Quotes & Sayings About Ranking Things

The (capital punishment) controversy passes the anarch by. For him, the linking of death and punishment is absurd. In this respect, he is closer to the wrongdoer than to the judge, for the high-ranking culprit who is condemned to death is not prepared to acknowledge his sentence as atonement; rather, he sees his guilt in his own inadequacy. Thus, he recognizes himself not as a moral but as a tragic person. — Ernst Junger

What's worse than dead? Is there a new ranking system in the Wilds I'm unaware of? — Donna Augustine

We should spend less time ranking children and more time helping them to identify their natural competencies and gifts, and cultivate those. — Daniel Goleman

You know, a lot of things changed. What never changed is the illusion to keep playing tennis, the illusion to keep doing well the things, and the illusion to be in a good position of the ranking and play these kind of matches. — Rafael Nadal

There is no formula when it comes to gender and sexuality. Yet it is often only people whose gender identity and/or sexual orientation negates society's heteronormative and cisnormative standards who are targets of stigma, discrimination, and violence. I wish that instead of investing in these hierarchies of what's right and who's wrong, what's authentic and who's not, and ranking people according to these rigid standards that ignore diversity in our genders and sexualities, we gave people freedom and resources to define, determine, and declare who they are. — Janet Mock

I am the only high-ranking U.S. official to ever meet with Kim Jong-il, and we are the same height and both wear high heels. — Madeleine Albright

mounted hordes from the steppes, such as the Scythians, Huns, Mongols, Turks, Magyars, Tatars, Mughals, and Manchus. For two thousand years these warriors deployed meticulously crafted composite bows (made from a glued laminate of wood, tendon, and horn) to run up immense body counts in their sackings and raids. These tribes were responsible for numbers 3, 5, 11, and 15 on the top-twenty-one list, and they take four of the top six slots in the population-adjusted ranking. — Steven Pinker

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself. — Scott McClellan

My website, my email magazine, my blog, my books, my corporate seminars, and my public seminars all create the ability for social media to work and all build reputation and ranking. — Jeffrey Gitomer

Although a large branch of game theory is devoted to the study of expected utility, we generally consider each player's payoffs as a ranking of his most preferred outcome to his least preferred outcome. — William Spaniel

In some ways we indisputably are, but a major new ranking of livability in 132 countries puts the United States in a sobering 16th place. We underperform because our economic and military strengths don't translate into well-being for the average citizen. — Anonymous

The assumption lurking beneath a desire for hierarchy is that we can't really trust our partners to act well without a set of rules. That without a formal ranking to remind our partners that we come first, we will lose our status, lose the things we most value about our relationship, lose our sense of security, or even lose the relationship entirely. But as we've said before, if your partner can't be trusted to work with you on your needs when asked, she probably can't be trusted to follow rules. — Franklin Veaux

Google gives preference to its own products, so having a Google+ account influences your search rankings. — Gary Vaynerchuk

But now I began to notice odd moments that suggested he was not the brightest lighthouse on the coastline. For instance, he once got very cross during assembly because he felt the boys had become lazy, and so he demanded that every single boy in the school should improve his ranking in class in the course of the next fortnight. — John Cleese

Whatever characterization one may choose to place on Satan, "imbecile message maker" doesn't fit. This was no third-ranking demon out there in the wilderness throwing lines at Christ. This was the manic master who understood the power of words. He spun what he hoped would be a strike. He failed; Christ succeeded. They both used words. — William E. Jefferson

Other primates, of course, have none of these problems, but even they strive for a certain kind of society. In their behavior, we recognize the same values we pursue ourselves. For example, female chimpanzees have been seen to drag reluctant males toward each other to make up after a fight, while removing weapons from their hands. Moreover, high-ranking males regularly act as impartial arbiters to settle disputes in the community. I take these hints of community concern as a sign that the building blocks of morality are older than humanity, and that we don't need God to explain how we got to where we are today. On — Frans De Waal

Money is not the thing that drives me. I like to develop assets to create value. No one cares how rich you are or what your ranking is in Forbes magazine. — Mikhail Prokhorov

Now quantitatively we rank things on something called alpha over standard deviation, which is the return independent of the market divided by volatility. Usually, to get a high ranking, you need some buying pressure. — Louis Navellier

I was fortunate to start the sport at a young age. I was 6 years old when my dad started teaching me. We started playing tournaments together when I was 11, in the lower ranking of beach volleyball in California. We weren't playing against kids; we played against grown men, so immediately, I had to raise my game to compete. — Karch Kiraly

We want people doing white hat search engine optimization (or even no search engine optimization at all) to be free to focus on creating amazing, compelling web sites. As always, we'll keep our ears open for feedback on ways to iterate and improve our ranking algorithms toward that goal. — Matt Cutts

