Quantifiable Quotes & Sayings

Poetry was a discipline grounded in experience that drew its life and worth from a source much greater than oneself, and as it realized its potential to touch others in their innermost being, what [Kathleen] Fraser has termed their "yearning side," it could be a profoundly communal act. Poetry, when it succeeded, did so in ways that were not quantifiable, and did not look much like worldly success, but that might be summed up as the joy on the face of a girl in a dingy classroom who finds a kindred spirit in a poem by Garcia Lorca. — Kathleen Norris

History shows that pay-TV subscribers flee in droves to alternative providers when there is even a rare service disruption - demonstrating a quantifiable value for 'must-have' broadcast programming. — Gordon Smith

No really. What exactly did you do today, Jenny? Quantify it for me."
"It's not quantifiable. There aren't even metrics for the shit I do. — Jenny Lawson

Cooking is the great divide between good eating and bad. The gains are quantifiable. Cooking and eating at home - even with quality ingredients - costs pennies on the dollar compared with meals prepared by a restaurant or factory. — Barbara Kingsolver

When a positive exchange between a brand and customers becomes quantifiable metrics, it encourages brand to provide better service, customer service to do a better job, and consumers to actively show their gratitude. — Simon Mainwaring

Muted pain, it turns out, is much worse than clear pain. Clear pain is quantifiable. One can face it, reckon with it, come away braver. There is no way to understand what you cannot feel. No reckoning to be had. It will haunt you forever, make you afraid. Still, they call her this laughable word: Survivor. — Elisa Albert

We have faith that the practices of silence, praying with scripture, or reciting the prayers passed on to us will bear fruit over time. If we continue to fight through our fears and anxieties in order to sit in silence, we trust that God can meet us, even if it leads to results we aren't expecting or doesn't even result in quantifiable progress. — Ed Cyzewski

Up until I started working with him, I had thought that music was a nice thing that I enjoyed and liked making, but it wasn't a serious healing modality. What Dr. Sacks has proven is that music is actually a quantifiable, profound healing modality. — Moby

It's not enough to be kind. One should be kinder than needed. Why I love that line, that concept, is that it reminds me that we carry with us, as human beings, not just the capacity to be kind, but the very choice of kindness.
And what does that mean? How is that measured? You can't use a yardstick. It's like I was saying just before: it's not like measuring how much you've grown in a year. It's not exactly quantifiable, is it? — R.J. Palacio

If everything really does get better, the way everyone claims, then happiness should be graphable. But that's crap, because better isn't quantifiable. — Robyn Schneider

Here Mr. Tushman looked up at the audience. "Kinder than is necessary," he repeated. "What a marvelous line, isn't it? Kinder than is necessary. Because it's not enough to be kind. One should be kinder than needed. Why I love that line, that concept, is that it reminds me that we carry with us, as human beings, not just the capacity to be kind, but the very choice of kindness. And what does that mean? How is that measured? You can't use a yardstick. It's like I was saying just before: it's not like measuring how much you've grown in a year. It's not exactly quantifiable, is it? How do we know we've been kind? What is being kind, anyway? — R.J. Palacio

One of the great challenges in healthcare technology is that medicine is at once an enormous business and an exquisitely human endeavor; it requires the ruthless efficiency of the modern manufacturing plant and the gentle hand-holding of the parish priest; it is about science, but also about art; it is eminently quantifiable and yet stubbornly not. — Robert Wachter

To say that the humanities can be a path to truth itself is to challenge one of our most closely held beliefs. We live not only in a scientific world, but also in a scientistic one: a world that thinks that science - empirical, objective, quantifiable - is the exclusive form of knowledge, and that other methods of inquiry are valid only insofar as they approximate its methods. But the humanities and science face in opposite directions. They don't just work in different ways; they work on different things. — William Deresiewicz

Beauty is undefinable in language. It's something that you see when you see it, or you feel when you feel it, or you hear when you hear it. It usually encompasses all five of the senses. It can't exist without it being a somehow sensorial experience. But, I don't think it's quantifiable. Nothing is really quantifiable. Nothing is certain in love and friendship. We all try to understand these things. — Colin Farrell

