Ninety Nine Percent Quotes & Sayings

Our institutions are too big; they represent not the best but the worst characteristics of human beings. By submitting to huge hierarchies of power, we gain freedom from personal responsibility for what we do and are forced to do - the seduction of it - but we lose the dignity of being real men and women. Power corrupts; attracts the worst and corrupts the best ... Refuse to participate in evil; insist on taking part in what is healthy, generous, and responsible. Stand up, speak out, and when necessary fight back. Get down off the fence and lend a hand, grab a-hold, be a citizen - not a subject. — Edward Abbey

To declare war on ninety-nine percent of bacteria when less than percent of them threaten our health makes no sense. Many of the bacteria we're killing are our protectors. — Sandor Katz

Ninety-nine percent of singing is listening and hearing, and so then 1 percent of it is singing. — Linda Ronstadt

I am not against marriage - without marriage, ninety-nine percent jokes will disappear from the world. How I can be against marriage? I am all for it. — Rajneesh

"It's not just about Jen," he said. "It's about the entire romantic system. Ninety-nine percent of men are in love with the top one percent of women. And yet they often refuse to date us. It's a complete injustice. — Simon Rich

Persistence isn't very glamorous. If genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration, then as a culture we tend to lionize the one percent. We love its flash and dazzle. But great power lies in the other ninety-nine percent. — Susan Cain

In one way or another everything communicates. Human are the only creatures on earth, with the exception of cats, that are certain of the absolute critical nature of the message they try to convey. I have found that the only difference between the two is that cats are correct, while humans...eh...not so much. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time we are just making stuff up. And some of us have elevated it to a seriously messed up art form. — Cindy Cruciger

Success is ninety-nine percent mental attitude. It calls for love, joy, optimism, confidence, serenity, poise, faith, courage, cheerfulness, imagination, initiative, tolerance, honesty, humility, patience, and enthusiasm. — Wilferd Peterson

Ninety-nine percent of pilots that go up never have engine failure, and the 1 percent that do usually land it. But if you're up in the air and something goes wrong, you pull that parachute, and the whole plane goes down slowly. — Cory Lidle

What is the function of man? Surely the sheep can get along without him; horses run better wild; rifles make nothing; of what good are banks when ninety-nine percent of us have no money? - I have said: what are we on earth for? WE SERVE NO PURPOSE IN NATURE. It is my guess that we are slated for extinction. — Kenneth Patchen

Ninety-nine percent of girls want to be models because they believe it will mean that they are the most beautiful women in the world. They think that they will wear expensive clothes, makes loads of money, travel a lot and have a rock star for a boyfriend. This never interested me. I didn't want anyone to scream out my name. I wanted to make art, to create an image with a photographer. And yes, I wanted to get out of Clinton, Mississippi - a small town that was so closed-minded you can't even imagine. — Crystal Renn

Something weird," Ben said. "You would think, with ninety-nine percent of us gone, the two percent would get along better."
Um, that would be one percent, Parish. — Rick Yancey

There are some basic tenets that ninety-nine percent of all Wiccans follow, but at its core the faith is all about individual freedom. Wiccans believe that as long as you aren't hurting anyone else by doing it, you should be free to act and worship in whatever way you'd like. — Jim Butcher

By the way, I've been homeless for the past two years. Some of you may think, Aw, how sad. Others may think, Ha, ha, loser! But if you saw me on the street, ninety-nine percent of you would walk right past like I'm invisible. You'd pray, Don't let him ask me for money. — Rick Riordan

I always say, or have said in the past, that ninety-nine and forty-four-hundredths of the audience does not pay any attention to the lighting, but one hundred percent is affected by it. — Jennifer Tipton

Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses. — George Washington Carver

Ninety-nine percent of all failures come from people who have a habit of making excuses. — George Washington Carver

Take a look around," the instructor had advised. "Ask yourself if there's anyone else who is better qualified to do the job. Not in the entire galaxy, but right there, at that point in time. If the answer is 'yes,' ask them to accept command, and do everything you can to support them. If the answer is 'no,' which it will be ninety-nine percent of the time, then take your best shot. That's all any of us can do. — William C. Dietz

And just being there is ninety-nine percent of what matters when your world falls apart — Holly Goldberg Sloan