When those eyes of fire discover a heart that is fully set to love Him through wholehearted obedience, no matter their station or ranking, He is moved. — Anna Blanc

His actions had saved three US cities from annihilation but only a few very high-ranking people knew it. Fairfax was just pleased he could still wear jeans and sneakers to work. — Matthew Reilly

Certainty is not biologically possible. We must learn (and teach our children) to tolerate the unpleasantness of uncertainty. Science has given us the language and tools of probabilities. We have methods for analyzing and ranking opinion according to their likelihood of correctness. That is enough. — Robert A. Burton

Since 2008, no high-ranking executive from any financial institution has gone to jail, not one, for any of the systemic crimes that wiped out 40 percent of the world's wealth. — Matt Taibbi

Overeating is the addiction of choice of carers, and that's why it's come to be regarded as the lowest-ranking of all the addictions. It's a way of fucking yourself up while still remaining fully functional, because you have to. Fat people aren't indulging in the "luxury" of their addiction making them useless, chaotic, or a burden. Instead, they are slowly self-destructing in a way that doesn't inconvenience anyone. And that's why it's so often a woman's addiction of choice. All the quietly eating mums. All the KitKats in office drawers. All the unhappy moments, late at night, caught only in the fridge light. — Caitlin Moran

Yet even among those who are not economically poor, work remains, as a matter of experience, a great burden. Those whose work consists of serving the great corporate principalities, for instance, are subject to dehumanized, enslaving, frequently idolatrous claims over their lives. Does anyone seriously suppose that the high-ranking executives involved in the price-fixing scandals in some of the great corporations in this country are anything but prisoners, no more truly free than serfs, confined and conformed to the interest of the principalities they serve? — William Stringfellow

I keep track of my blog stats, Facebook subs, my Amazon rank, Twitter followers, Facebook likes per posts, my chess ranking. I get stressed when they all don't go up. — James Altucher

At a national political convention, you have hundreds of people who consider themselves at least as important as the Secretary of Commerce. If it's a Democratic convention, you also have dozens of A-list Hollywood and music celebrities. (If it's a Republican convention, you have Bo Derek.) Also you have swarms of lower-ranking Washington minions with titles like Deputy Assistant to the Associate Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff who are trying to move up the ladder to Deputy Associate to the Assistant Acting Deputy Assistant Understudy. — Dave Barry

If I win and play well, then the ranking will take care of itself. Defending points is really not a problem. Just go out and play and not worry about it. — Pete Sampras

Of course my family and friends are incredibly valuable to me. They keep me sane, they teach me things and I love spending time with them. I think that ranking what you value is a sort of western and linear way of looking at things. — Julia Stiles

Reaching the top 100 was always my goal since I started to play as a pro. In '05 I came quite close, reaching a ranking of No. 129, but then was stopped by a major shoulder injury. — Marco Chiudinelli

My objective has always been to get better, no matter where my ranking is. — Luke Donald

The Central Propaganda Department is the highest-ranking censorship agency in China. And it has control over everything from the appointment of newspaper editors to university professors to the way that films are cut and distributed. — Evan Osnos

Remember, I was only in to fighting; I wasn't a high-ranking underworld figure selling the Crown Jewels! I wasn't the Merthyr Mafia and I had no connections with the goings on of petty criminal matters. — Stephen Richards

From time to time you'll see documentaries about low-ranked wolves who somehow rise to the top of the pack - an omega that earns a position as an alpha. Frankly, I don't buy it. I think that, in actuality, those documentary makers have misidentified the wolf in the first place. For example, an alpha personality, to the man on the street, is usually considered bold and take-charge and forceful. In the wolf world, though that describes the beta rank. Likewise, an omega wolf - a bottom-ranking, timid, nervous animal - can often be confused with a wolf who hangs behind the others, wary, protecting himself, trying to figure out the Big Picture.
Or in other words: There are no fairy tales in the wild, no Cinderella stories. The lowly wolf that seems to rise to the top of the pack was really an alpha all along. — Jodi Picoult

That's weird. 'Cause many high-ranking staff members at the USDA were employed by, or are otherwise affiliated with, the meat and dairy industries.159 And if the group responsible for "the safety of meat, poultry, and egg products" is run by people from the same industries they're supposed to be protecting us from ... well, that would be a conflict of interest. And it is. — Rory Freedman

There is no news media. There's simply a bunch of people on television and in newspapers who are ranking members of the Democrat Party. — Rush Limbaugh

I'm the ranking Republican on the foreign aid appropriations subcommittee, so I know Tunisia well. — Lindsey Graham