The use of method as the criterion of science abolishes theoretical relevance. As a consequence, all propositions concerning facts will be promoted to the dignity of science, regardless of their relevance, as long as they result from a correct use of method. Since the ocean of facts is infinite, a prodigious expansion of science in the sociological sense becomes possible, giving employment to scientistic technicians and leading to the fantastic accumulation of irrelevant knowledge through huge "research projects" whose most interesting features is the quantifiable expense that has gone into their production. — Eric Voegelin

My provocative statement is that we desperately need a serious, scientific theory of cities and scientific theory means quantifiable, relying on underlying generic principles that can be made in a - put into a predictive framework. That's the quest. — Geoffrey West

My friend Chip Ward speaks of "the tyranny of the quantifiable," of the way what can be measured almost always takes precedence over what cannot: private profit over public good; speed and efficiency over enjoyment and quality; the utilitarian over the mysteries and meanings that are of greater use to our survival and to more than our survival, to lives that have some purpose and value that survive beyond us to make a civilization worth having. — Rebecca Solnit

The tyranny of the quantifiable is partly the failure of language and discourse to describe more complex, subtle, and fluid phenomena, as well as the failure of those who shape opinions and make decisions to understand and value these slipperier things. It is difficult, sometimes even impossible, to value what cannot be named or described, and so the task of naming and describing is an essential one in any revolt against the status quo of capitalism and consumerism. — Rebecca Solnit

You must ask, "What do we mean by great results?" Your goals don't have to be quantifiable, but they do have to be describable. Some leaders try to insist, "The only acceptable goals are measurable," but that's actually an undisciplined statement. Lots of goals-beauty, quality, life change, love-are worthy but not quantifiable. But you do have to be able to tell if you're making progress. — James C. Collins

People who are incapable of having any kind of intimate relationship have to turn to feeling this incredible hunger and void, have to turn to some quantifiable external product to make them feel whole. — Jennifer Connelly

Are all things quantifiable, and all numbers fraught with poetic possibility? — Yoko Ogawa

But there is a reason why religions insist so much on strange events in the sky, as well as on less quantifiable phenomena such as dreams and visions. All of these things cater to our inborn stupidity, and our willingness to be persuaded against all the evidence that we are indeed the center of the universe and that everything is arranged with us in mind. — Christopher Hitchens

Mathematics is natural. Love is natural. It only makes sense that it's mathematically quantifiable. — Ally Blake

Some of these challenges may be foreseable, many of them may not. Some of the risks associated with a rapidly changing climate may be quantifiable, many of them may not. Doing nothing is not an option. — Mike Hulme

The belief that rational and quantifiable disciplines such as science can be used to perfect human society is no less absurd than a belief in magic, angels, and divine intervention. — Chris Hedges

My own task these past twenty years or so of living by words has been to try to find or make a language to describe the subtleties, the incalculables, the pleasures and meanings - impossible to categorize - at the heart of things My friend Chip Ward speaks of "the tyranny of the quantifiable," of the way what can be measured almost always takes precedence over what cannot. — Rebecca Solnit

It says quite clearly that processes within the brain that trigger a hormone release can cause enormous effects on the body." It says, that is, that what we think can change our bodies, that there is a quantifiable chemical link between mind and matter, spirit and body, imagination and reality. Spiritual leaders, great thinkers, artists have been saying this very thing for ages, but the fact that hardheaded, hard-research oriented neuroscientists are not just saying it but actually identifying and measuring the very neurochemicals that link idea with matter adds a new legitimacy and urgency to the idea. — Michael Hutchison

A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome. — Katie Salen

Since ancient times, the left side has stood for the side of the unconscious or the unknown; the right side, by contrast, has represented the side of consciousness or wakefulness. Through the late twentieth century, the movement of the Left limited themselves to a materialist understanding of reality- exemplified by Marxism- demanding social justice and economic equality but not the restoration of intuition and the recognition of the hidden, qualitative dimensions of being suppressed by the mental-rational consciousness, narrowly focused on the quantifiable. — Jean Gebser