I was ninety-nine point nine percent sure that I was dreaming. — Stephenie Meyer

Veblen called it the price-system. Mills called it the Power Elite. It's probably no more than ninety-nine people who don't know what they are doing. They're involved in high finance. Fascinating form of gambling. — John Cage

If you ask Muslim women why they cover up, ninety-nine percent of them will say it's to avoid arousing men. Fuck that, where's your self-accountability? — Michael Muhammad Knight

Since the initial publication of the chart of the electromagnetic spectrum, humans have learned that what they can touch, smell, see, and hear is less than one-millionth of reality. Ninety-
nine percent of all that is going to affect our tomorrows is being developed by humans using instruments and working in ranges of reality that are nonhumanly sensible. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. — Thomas A. Edison

Ninety-nine percent of humanity does not know that we have the option to "make it" economically on this planet and in the Universe. We do. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Getting up way in advance of dawn is always a good idea. Nearly ninety-nine percent of the time when I have gotten up in the middle of the night for a shoot, something good always presents itself to offset the nagging tiredness and discomfort of losing sleep. — Peter Menzel

Ninety-nine percent of all work on self is attitudinal. — E. J. Gold

Ninety-nine percent of all land animals eaten or used to produce milk and eggs in the United States are factory farmed. So although there are important exceptions, to speak about eating animals today is to speak about factory farming. — Jonathan Safran Foer

One percent of the population ruled - and they were all grafters - while the other ninety-nine percent live under the worst kind of feudalism. — David Halberstam

Open your eyes, Mac." "What do you mean?" "Words can be twisted into any shape. Promises can be made to lull the heart and seduce the soul. In the final analysis words mean nothing. They are labels we give things in an effort to wrap our puny little brains around their underlying natures, when ninety-nine percent of the time the totality of the reality is an entirely different beast. The wisest man is the silent one. Examine his actions. Judge him by them. He thinks you have the heart of a warrior. He believes in you. Believe in him. — Karen Marie Moning

Ninety-nine percent of people believe they can't do great things, so they aim for mediocrity. — Tim Ferriss

Angel, getting you off is ninety-nine percent of the fun for me. — Sylvia Day

Ninety-nine percent of my life I was lied to
I just found out my mom does more dope than I do — Eminem

Don't think you can watch all the romantic movies, soap operas, TV shows and read all the romantic books out there and not be affected. Ninety-nine percent of the romantic stuff out there is garbage ... and what you put in always comes out ... UGLIER! — Osayi Emokpae Lasisi

Ninety-nine percent of men are okay with following the rules and doing what they're told. We're the other one percent, so we built our own world with our own rules. — Joanna Wylde

In some way or another we are all agnostics. We don't believe in ninety-nine percent of Gods, and we don't know the ultimate reality. — Debasish Mridha

Sex is the ... tremulous and bewildering and nerve-racking and delicious and myriad-adjectived soul-condition ... generally known as love. Ninety-nine point nine repeater percent of the world's literature has been devoted to its analysis. It's therefore of some importance. — William John Locke

The Art of Success ... Success is ninety-nine percent mental attitude. It calls for love, joy, optimism, confidence, serenity, poise, faith, courage, cheerfulness, imagination, initiative, tolerance, honesty, humility, patience, and enthusiasm ... Success is having the courage to meet failure without being defeated. It is refusing to let present loss interfere with your long-range goal ... Success is relative and individual and personal. It is your answer to the problem of making your minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years add up to a great life. — Wilferd Peterson

In science, probably ninety-nine percent of the knowable has to be discovered. We know only a few streaks about astronomy. We are only beginning to imagine the force and composition of the atom. Physics has not yet found any indivisible matter, or psychology a sensible soul. — Lincoln Steffens

Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion. — Thornton Wilder

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration. — Thomas A. Edison

Success is ninety-nine percent failure. — Soichiro Honda

Ninety-nine percent of Indian people loved me and they still love me. — M. F. Husain

The best picture has not yet been painted; the greatest poem is still unsung; the mightiest novel remains to be written; the divinest music has not been conceived, even by Bach. In science, probably ninety-nine percent of the knowable has not yet been discovered. — Lincoln Steffens

Ninety-nine percent of the world's lovers are not with their first choice. That's what makes the jukebox play. — Willie Nelson

