Quotes & Sayings About Reduce

Greening school design provides an extraordinarily cost-effective way to enhance student learning, reduce health and operational costs and, ultimately, increase school quality and competitiveness. — Gregory Kats

It's the usual utopian vision. This time they were saying it'll reduce waste. If stores know what their customers want, then they don't overproduce, don't overship, don't have to throw stuff away when it's not bought. I mean, like everything else you guys are pushing, it sounds perfect, sounds progressive, but it carries with it more control, more central tracking of everything we do. — Dave Eggers

If a rise in wages does not raise prices, a fall will not reduce them. — Joan Robinson

For the planet's sake, I hope we have bird flu or some other thing that will reduce the population, because otherwise we're doomed. — Susan Blackmore

A vast technology has been developed to prevent, reduce, or terminate exhausting labor and physical damage. It is now dedicated to the production of the most trivial conveniences and comfort. — B.F. Skinner

Diversifying sufficiently among uncorrelated risks can reduce portfolio risk toward zero. But financial engineers should know that's not true of a portfolio of correlated risks. — Harry Markowitz

People from the world's richest countries should be prepared to accept the burden of debt reduction for heavily indebted poor countries, and should urge their leaders to fulfill the pledges made to reduce world poverty, especially in Africa, by the year 2015. — Pope Benedict XVI

It is obvious that the aspects of mystery which gather round the word "election" are not confined to it alone. An important class of words, such as "calling," "predestination" "foreknowledge," "purpose," "gift," bears this same character; asserting or connoting, in appropriate contexts, the element of the inscrutable and sovereign in the action of the Divine will upon man, and particularly upon man's will and affection toward God. And it will be felt by careful students of the Bible in its larger and more general teachings that one deep characteristic of the Book, which with all its boundless multiplicity is yet one, is to emphasize on the side of man everything that can humble, convict, reduce to worshipping silence (see for typical passages Job 40:3, 1; Ro 3:19), and on the side of God everything which can bring home to man the transcendence and sovereign claims of his almighty Maker. — James Orr

We must leave Christmas to be what it is, for to reduce it to the stuff of myth and whimsy is take the single and sole hope of a dying humanity and obliterate it. And I would contend that such an action is insanity of the greatest sort. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

We still have too much air and water pollution and we still need to work to reduce it. But we also need to put the problem of pollution into a historical as well as scientific perspective ... — Ronald Reagan

We have shared responsibility for global climate; we have to reduce climate change below 2 degrees Celsius. — Angela Merkel

Welfare states on both sides of the Atlantic have discovered that largesse to losers does not reduce their hostility to society, but only increases it. Far from producing gratitude, generosity is seen as an admission of guilt, and the reparations as inadequate compensations for injustices - leading to worsening behavior by the recipients. — Thomas Sowell

War as a moral metaphor is limited, limiting, and dangerous. By reducing the choices of action to "a war against" whatever-it-is, you divide the world into Me or Us (good) and Them or It (bad) and reduce the ethical complexity and moral richness of our life to Yes/No, On/Off. This is puerile, misleading, and degrading. In stories, it evades any solution but violence and offers the reader mere infantile reassurance. All too often the heroes of such fantasies behave exactly as the villains do, acting with mindless violence, but the hero is on the "right" side and therefore will win. Right makes might. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Unless you reduce the long-term spending burden, you cannot cut taxes in any lasting way, but can only shift the burden of taxes from the present to the future. — Peter George Peterson

The Luddites ... asserted the precedence of community needs over technological innovation and monetary profit; ... The victory of industrialism over Luddism was overwhelming and unconditional; it was undoubtedly the most complete, significant, and lasting victory of modern times. ... To this day, if you say you would be willing to forbid, restrict, or reduce the use of technological devices in order to protect the community -- or to protect the good health of nature on which the community depends -- you will be calle4d a Luddite, and it will not be a compliment. ... Technological determinism has triumphed. — Wendell Berry

Experience conclusively shows that index-fund buyers are likely to obtain results exceeding those of the typical fund manager, whose large advisory fees and substantial portfolio turnover tend to reduce investment yields. Many people will find the guarantee of playing the stock-market game at par every round a very attractive one. The index fund is a sensible, serviceable method for obtaining the market's rate of return with absolutely no effort and minimal expense. — Burton Malkiel

Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. — Henry David Thoreau

You are so full of light," I say after a moment. "You align with joy, and I with fear and fury. If you could see into my thoughts, you would surely turn away. So why would you stay with me, even if return to Kenettra and resume our lives?"

