Quotes & Sayings About Number 13

I have tried, with little success, to get some of my friends to understand my amazement that the abstraction of integers for counting is both possible and useful. Is it not remarkable that 6 sheep plus 7 sheep makes 13 sheep; that 6 stones plus 7 stones make 13 stones? Is it not a miracle that the universe is so constructed that such a simple abstraction as a number is possible? To me this is one of the strongest examples of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics. Indeed, I find it both strange and unexplainable. — Richard Hamming

For 13 to be unlucky would require there to be some kind of cosmic intelligence that counts things that humans count and that also makes certain things happen on certain dates or in certain places according to whether the number 13 'is involved' or not (whatever 'is involved' might mean). — Douglas Hofstadter

Why are you Ojo the Unlucky?" asked the tin man. "Because I was born on a Friday." "Friday is not unlucky," declared the Emperor. "It's just one of seven days. Do you suppose all the world becomes unlucky one-seventh of the time?" "It was the thirteenth day of the month," said Ojo. "Thirteen! Ah, that is indeed a lucky number," replied the Tin Woodman. "All my good luck seems to happen on the thirteenth. I suppose most people never notice the good luck that comes to them with the number 13, and yet if the least bit of bad luck falls on that day, they blame it to the number, and not to the proper cause. — L. Frank Baum

At 13:57 local time, a low yield nuclear warhead exploded in the city of Chongjin, North Korea.
A long standing military target. Chongjin is home to some 532,000 men, women, and children.
This city has survived a number of wars. It will not survive this.
But her people will.
As 13:57 and .00001 microseconds, half a million Koreans seemed to materialize on a hilltop 35 miles away from the blast.
They were carried there ...
One at a time, sometimes two ...
At a hair's breadth short of the speed of light ...
By one man ...
The Flash. The Fastest Man Alive. — Joe Kelly

13 million Indians will join the workforce every year from now till 2030. They know their prospects aren't good. Here's why: in the years from 1972 to 1983 - not celebrated as a time of overwhelming prosperity - the total number of jobs in the economy nevertheless grew 2.3 per cent a year. In the years between liberalization in 1991 and today, jobs have grown at an average of only 1.6 per cent a year. But, if these young people have to be absorbed, then jobs must grow at least 3 per cent a year - almost twice the rate at which they have since liberalization. This is simply not happening. In other words, one out of every two youngsters who starts looking for a job next year won't find one. — Mihir S. Sharma

The Angel is one of those Articles of Faith as unshakable as our belief in the existence of God, an atom, or the ill luck of the number 13 ... — Malcolm Godwin

We all have heard it claimed that 13 is an 'unlucky number.' Indeed, there are many hotels in America that for this very reason claim not to have a 13th floor, in the sense that there is no button bearing the label '13' in their elevators (I recently stayed in one in New York, in fact). — Douglas Hofstadter

After 13 years, I couldn't accept to be number two. — Guy Lafleur

The little song and dance number at the end - that's me, my voice, howling out. It was a new experience for me. I've never sung before and I've certainly never sung on screen. I think I sung on stage when I was 13 and for some reason nobody's asked me to try it again since. — Hugh Dancy

appears on 3 and 7 in 1/8 quantization, it will move to 5 and 13 in 1/16 quantization. Likewise, it will move to 9 and 25 in 1/32 quantization. Refer to Table 5 and note that these pairs of numbers all represent the same moments in time.
How did I determine where the Snare would appear? It's simple. Let's take 1/16 quantization for example. To get the first number, multiply the denominator of the quantization by 1/4 and add 1 ((16 x 1/4) + 1 = 5). The second number is attained in a similar fashion. Multiply the denominator of the quantization by 3/4 and add 1 ((16 x 3/4) + 1 = 13). I told you it was easy. Using this mathematical algorithm — Ray F. Badness

Over 13 percent of women in college have reported being a victim of stalking during the school year, and one out of every five college women has reported being sexually assaulted. It is simple to talk about statistics. It is more difficult to remember that each number is a victim and represents a daughter, a sister or a friend. — Gwen Moore

Since the date, 1776, is placed on the bottom course of the pyramid [on the Great Seal], and since the number 13 has been so important in the history of the United States and in the symbols of the seal, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the thirteen courses of the pyramid may represent thirteen time-periods of thirteen years each. — Paul Foster Case