Concerning trees and leaves ... there's a real power here. It is amazing that trees can turn gravel and bitter salts into these soft-lipped lobes, as if I were to bite down on a granite slab and start to swell, bud and flower. Every year a given tree creates absolutely from scratch ninety-nine percent of its living parts. Water lifting up tree trunks can climb one hundred and fifty feet an hour; in full summer a tree can, and does, heave a ton of water every day. A big elm in a single season might make as many as six million leaves, wholly intricate, without budging an inch; I couldn't make one. A tree stands there, accumulating deadwood, mute and rigid as an obelisk, but secretly it seethes, it splits, sucks and stretches; it heaves up tons and hurls them out in a green, fringed fling. No person taps this free power; the dynamo in the tulip tree pumps out even more tulip tree, and it runs on rain and air. — Annie Dillard

Ninety nine percent of the time it's not urgent and to create a culture where you are constantly plugged in and expected to be always-on is to create a culture of burnout. — Arianna Huffington

To wait. In our lives we know joy, anger, sorrow, and a hundred other emotions, but these emotions all together occupy a bare one percent of our time. The remaining ninety-nine percent is just living in waiting. I wait in momentary expectation, feeling as though my breasts are being crushed, for the sound in the corridor of the footsteps of happiness. Empty. Oh, life is too painful, the reality that confirms the universal belief that it is best not to be born. — Osamu Dazai

The successes in the entertainment business are like one percent of the iceberg that you see, and the other ninety-nine percent, which is the rejection and the failure and the work and the toil and the sacrifice, is the rest of the iceberg that's below the water. — Jonathan Tucker

The mistake ninety-nine percent of humanity made, as far as Fats could see, was being ashamed of what they were; lying about it, trying to be somebody else. — J.K. Rowling

It's lonely at the top. Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for "realistic" goals, paradoxically making them the most time-consuming. It's easier to raise $1,000,000 than it is $100,000. It is easier to pick up the one perfect 10 in the bar than the five 8s. — Timothy Ferriss

There are other advantages," continued the child. "For instance, if one rat were cornered by nine cats, on the average, each cat would be ten percent rat and the rat would be ninety percent cat. If you happened to be a rat, you can see how much nicer it would make things. — Norton Juster

Ninety percent of my work is crap," he continued. "Another nine percent is mediocre, and then there are those rare gems that are actually useable. — Olivia Cunning

Actually ninety-nine percent of my acting has nothing to do sci-fi or fantasy, I consider it a good part of my acting, and enjoy the roles I play. — Claudia Christian

I was 13 when my parents moved to Israel, and I was put in a Scottish mission school. Ninety-nine percent of the children were Israeli ... Suddenly, I found myself speaking the wrong language, dressed in the wrong clothes, picked up by the wrong mode of transportation - an embassy car instead of a bus. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

Words can be twisted into any shape. Promises can be made to lull the heart and seduce the soul. In the final analysis, words mean nothing. They are labels we give things in an effort to wrap our puny little brains around their underlying natures, when ninety-nine percent of the time the totality of the reality is an entirely different beast. The wisest man is the silent one. Examine his actions. Judge him by them. — Karen Marie Moning

Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire one hundred percent is bullshit, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds. — Neal Stephenson

Music is, by far, the best art. Nothing even comes close. It's so immediate and emotional. In writing, maybe ninety percent of it is the unconscious and ten percent is control. In music, I think it's probably more like ninety-nine percent the unconscious. It's just a beautiful thing happening through you. And so, too, is writing a great story. — T.C. Boyle

He most effective lie is ninety-nine percent true. — Robert Ferrigno

then came a virus like an avenging angel, unsurvivable, a microbe that reduced the population of the fallen world by, what? There were no more statisticians by then, my angels, but shall we say ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent? — Emily St. John Mandel

Ninety-nine point nine percent of all employees are in the pile because they don't think. — Jack Welch

Look at the paintings of Picasso. He is a great painter, but just a subjective artist. Looking at his paintings, you will start feeling sick, dizzy, something going berserk in your mind. You cannot go on looking at Picasso's painting long enough. You would like to get away, because the painting has not come from a silent being. It has come from a chaos. It is a by product of a nightmare. But ninety-nine percent art belongs to that category. — Rajneesh

in police work ninety-nine percent of the effort is routine, unspectacular enquiry, checking and double-checking, laboriously building up a web of parts until the parts become a whole, the whole becomes a net, and the net finally encloses the criminal with a case that will not just make headlines but stand up in court. He — Frederick Forsyth

