization touches upon this vital subject in a long letter to all his salesmen. He uses as his text a passage from Robinson Crusoe which included this: ""My Father bid me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind; but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, and were not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind. — B.C. Forbes

Comedy is a necessity to get through life with the fewest scars. Humor is the best antidote to help relieve all struggles. — Suzy Kassem

I thought it reasonable that I should seek the work where the work was the most abundant and the workers fewest. — James Gilmour

There is an intense but simple thrill in setting off in the morning on a mountain trail, knowing that everything you need is on your back. It is a confidence in having left the inessentials behind and of entering a world of natural beauty that has not been violated, where money has no value, and possessions are a dead weight. The person with the fewest possessions is the freest. Thoreau was right. — Paul Theroux

The fishing is best where the fewest go and the collective insecurity of the world makes it easy for people to hit home runs while everyone is aiming for base hits. — Timothy Ferriss

After all that corrupt poets, and more corrupt philosophers, have told us of the blandishments of pleasure, and of its tendency to soften the temper and humanize the affections, it is certain, that nothing hardens the heart like excessive and unbounded luxury; and he who refuses the fewest gratifications to his own voluptuousness, will generally be found the least susceptible of tenderness for the wants of others. — Hannah More

I have lived long enough to learn how much there is I can really do without ... He is nearest to God who needs the fewest things. — Socrates

The best rose-bush, after all, is not that which has the fewest thorns, but that which bears the finest roses. — Henry Van Dyke

The perfection of style consists in the use of the exact speech necessary to convey the sense in the fewest words consistent with perspicuity, at the same time having regard to appropriateness and harmony of expression. Its greater excellencies are directness, accuracy, appropriateness and perspicuity. — Joseph P. Bradley

The biggest thing, I think, is to stay healthy and make the fewest mistakes, and then you can win ... The margin of error is so small in the NFL, so if you can do those two things - keep your team healthy and make the fewest mistakes each Sunday - you have a good chance of going to the Super Bowl. — Hugh Douglas

The anarch knows the rules. He has studied them as a historian and goes along with them as a contemporary. Wherever possible, he plays his own game within their framework; this makes the fewest waves. — Ernst Junger

Victory favors the team making the fewest mistakes. — Bobby Knight

I have made many mistakes myself; in learning the anatomy of the eye I dare say, I have spoiled a hatfull; the best surgeon, like the best general, is he who makes the fewest mistakes. — Astley Cooper

Children's literature as a literary aberration or at best a minor amusement is a notion held most strongly by people who read the fewest children's books. I think it was Ruth Hill Viguers who compared this attitude with asking a pediatrician when he's going to stop fooling around and get down to the serious business of treating adults. — Lloyd Alexander

Men who have much to say use the fewest words. — Josh Billings

Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards. — Diogenes Of Sinope

That man has the fewest wants who is the least anxious for wealth. — Publilius Syrus

The only nations which deny the utility of provincial liberties are those which have fewest of them; in other words, those who are unacquainted with the institution are the only persons who passed censure upon it. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Short stories and some short novels are close to poetry
with the fewest words they capture the essence of a situation, of a human being. It's like trying to pin down the eternal moment. — Gina Berriault

The technologies that raise the fewest ethical problems are those that work on a human scale, brightening the lives of individual people. — Freeman Dyson

The poorest man in a religious community is not necessarily the one who has the fewest objects assigned to him for his use. Poverty is not merely a matter of not having "things." It is an attitude which leads us to renounce some of the advantages which come from the use of things. — Thomas Merton

It was once necessary to proclaim the entire doctrine of Yoga in the fewest possible words ... I did so.
"Sit still. Stop thinking. Shut up. Get out!"
The first two of these instructions comprise the whole of the technique of Yoga. The last two are of a sublimity which it would be improper to expound in this present elementary stage. — Aleister Crowley

The best men of the best epochs are simply those who make the fewest blunders and commit the fewest sins. — Thomas Huxley

I have known lots of millionaires who were not happy men; they had not got all they wanted and therefore had failed to find success in life. A Singalese proverb says: "He who is happy is rich, but it does not follow that he who is rich is happy." The really rich man is the man who has fewest wants. — Robert Baden-Powell