"You paint me as a saint," he murmurs. "But I aligned with greed solely to prevent that."

Even now, he can make my lips twitch with a smile. "I'm serious, Magiano."

"As am I. None of us are saints. I have seen your darkness, yes, and know your struggle. I won't deny it." He touches my chin with one hand. At this gesture, the whispers seem to settle, pushed away where I can't hear them. "But you are also passionate and ambitious and loyal. You are a thousand things, mi Adelinetta, not just one. Do not reduce yourself to that. — Marie Lu

must reason your way through the problem. Using line only, draw one simple geometric shape, such as a square, triangle or circle. Without overlapping or intersecting, draw a different shape. Now, draw another. Choose your favorite. Make the other 2 like your favorite. Enlarge one of the shapes. Reduce one of them. Make one shape touch one edge of the page. Make the other — Paper Monument

An encounter with generosity can remind us that life always overflows our attempts to reduce it to a commodity or a transaction - because it is a gift. — Makoto Fuijmura

Reduce complexity. The single most important reason to create a routine is to reduce a program's complexity. Create a routine to hide information so that you won't need to think about it. — Steve McConnell

The overarching goal of Tesla is to help reduce carbon emissions and that means low cost and high volume. We will also serve as an example to the auto industry, proving that the technology really works and customers want to buy electric vehicles. — Elon Musk

Depression is a serious problem, but drugs are not the answer. In the long run, psychotherapy is both cheaper and more effective, even for very serious levels of depression. Physical exercise and self-help books based on CBT can also be useful, either alone or in combination with therapy. Reducing social and economic inequality would also reduce the incidence of depression. — Irving Kirsch

I say that creeds, dogmas, and theologies are inventions of the mind. It is the nature of the mind to make sense out of experience, to reduce the conglomerates of experience to units of comprehension which we call principles, or ideologies, or concepts. Religious experience is dynamic, fluid, effervescent, yeasty. But the mind can't handle these so it has to imprison religious experience in some way, get it bottled up. Then, when the experience quiets down, the mind draws a bead on it and extracts concepts, notions, dogmas, so that religious experience can make sense to the mind. — Howard Thurman

The more government takes in taxes, the less incentive people have to work. What coal miner or assembly-line worker jumps at the offer of overtime when he knows Uncle Sam is going to take sixty percent or more of his extra pay? ... Any system that penalizes success and accomplishment is wrong. Any system that discourages work, discourages productivity, discourages economic progress, is wrong. If, on the other hand, you reduce tax rates and allow people to spend or save more of what they earn, they'll be more industrious; they'll have more incentive to work hard, and money they earn will add fuel to the great economic machine that energizes our national progress. The result: more prosperity for all - and more revenue for government.4 — Donald J. Trump

Typical mergers happen when there are two competitors coming together, and they reduce overhead. — Tony Fadell

When we reduce Christianity to a negative system where fasting becomes more sacred than feasting, law wins out over grace, and correct theology becomes more important than divine encounter, we in effect become the modern-day Pharisees - whose ministry Jesus was set against. — Debra Hirsch

I 'd never seen him cry; I didn't think he could . It would have to take something greater than the end of the world to reduce Vaughn Ashby to tears . — Lauren DeStefano

When people switch to car-sharing from car ownership, they reduce their vehicle miles traveled by 44 percent, and thus their greenhouse gas emissions go down by, like, 40 percent. — Jessica Scorpio

Weak banks endangered sovereigns that were called upon to save them, and weak sovereigns endangered banks holding bonds at risk of default. Recession worsened the debt ratio, but austerity to reduce borrowing suppressed growth, or caused even worse recession. — John Peet

When you reduce taxes on higher earners it's vital to be reducing them on lower earning people as well so the nation shares in the approach. — William Hague