Tired?" he asks.
"Tired - yes. Angry - yes. Pissed off - ninety-nine percent of the time. Fun to be around - never."
Gabriel smiles. "Who wants fun when you can have interesting? — Sally Green

Ninety-nine percent of the time, when it comes down to it, if I have the choice between a great role and seeing a new guy, I would probably go for the great role because I figure if the guy's really that great that he'll be around once I'm done with the movie. — Madeline Zima

Ninety-nine percent of the time, your parents never have to know, though. The school doesn't want your parents to think you became a fuckup here any more than you want your parents think you're a fuckup. — John Green

I have no patience for any "fairness"-driven complaints. Life isn't fair, love isn't fair, and as long as we breathe the free air of a capitalistic society, business will never be fair. Thirty years into my career, I have yet to hear a valid "that's not fair" career-related complaint that wasn't related to gender or racial bias. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the people complaining were underachievers that relied on their own lazy standards instead of common sense. They tried to do a good job instead of running a successful business. — Ari Gold

Ninety-nine point nine percent of the people that are gun owners are very responsible. — Jan Brewer

We're not only the ninety-nine percent, we're the assistants to the one percent. There's power in that." I — Camille Perri

Ninety-nine percent of all surprises in business are negative. — Harold Geneen

I told her that I didn't want to take any drugs. That I had come here not to take drugs.
"Listen," she said, not unkindly, "up until now I would say that ninety-nine percent of all the narcotics you have taken in your life you bought from guys you didn't know, in bathrooms or on street corners, something like that. Correct?"
I nodded.
"Well these guys could have been selling you salt or strychnine. They didn't care. They wanted your money. I don't care about your money, and, unlike your previous suppliers, I went to college to study just the right drugs to give to people like you in order to help you get better. So, bearing all that in mind ... Take the fucking drugs!"
I took the drugs. — Craig Ferguson

At the end of the day, photography is ninety-nine percent business, connections, and politics and one percent creativity. — Rankin

His genius he was quite content in one brief sentence to define; Of inspiration one percent, of perspiration, ninety nine. — Thomas A. Edison

Ninety-nine percent of people now call me The Hoff - and it's out of respect. — David Hasselhoff

Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable. — Rhonda Byrne

Ninety-nine percent of the people on the street will lick the flavor right off your Life Saver if you let them. — James Altucher

Nimrod continued, "These were the one percent of wealthy pigs who ruled over the ninety-nine percent of people with their greed and their selfishness! But I swear to you by my very head and by the head of my queen Semiramis, that as our subjects you will never go hungry!" The crowd burst out in applause. He milked it, "You will never be without shelter in the great city of Babylon!" More applause resounded. "You will never be without health and welfare!" The applause turned to jubilation. Nimrod reeled them in like a fish on a line. "You will be taken care of from birth to death under the mighty rule of Nimrod, emperor of the earth!" The masses swarmed with worship and screams of orgasmic release. Nimrod had secured their total dependency upon city-state and king. Nimrod had become their lord and savior. — Brian Godawa

Ninety-nine percent of leadership failures are failures of character. — Norman Schwarzkopf

I've been so fortunate because I never really had ups and downs as far as my career. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I've been sold out all over the world. — Tony Bennett

I'll never understand ninety-nine percent of humanity. - Enoch — Ransom Riggs

Ninety-nine percent of the music that was of any interest to me when I was growing up came out of the black community. — David Sanborn

Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything. — David Ogilvy

Ninety-nine percent of everything you do in life is attitude. If you have a relationship with God ... you're going to learn to ask the one question in life that covers everything: How can I help you? — Walter Levine

I was receiving at least ninety-nine incredible, positive, and life-changing responses for every negative or abusive one, yet I couldn't stop looking at the one percent. I couldn't get them out of my mind. I let them kill my excitement. I let them destroy my love for what I was doing. I let them shut me down. I let them bully me into changing the way I did things around here.
I almost stopped. I almost gave up. I almost quit writing.
But every time, I remembered my dad.
He taught me better than that.
And I forced myself to be excited again. I forced myself to see the goal and vision of why I was excited in the first place. I forced myself to start skipping over the negative replies and start diving into the loving ones. — Dan Pearce