I thought about majoring in Math, Chemistry and English, but Math had the fewest requirements, so I went with it. I knew I wanted to teach, and Math was my field, so I studied Math. — Tom Lehrer

Those who are pleased with the fewest things know the least, as those who are pleased with everything know nothing. — William Hazlitt

The LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth. DEU7:07 The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: DEU7:08 But because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the LORD brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of — Anonymous

It explains the great quandary of why the most depressed societies are those with the fewest wants. — Hugh Howey

We have a saying. My people call it 'choosing the path of fewest lashes.'"
"That's terrible," I murmur; half to myself.
"You mistake 'terrible' for 'different,'" he says. "You have a similar say, do you not? 'The lesser of two evils'? — Rae Carson

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room. — Jonathan Swift

What it came down to was a search not for the most talent, the greatest brilliance, but for the fewest black marks, the fewest objections. The man who had made the fewest enemies in an era when forceful men espousing good causes had made many enemies: the Kennedys were looking for someone who made very small waves. They were looking for a man to fill the most important Cabinet post, a job requiring infinite qualities of intelligence, wisdom and sophistication, a knowledge of both this country and the world, and they were going at it as presidential candidates had often filled that other most crucial post, the Vice-Presidency, by choosing someone who had offended the fewest people. Everybody's number-two choice. — David Halberstam

It is a significant fact that, of all the Christian countries, in those where the church stands highest, and has most power, women rank lowest, and have fewest rights accorded them, whether of personal liberty or proprietary interest. — Helen H. Gardener

Good manners is the art of making people comfortable. Whoever makes the fewest people uncomfortable has the best manners. — Jonathan Swift

It makes sense for people who are good at fighting to go out and do it-because if they're good at it, that means the fewest number of other people die. — Mercedes Lackey

The university is a vast public utility which turns out future workers in today's vineyard, the military-industrial complex. They've got to be processed in the most efficient way to see to it that they have the fewest dissenting opinions, that they have just those characteristics which are wholly incompatible with being an intellectual. This is a real internal psychological contradiction. People have to suppress the very questions which reading books raises. — Mario Savio

A true critic, in the perusal of a book, is like a dog at a feast, whose thoughts and stomach are wholly set upon what the guests fling away, and consequently is apt to snarl most when there are the fewest bones. — Jonathan Swift

If you really understand something, you can say it in the fewest words, instead of thrashing about. — Paul Graham

Increase Your Productivity We live in a demanding and distracting world. Being productive can sometimes feel like an impossible feat. Here are three ways to get more done without burning out: Keep one to-do list. Include everything you want or need to do in one place. Writing it down helps get it off your mind and leaves you free to focus on the task at hand. Do the most important thing first. Before you leave work in the evening, decide what one thing you need to accomplish the next day. Do it first thing in the morning, when you're likely to have the most energy and fewest distractions. Schedule time for non-urgent things. It's easy to get caught up in the pressing issues of the day. Block off time in your calendar to do things that would otherwise get squeezed out, like writing, thinking creatively, or building relationships. — Anonymous

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them. — John Ruskin

Football is a game of mistakes. Whoever makes the fewest mistakes wins. — Johan Cruyff

Captain, said Khaavren, both by way of affirmation and correction, thus conveying the maximum amount of information in the fewest possible words; a custom of his, and one that this historian has, in fact, adopted for himself, holding efficiency of language to be a high virtue in all written works without exception. — Steven Brust

Christian apologists who argue that a story about an empty tomb is convincing evidence of a resurrected body are likely unfamiliar with Occam's razor, which states that among competing hypotheses, the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions should be selected. They assume that the most likely explanation is miraculous resurrection through some unproven divine connection, but more likely scenarios include a stolen body, a mismarked grave, a planned removal, faulty reports, creative storytelling, edited scriptures, etc. No magic required. — David G. McAfee