The Prayer of Examine produces within us the priceless grace of self-knowledge. I wish I could adequately explain to you how great a grace this truly is. Unfortunately, contemporary men and women simply do not value self-knowledge in the same way that all preceding generations have. For us technocratic knowledge reigns supreme. Even when we pursue self-knowledge, we all too often reduce it to a hedonistic search for personal peace and prosperity. How poor we are! Even the pagan philosophers were wiser than this generation. They knew that an unexamined life was not worth living. — Richard J. Foster

This is what I term a reduction lifestyle - reduce excessive consumption, unnecessary obligations, and overbearing clutter. When — Cristin Frank

I would be remiss, as a scientist who studied this, if I didn't mention the following two things: The first is that, most importantly, we need to do, as a society, in this country and globally, whatever we can to reduce population" ... "Our whole economic system is based on growth, and growth of our population, and this economic madness has to end. — John Miller

A peek-a-boo world, where now this event, now that, pops into view for a moment, then vanishes again. It is an improbable world. It is a world in which the idea of human progress, as Bacon expressed it, has been replaced by the idea of technological progress. The aim is not to reduce ignorance, superstition, and suffering but to accommodate ourselves to the requirements of new technologies. We tell ourselves, of course, that such accommodations will lead to a better life, but that is only the rhetorical residue of a vanishing technocracy. We are a culture consuming itself with information, and many of us do not even wonder how to control the process. We proceed under the assumption that information is our friend, believing that cultures may suffer grievously from a lack of information, which, of course, they do. It is only now beginning to be understood that cultures may also suffer grievously from information glut, information without meaning, information without control mechanisms. — Neil Postman

Nutshells close and encapsulate, shelter and protect, reduce and simplify, while everything in deconstruction is turned toward opening, exposure, expansion, and complexification, toward releasing unheard of, undreamt of possibilities to come, toward cracking nutshells wherever they appear. — John D. Caputo

When we turn to one another for counsel we reduce the number of our enemies. — Khalil Gibran

Private loans will utilize existing resources and capital far better than government loans. Government loans will waste far more capital and resources than private loans. Government loans, in short, as compared with private loans, will reduce production, not increase it. — Henry Hazlitt

We shall continue, in this era of negotiation, to work for the limitation of nuclear arms and to reduce the danger of confrontation between the great powers. — Richard M. Nixon

The business of the law is to make sense of the confusion of what we call human life - to reduce it to order but at the same time to give it possibility, scope, even dignity. — Archibald MacLeish

We must distinguish between the kind of structural transformation that would leave in place (even increase) the realities of the exploitation of labor, and one that would undo this kind of exploitation or at least radically reduce it — Immanuel Wallerstein

You don't tell people who disagree with you they'd be better off somewhere else. And you don't reduce them to stereotypes; you address them as fully formed people worthy of respect. You try to persuade them. — Peggy Noonan

If the painful history of the human and Christian striving for God proves anything, it surely proves this: that any attempt to reduce God to the scope of our own comprehension leads to the absurd. We can only speak rightly about him if we renounce the attempt to comprehend and let him be the uncomprehended. Any doctrine of the Trinity, therefore, cannot aim at being a perfect comprehension of God. It is a frontier notice, a discouraging gesture pointing over to unchartable territory. It is not a definition that confines a thing to the pigeonholes of human knowledge, nor is it a concept that would put the thing within the grasp of the human mind. — Pope Benedict XVI

I'd rather be an adviser. I don't wanna become a trainer because I think with the knowledge and the business sense that I've accomplished through my career and have credibility, why would I reduce myself down to being in a gym with a bunch of training which is not a bad thing to give advice, but I can do that with a suit and tie on and also be there when the cheques are written. I don't wanna be there when the cheques are handed down from 3 or 4 people's hands and then it hits mine as a trainer because 9/10 times, deductions have come out of that. — Bernard Hopkins

You know, they say you can reduce genius to someone who spent 10,000 hours trying to get good at something. I'm not claiming either one of those. I haven't done anything for 10,000 hours but sleep. But you do stuff enough, you get better at it. Usually it's a simple thing like that. Essentially, a brainless endeavor. — Randy Newman

We're trying to publicize this one and make people realize that the gun industry can clean up its act and can operate in a way that can reduce the likelihood of guns killing police officers and other innocent people. — Michael D. Barnes