We know how ninety-nine percent of the universe works," he told Carter shortly after they met, "and that's the clockworks, that's what we build with. But the other one percent makes the clockworks wind down. That's inertia. No one knows how that works, but it does. It's that one percent mystery that's the way of our maker. Put everything together, energy and inertia, the explicable and the inexplicable, and that's how you and I make our living. — Glen David Gold

Okay, but what about microbial disease? "To declare war on ninety-nine percent of bacteria when less than one percent of them threaten our health makes no sense. Many of the bacteria we're killing are our protectors." In fact, the twentieth-century war on bacteria - with its profligate use of antibiotics, and routine sterilization of food - has undermined our health by wrecking the ecology of our gut. "For the first time in human history, it has become important to consciously replenish our microflora." Hence the urgency of cultural revival. And — Michael Pollan

We do not want an official state church. If ninety-nine percent of the population were Catholics, I would still be opposed to it. I do not want civil power combined with religious power. I want to make it clear that I am committed as a matter of deep personal conviction to separation. — John F. Kennedy

Ninety-nine percent of everyday things are things we don't need - that goes for regular visits to the hairdresser just as it does for clothing. What would it mean if we all consumed 20 percent less? It would be catastrophic. It would mean 20 percent less jobs, 20 percent less taxes, 20 percent less money for schools, doctors, roads. The global economy would collapse. — Karl-Johan Persson

Life is one percent what happens to you, and ninety-nine percent how you respond to it. — Shubhra Krishan

Ninety-nine percent of the time humans have lived on this planet we've lived in tribes, groups of 12 to 36 people. Only during times of war, or what we have now, which is the psychological equivalent of war, does the nuclear family prevail, because it's the most mobile unit that can ensure the survival of the species. But for the full flowering of the human spirit we need groups, tribes. — Margaret Mead

At some point you have to set aside snobbery and what you think is culture and recognize that any random episode of Friends is probably better, more uplifting for the human spirit, than ninety-nine percent of the poetry or drama or fiction or history every published. Think of that. Of course yes, Tolstoy and of course yes Keats and blah blah and yes indeed of course yes. But we're living in an age that has a tremendous richness of invention. And some of the most inventive people get no recognition at all. They get tons of money but not recognition as artists. Which is probably much healthier for them and better for their art. — Nicholson Baker

I know how birth control works, big brother, and - spoiler alert - putting a wrapper on the banana is ninety-nine percent effective. — Penny Reid

If I have a better idea, I say, 'Can we try one like this?' I try not to step on writers' toes, but ninety-nine percent of the time, it ends up in the movie, and sometimes it's the line that everyone remembers and quotes from the movie. — William Sadler

We have become ninety-nine percent money mad. The method of living at home modestly and within our income, laying a little by systematically for the proverbial rainy day which is due to come, can almost be listed among the lost arts. — George Washington Carver

Why aren't you happy? It's because ninety-nine percent of everything you do, and think, and say, is for yourself -- and there isn't one. — Wei Wu Wei

Ninety-nine percent talent ... ninety-nine percent discipline ... ninety-nine percent work. He must never be satisfied with what he does. It is never as good as it can be done. Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done. — William Faulkner

From now on - specialize; never again make any concession to the ninety-nine percent of you which is like everyon else at the expense of the one percent which is unique. — Cyril Connolly

I've heard that nature abhors a vacuum - though if that's true, then I can't figure why about ninety-nine zillion percent of creation is vacuum. — Jim Butcher

Of course, once I'd wrapped my mind around the fact that it was Cal and not Archer standing in my bedroom, it dawned on me that Cal was standing in my bedroom.
"Hey," I breathed, hoping my hair wasn't a huge tangled mess, even though I was ninety-nine percent sure that it was. I mean, I could see it out of my peripheral vision.
"Hey."
"You're,um,in my room."
"I am."
"Is that allowed?"
"Well,we are engaged," Cal deadpanned.
I squinted at him, shoving big handfuls of my hair away from my face. I had no idea if that was supposed to be a joke or not. You could never tell with Cal.
"Did you want to watch me sleep or something? Because if that's the case, this engagement is so broken."
Cal's lips quirked in what might have been a smile. "Do you have a smart-ass reply for everything?
"If at all possible,yeah. — Rachel Hawkins

If genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration, then as a culture we tend to lionize the one percent. — Susan Cain