The foundations of liberty are private property and the rule of law; this system guarantees the fewest possible forms of injustice, produces the greatest material and cultural progress, most effectively stems violence and provides the greatest respect for human rights. According to this concept of liberalism, freedom is a single, unified concept. Political and economic liberties are as inseparable as the two sides of a medal. — Mario Vargas-Llosa

The church I lead could have the least gifted people, the least talented people, the fewest leaders, and the least money, and this church under the power of the Holy Spirit could still shake the nations for his glory. — David Platt

Those who want the fewest things are nearest to the gods. — Socrates

I should always find that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind, but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, ... — Daniel Defoe

Where people work longest and with least leisure, they buy the fewest goods. No towns were so poor as those of England where the people, from children up, worked fifteen and sixteen hours a day. They were poor because these overworked people soon wore out
they became less and less valuable as workers. Therefore, they earned less and less and could buy less and less. — Henry Ford

A true gentleman ... was characterized as the man that asks the fewest questions. This trait of refined society might be adopted into home-like in a far greater degree than it is, and make it far more agreeable. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

There are occasions when the simplest and fewest words surpass in effect all the wealth of rhetorical amplification. — George Henry Lewes

Later, when they sat down and went over the figures closely, they found an interesting pattern. Adamowski had received fifty-one percent of the votes, cast by white persons. But the enormous black vote had given Daley his victory. The people who were trapped in the ghetto slums and the nightmarish public housing projects, the people who had the worst school system and were most often degraded by the Police Department, the people who received the fewest campaign promises and who were ignored as part of the campaign trail, had given him his third term. They had done it quietly, asking for nothing in return. Exactly what they got. — Mike Royko

We have the best customer satisfaction record, based on Transportation Dept. statistics, of any airline in America, the fewest complaints filed per 100,000 passengers carried. So you're not just getting low fares, you're also getting wonderful customer service. — Herb Kelleher

The happiest people are those with the fewest regrets. It is not because they have succeeded in everything they've tried; rather, they're happier because they at least put forth the effort - win or lose -and tried to make their thoughts and dreams a reality. — Ian K. Smith

And tried to redesign the computers using these newer parts. The challenge he set himself was to replicate the design using the fewest components possible. Each night he would try to improve his drawing from the night before. By the end of his senior year, he had become a master. "I was now designing computers with half the number of chips the actual company had in their own design, but only on paper." He never told his friends. After all, most seventeen-year-olds were getting their kicks in other ways. On Thanksgiving weekend of his senior year, Wozniak visited the University of Colorado. It was closed for the holiday, but he found an engineering student who took him on a tour of the labs. He begged his father to let him go there, even — Walter Isaacson

How can he be killed most easily? With the fewest stains? — Donald Barthelme

There will never be a successful person who, before performing a task, has doubts. Negative thoughts arise from recognizing that somewhere along the line your level of commitment has dropped below 100 percent. The winner will always be the person with the fewest doubts. — Nicole Haislett

The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct. — William Of Ockham

Much wisdom often goes with fewest words. — Sophocles

He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles. — Walter Scott

Say what you have to say in the fewest possible words. — Arthur Bryant

I believe that our society's "mistake-phobia" is crippling, a problem that begins in most elementary schools, where we learn to learn what we are taught rather than to form our own goals and to figure out how to achieve them. We are fed with facts and tested and those who make the fewest mistakes are considered to be the smart ones, so we learn that it is embarrassing to not know and to make mistakes. Our education system spends virtually no time on how to learn from mistakes, yet this is critical to real learning. — Ray Dalio

You swing your best when you have the fewest things to think about. — Bobby Jones

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

Horace, fit, and athletic and light on his feet, gave their guards the fewest opportunities to beat him, although on one occasion an angry Tualaghi, furious that Horace misunderstood an order to kneel, slashed his dagger across the young man's face, opening a thin, shallow cut on his right cheek. The wound was superficial but as Evanlyn treated it that evening, Horace shamelessly pretended that it was more painful than it really was. He enjoyed the touch of her ministering hands. Halt and Gilan, bruised and weary, watched as she cleaned the wound and gently pated it dry. Horace did a wonderful job of pretending to bear great pain with stoic bravery. Halt shook his head in disgust.
"What faker," he said to Gilan. The younger Ranger nodded.
"Yes. He's really making a meal of it isn't he?" He paused, then added more ruefully, "Wish I'd thought of it first. — John Flanagan