By 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth's population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people. — Paul R. Ehrlich

Everything started to move in slow motion. A vehicle was coming up the hill in the opposite direction, facing us but in its own lane. With vehicles parked on both sides of the road, this meant that there was just a narrow passage area for both vehicles to pass through. However, he had yet to reduce his speed, and now I knew which car he was going to hit. I was frozen stiff with fear in the front passenger seat, as I helplessly watched him slam into the back of a parked car. I was not wearing a seat belt, so upon impact my head crashed into the windshield. I was then slammed back into my seat, but with such force that everything went black. — Drexel Deal

Probation is impossible," Baker said. "I can't reduce a death-penalty case to a probatable offense. — Scott Pratt

For agnosticism is, in a sense, what I am preaching. I do not wish to reduce the sceptical element in your minds. I am only suggesting that it need not be reserved exclusively for the New Testament and the Creeds. Try doubting something else. — C.S. Lewis

One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it. If you do that, you will double the danger. But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half. — Winston S. Churchill

Make no mistake: I will work with both Democrats and Republicans to cut wasteful spending and reduce our debt in a balanced, responsible way. — Ann McLane Kuster

The ultimate way to reduce stress is find the cause and melt it away with love. — Debasish Mridha

The terrible part of this looming catastrophe is that people have been working on solutions for years and have developed concrete steps to massively reduce our energy use, while stimulating whole new industries and technologies that are more efficient and affordable. — David Suzuki

The State insists that, by thus quarantining the general reading public against books not too rugged for grown men and women in order to shield juvenile innocence, it is exercising its power to promote the general welfare. Surely this is to burn the house to roast the pig ... The incidence of this enactment is to reduce the adult population of Michigan to reading only what is fit for children. — Felix Frankfurter

Oftentimes when you have the federal government or others step in and start to raise minimum wage, what happens is you take away or reduce some people's opportunity to grab the bottom rung of the economic ladder to get the opportunities and the skills that you need to move up that economic ladder. — Kevin Madden

Tolerance is a virtue, but like all virtues, when exaggerated, it transforms itself into a vice. We need to be careful of the 'tolerance trap' so that we are not swallowed up in it. The permissiveness afforded by the weakening of the laws of the land to tolerate legalized acts of immorality does not reduce the serious spiritual consequence that is the result of the violation of God's law of chastity. — Boyd K. Packer

Stated in the simplest terms, the recognized solution to the problem of foodborne illness is a comprehensive prevention strategy that involves all participants in the food system, domestic and foreign, doing their part to minimize the likelihood of harmful contamination. And that is the strategy mandated by FSMA. It is not a strategy that assumes we can achieve a zero-risk food supply, but it is a strategy grounded in the conviction that we can better protect consumers and the economic vigor of the food system if everyone involved implements reasonably available measures to reduce risk. — Michael R. Taylor

It's sobering really," she thought, "how easy it is to reduce a human being to the state of an animal. You just take away some paraphernalia like clothing and put him in another environment. I bet that if I were to keep him there for a few months he would simply adapt to the swine lifestyle. A pity, but I haven't got time to experiment. But a few days, well, they are necessary to take his hope away and mollify his spirit. — Andrew Ashling

We must aim for a zero-tolerance approach to hospital-acquired infections; we have to be clear about who's in charge at ward level, so there's proper accountability, and we need to reduce the reliance on agency nursing staff. — Andrew Lansley

I think, social business is the most logical thing to do. If we had done that, we could reduce all the problems we have. — Muhammad Yunus

One essential object is to choose that arrangement which shall tend to reduce to a minimum the time necessary for completing the calculation. — Ada Lovelace

I am certainly interested in a tribunal in which, for having used my reason, I was deemed little less than a heretic. Who knows but men will reduce me from the profession of a philosopher to that of historian of the Inquisition! — Galileo Galilei

After trying out a number of ways to reduce inequalities and failing, I was gradually forced to conclude that the decisive factors were the people, their natural abilities, education and training. Knowledge and the possession of technology were vital for the creation of wealth. — Lee Kuan Yew