Fire relatively quickly. A poorly performing employee is likely also an unhappy employee and that can be a cancer to your company's culture. If an employee is no longer achieving what you want or is not fitting in for whatever reason, think about the specific accomplishments or behavior you're looking for. Sit down with him and give him very specific, quantifiable goals you want him to accomplish over the next two months. If he can't meet your requirements in that two-month period, let him go. You will never regret it. Save — Chris LoPresti

Dostoevsky believed that the gods of rationalism and materialist utilitarianism had joined in conspiracy against all other ethical systems ... The accumulation of capital, or the acquisition of money, are endeavors par excellence which establish a quantifiable goal: hence they are directly amenable to maximization formulae. — John Carroll

There is no final stage in nirvana. Nirvana is beyond definition. It is not quantifiable. — Frederick Lenz

One's real worth is never a quantifiable thing. — Malcolm Forbes

But love isn't quantifiable on paper. — Maggie Stiefvater

Compassion has more to do with the attitude we bring to our encounters with other people than with any quantifiable metric of giving. — Sharon Salzberg

Chronological time is what we measure by clocks and calendars; it is always linear, orderly, quantifiable, and mechanical. Kairotic time is organic, rhythmic, bodily, leisurely, and aperiodic; it is the inner cadence that brings fruit to ripeness, a woman to childbirth, a man to change the direction of his life. — Sam Keen

The reality, I believe, is that all change starts small. The big picture is just too unwieldy, too incomprehensible and seemingly immovable. But give us something individual, quantifiable and personalize-able and, suddenly, our perspective shifts to the one. — Mick Ebeling

Emotion is not a defect in an otherwise perfect reasoning machine. Reason, unfettered from human feeling, has led to as many horrors as any crusader's zeal. What use is pity in a world devoted to maximizing efficiency and productivity? Scientific husbandry tells us to weed out the sick, the infirm, the weak. The ruthless efficiency of euthanasia initiatives and ethnic cleansing are but the programmatic application of Nietzsche's point: from any quantifiable cost-benefit analysis, the principles of animal husbandry should apply to the human race. Charles Darwin himself acknowledged that strict obedience to "hard reason" rather than sympathy for fellow humans would represent a sacrifice of "the noblest part of our nature."6 It is the human heart resonating with empathy, not the logical brain attuned to the mathematics of efficiency, that revolts at cruelty and inhumanity. In — Terryl L. Givens

Meditation essentially means having a great time. Some people have applied a sense or a feeling to the meditative experience, such that, meditation has become a quantifiable religious experience, which means it's not any fun! — Frederick Lenz

Love was not a quantifiable substance. There was always more of it somewhere, and even after one love had been lost, it was by no means impossible to find another. — Paul Auster

It was right then and there that she'd realized there was no quota on misery for people, no quantifiable threshold that once reached, got you miraculously taken out of the distress pool. — J.R. Ward

Life is not quantifiable in terms of age, but I suppose in my fifties I am more grounded and more at ease in my own skin than when I was younger. I have a confidence that I didn't have before from the experiences I've had. — Annie Lennox

The computer, being a mechanical moron, can handle only quantifiable data. — Peter Drucker

For many girls, the pressure to be considered "hot" is felt on a nearly continual basis online. The sites with which they most commonly interact encourage them to post images of themselves, and employ the "liking" feature, with which users can judge their appearance and, in effect, rate them. When girls post their pictures on Instagram or Snapchat or Facebook, they know they will be judged for their "hotness," and in a quantifiable way, with numbers of likes. Social media, which gave us selfies, seems to encourage an undue focus on appearance for everyone, but for girls, this focus is combined with a pervasive sexualization of girls in the wider culture, an overarching trend which is already having serious consequences. — Nancy Jo Sales

Unlike return, however, risk is no more quantifiable at the end of an investment that it was at its beginning. Risk simply cannot be described by a single number. Intuitively we understand that risk varies from investment to investment: a government bond is not as risky as the stock of a high-technology company. But investments do not provide information about their risks the way food packages provide nutritional data. — Seth Klarman

The author indicts "our culture's rush toward efficiency, speed, quantification, and distraction" and counters with the value of "the time and attention required to find the best words and images and then hold them together in ways that illuminate. This, she diagnoses, "is now wildly countercultural. It is inefficient. Its value is not readily quantifiable. Its utility is intangible. — Cherie Harder