Most people recognize me from The Shawshank Redemption, but there is this subculture of people who have collected all 13 episodes of Greg The Bunny. And I'm still close to a number of the creative people, Dan Milano particularly, who created Warren The Ape and Greg The Bunny and all of those characters. — Bob Gunton

I've got a few ideas," (Amy) admitted. "But I don't know where we're going in the long term. I mean - have you ever thought about what this ultimate treasure could be?"
"Something cool." (Dan)
"Oh, that's real helpful. I mean, what could make somebody the most powerful Cahill in history? And why thirty-nine clues?"
Dan shrugged. "Thirty-nine is a sweet number. It's thirteen times three. It's also the sum of five prime numbers in a row - 3,5,7,11,13. And if you add the first three powers of three, 3 to the first, 3 to the second, and s to the third, you get thirty-nine."
Amy stared at him. "How did you know that?"
"What do you mean? It's obvious. — Rick Riordan

Squaring numbers is a symmetrical process that I like very much. And when I divide one number by another, say, 13 divided by 97, I see a spiral rotating downwards in larger and larger loops that seem to warp and curve. The shapes coalesce into the right number. I never write anything down. — Daniel Tammet

Close to half my students in one class in northern Nigeria, where head coverings are part of the culture, held this view, so after they had finished debating with the other half, I asked why none of them had greeted me with a holy kiss - and they laughed! The holy kiss is an explicit command repeated in Scripture five times as often as head coverings (Rom. 16:16; 1 Cor. 16:20; 2 Cor. 13:12; 1 Thess. 5:26; 1 Pet. 5:14), but the usual response is, "That was merely a cultural form of greeting." Indeed it was, but covering the head (technically, all the hair) was also merely a cultural expression of sexual modesty, as can be demonstrated from a massive number of ancient sources.26Yet a few of my students bordered on calling other students "liberal" because they did not insist on head coverings as a transcultural requirement! Who determines where to draw the line? Is everyone liberal who holds as cultural something we hold as transcultural? — James R. Beck

Dietary research reveals that many people go off their nutritional diets on or about day 13 - a Fibonacci number. Yet if they can pass critical day 13 and make it through to day 21, they usually will succeed in losing weight and establishing the new habit pattern that allowed them to lose the weight. — Robert Friedman

666 Pennsylvania Ave. "Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six." - Revelation 13:18 — Hunter S. Thompson

Back in the early 1970's the average person experienced roughly 500 advertising messages a day. By the 1990's that number had jumped to 5,000 and today (2014) the number of advertising messages we see on a daily basis is close to 13,000. — Rob Anspach

{Replying to G. H. Hardy's suggestion that the number of a taxi (1729) was 'dull', showing off his spontaneous mathematical genius}

No, it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as a sum of two cubes in two different ways, the two ways being 13 + 123 and 93 + 103. — Srinivasa Ramanujan

Perhaps the most likely answer is that, in the Bible, six is the number for human beings. People were created on the sixth day, and they are to work six of seven days. A Hebrew could not be a slave for more than six years. God's number, on the other hand, is seven. He created seven days in a week. There are seven colors in the visible spectrum and seven notes in a musical scale. Biblically, there are seven feasts of Jehovah (Leviticus 23); seven sayings of Jesus from the cross; and seven "secrets" in the Kingdom parables (Matthew 13). At the fall of Jericho, seven priests marched in front of the army bearing seven trumpets of rams' horns, and on the seventh day they marched around the city seven times (Joshua 6). — David Jeremiah

I surfed competitively from age 13 to 18. Every day, before and after school. I wanted to surf for the rest of my life. It's what all my friends did - I even had it as a subject in school for a number of years. — Liam Hemsworth

Nowadays he is best remembered for the Fibonacci sequence of numbers (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21 . . .), in which each successive number is the sum of the previous two, and the ratio between a number and its immediate antecedent tends towards a 'golden mean' (around 1.618). It — Niall Ferguson

As stated before, hypothyroidism may cause premature or delayed puberty. The majority of normal and hypothyroid females begin their cycle at ages 12 or 13. However, a growing number of those with hypothyroidism start their cycle years earlier or begin their periods at age 15 or later. Premature or delayed puberty in males is also becoming more common. — Mark Starr

I'm a situational writer. You give me a situation, like a writer gets in a car crash, breaks his leg, is kidnapped by his number-one fan, and is kept in a cabin and forced to write a book
everything else springs from there. You really don't have to work once you've had the idea. All you have to do is kind of take dictation from something inside. (from Parade Magazine interview, 5/26/13) — Stephen King