In the discovery of lemmas the best aid is a mental aptitude for it. For we may see many who are quick at solutions and yet do not work by method ; thus Cratistus in our time was able to obtain the required result from first principles, and those the fewest possible, but it was his natural gift which helped him to the discovery. — Proclus

Decide which is the line of conduct that presents the fewest drawbacks and then follow it out as being the best one, because one never finds anything perfectly pure and unmixed, or exempt from danger. — Niccolo Machiavelli

I would define globalization as the freedom for my group of companies to invest where it wants when it wants, to produce what it wants, to buy and sell where it wants, and support the fewest restrictions possible coming from labour laws and social conventions. — Percy Barnevik

I should always find, the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind; but that middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind; nay, they were not subjected to so many distempers and uneasinesses either of body or mind, as those were who, by vicious living, luxury, and extravagances on one hand, or by hard labor, want of necessaries, and mean or insufficient diet on the other hand, bring distempers upon themselves by the natural consequences of their way of living; that the middle station of life was calculated for all kind of virtues and all kind of enjoyments; that peace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle fortune; that temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the middle station of life ... — Daniel Defoe

The Apple has the fewest bells and whistles. It has simple sound and few graphics special effects. In a way, that is a weakness because markets for the other machines are getting bigger. — Bill Budge

We can invent as many theories we like, and any one of them can be made to fit the facts. But that theory is always preferred which makes the fewest number of assumptions. — Albert Einstein

We want the Army to be society's model of fair treatment. We want to assure that all soldiers are treated fairly, not because it is necessary but because it is right. Those units that have the fewest incidents are those whose noncommissioned officers really know their men and take a personal interest in their welfare. — Silas L. Copeland

Christian society is like a bundle of sticks laid together, whereof one kindles another. Solitary men have fewest provocations to evil, but, again, fewest incitations to good. So much as doing good is better than not doing evil will I account Christian good-fellowship better than an hermitish and melancholy solitariness. — Joseph Hall

Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods. — Socrates

Public action should seek to expand the set of opportunities of those who have the least voice and fewest resources and capabilities. — Paul Wolfowitz

Of all the nations in the Western world, the United States, with the most money and the most time, has the fewest readers of books per capita. This is an incalculable loss. This, too, is one of the few civilized nations in the world which is unable to support a single magazine devoted solely to books. — Eleanor Roosevelt

When grief is deepest, words are fewest. — Ann Voskamp

Good men have the fewest fears. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Everyone may want to be famous, everyone doesn't want to be patient. Fewest cross the bridge, fewer fall down the ladder and few get tired climbing the stairs. It's not about being famous then, it's winning a meaningless competition — Bhavik Sarkhedi

So it is to be another Christmas, then, and another New Year's on my own. Well, it is all right. I have grown used to it, have come almost to prefer it. Those days for most adults, it is generally acknowledged, and perhaps for all but the fewest children are so grim. Along with birthdays and of course Thanksgiving, only worse. Why observe them, then, unless one is for the sake of the children, or the office, or someone else's sake, obliged to. Well, no reason. — Renata Adler

For those who want to understand the issues of the environmental crisis, Encounters with the Archdruid is a superb book. McPhee reveals more nuances of the value revolution that dominates the new age of ecology than most writers could pack into a volume twice as long. I marvel at his capacity to listen intently and extract the essence of a man and his philosophy in the fewest possible words. — Stewart Udall

Most are on the search for their center their entire life long, for the axis of their world, but only the fewest are aware of it. — Kai Meyer

What's natural is the microbe. All the rest - health, integrity, purity (if you like) - is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter. The good man, the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention. — Albert Camus

That's what science is about: seeing the exact same things that other people do, finding the units of measurement with which to describe those things, communicating in the fewest and most precise words available. What could be saner - or more sociable - than that? — Barbara Ehrenreich

We set up harsh and unkind rules against ourselves. No one is born without faults. That man is best who has fewest. — Horace