I worked in sales. It was definable, it had a quantifiable approach to accomplishment that had a great deal of importance to me. It had a degree of clarity that I loved. And of course, it was core. — Anne M. Mulcahy

Now intelligence seemed quantifiable. You could measure someone's actual or potential height, and now, it seemed, you could also measure someone's actual or potential intelligence. We had one dimension of mental ability along which we could array everyone ... The whole concept has to be challenged; in fact, it has to be replaced. — Howard Gardner

Modern science was born through the Scientific Revolution in the 11th/17th century at a time when, as we saw earlier, European philosophy had itself rebelled against revelation and the religious world view. The background of modern science is a particular philosophical outlook which sees the parameters of the physical world, that is, space, time, matter and energy to be realities that are independent of higher orders of being and cut off from the power of God, at least during the unfolding of the history of the cosmos. It views the physical world as being primarily the subject of mathematicization and quatification and, in a sense, absolutizes the mathematical study of nature relegating the non-quantifiable aspects of physical existence to irrelevance. — Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Having fewer unhealthy days and, in turn, more days when you have the energy to get things done is probably the global constant through which businesses and individuals can think about the quantifiable upside of increasing wellbeing. — Tom Rath

We can become very short-sighted in terms of objectives. The first thing to go during times of economic crisis and budget cuts is funding for things that are essential and not-quantifiable, like the arts. Save Big Bird — Julia Stiles

Fashion is temporary; fashion is a race. What it's doing is giving you something that you say, "This is the outer wrapping of me." Style is something else. It's not quantifiable. Fashion is about selling. Fashion is about what's in. Style is independent of that; style is individual. — Annie Lennox

But risk perception may not be about quantifiable risk so much as it is about immeasurable fear. — Eula Biss

What I've learned is there's a scientifically proven phenomenon that's attached to gratitude, and that if you consciously take note of what is good in your life, quantifiable benefits happen. — Deborah Norville

As much as we think of performance management as numeric and thus perfectly quantifiable, it is as much a product of context and social science as the products we design and develop. — Steven Sinofsky

Marketing automation is the technology that propels your business into a new era of relationship based marketing with quantifiable results. When powerful technology meets effective implementation and internal process management, your company will soon find itself on a journey that leads to new heights of business success. — Jon Miller

I was always attracted not by some quantifiable, external beauty, but by something deep down, something absolute. Just as some people have a secret love for rainstorms, earthquakes, or blackouts, I liked that certain undefinable something directed my way by members of the opposite sex. For want of a better word, call it magnetism. Like it or not, it's a kind of power that snares people and reels them in. — Haruki Murakami

The light is not quantifiable. You experience it in meditation when thought stops. When you go beyond the limitations of the ego, the light is waiting for you. — Frederick Lenz

I'm so deeply in love with you it's hard to fathom. No words could provide quantifiable resonance or measure. — Truth Devour

I have come to the realization that history is not a fixed thing, a collection of precise dates, facts and events (even cogent commencement quotes) that add up to a quantifiable, certain, confidently known, truth. It is a mysterious and malleable thing. — Ken Burns

I put away that stuffed God I had all stitched up with my human understandings and fears. God is less formulaic and quantifiable as he once used to be, but experiencing the reality of his love is infinitely better than dragging that other one around. — Jim Palmer

True leaders have so much power they are willing to give it away. Power is not a fixed, quantifiable sum; instead it is an unlimited abstraction which grows as it is shared. — Marlene Caroselli

You will find scientists who will tell you - and they deeply believe it - that we're quantifiable. We are knowable. That if I can take a high enough resolution picture of all of you - not just your outsides, but your genes, your DNA, all the way down to your atoms - I can know everything about you and everything that you will be. There are people who believe this. And what this tells me is, no. No! All the way down, to the bottom of our thoughts, there's just more mystery. — Jad Abumrad

On the question of whether a behavioral science can in principle be constructed, we shall take no sides. That some kinds of human behavior can be described and even predicted in terms of objectively verifiable and quantifiable data seems to us to have been established. — Anatol Rapoport