In a sense, Britain inadvertently, through its actions in Hong Kong, did more to reduce world poverty than all the aid programs that we've undertaken in the last century, — Paul Romer

The question is: How do we reduce spending from 25% of GDP, which is where Obama put us? The focus is on total government spending. Can we bring it down, in a reasonable and politically acceptable way? That's what the Paul Ryan plan does. It puts us on a gradual reform path to reducing the size of government. — Grover Norquist

Most philosophers do not want intellectual matters to reduce to a question of morality (obedience or rebellion to God's Word). They want to hold the intellect or reason to be above matters of moral volition. They hold that truth is obtainable and testable no matter what ethical condition the thinker is in.
Hence, they maintain that all disputes must be rationally resolvable, and a rational case for a philosophic position relies on a valid chain of discursive argumentation that takes us back to incontestable first principles or facts. — Greg L. Bahnsen

To my mind, every emergency room should have a low-intensity laser for people with stroke or head trauma. This therapy would be especially important for head injuries, because there is no effective drug therapy for traumatic brain injury. Uri Oron has also shown that low-intensity laser light can reduce scar formation in animals that have had heart attacks; perhaps lasers should be used in emergency rooms for cardiac — Norman Doidge

The necessity of reform mustn't be allowed to become a form of blackmail serving to limit, reduce, or halt the exercise of criticism. Under no circumstances should one pay attention to those who tell one: "Don't criticize, since you're not capable of carrying out a reform." That's ministerial cabinet talk. Critique doesn't have to be the premise of a deduction that concludes, "this, then, is what needs to be done." It should be an instrument for those for who fight, those who resist and refuse what is. Its use should be in processes of conflict and confrontation, essays in refusal. It doesn't have to lay down the law for the law. It isn't a stage in a programming. It is a challenge directed to what is. — Michel Foucault

He who runs may see that opium and such other intoxicants and narcotics stupefy a man's soul and reduce him to a level lower than that of beasts. — Mahatma Gandhi

Science, my dears, is the systematic dissection of nature, to reduce it to working parts that more or less obey universal laws. Sorcery moves in the opposite direction. It doesn't rend, it repairs. It is synthesis rather than analysis. It builds anew rather than revealing the old. In the hands of someone truly skilled, ... it is Art. — Gregory Maguire

Becoming aware of the intense suffering of billions of animals, and of our own participation in that suffering, can bring up painful emotions: sorrow and grief for the animals; anger at the injustice and deception of the system; despair at the enormity of the problem; fear that trusted authorities and institutions are, in fact, untrustworthy; and guilt for having contributed to the problem. Bearing witness means choosing to suffer. Indeed, empathy is literally 'feeling with.' Choosing to suffer is particularly difficult in a culture that is addicted to comfort
a culture that teaches that pain should be avoided whenever possible and that ignorance is bliss. We can reduce our resistance to witnessing by valuing authenticity over personal pleasure, and integration over ignorance. — Melanie Joy

For our age-old enemies await us always, just beyond our thin walls. Hunger, thirst, and cold lie waiting there, and forever among us are those who would loot, rape, and maim rather than behave as civilized men.
If we sit secure this hour, this day, it is because the thin walls of the law stand between us and evil. A jolt of the earth, a revolution, an invasion or even a violent upset in our own government can reduce all to chaos, leaving civilized man naked and exposed. — Louis L'Amour

Its going to require a global effort to reduce greenhouse gases and hopefully derail some of the adverse impacts that we are experiencing today and the devastating impacts that we are going to experience in the future as a result of global warming. — Jerome Ringo

Binoculars, and a hawk-like vigilance, reduce the disadvantage of myopic human vision. — J.A. Baker

I've voted in some cases to remove and reduce tax breaks for the oil industry in other cases I've voted not to because I felt that the proposals covered too much. — Jeff Bingaman

Would that I could die, reduce myself to nothing, leave a glorious name to my country, die in the cause of defending it against a foreign invasion and afterwards the sun will shine on my body like a permanent sentinel in these ocean rocks! — Jose Rizal

Kids who are poor often have families that have not really been kept informed about ... how important it is to read to your child, to reduce stresses in their life, to use positive incentives and words. — Geoffrey Canada

That still would hardly reduce all other religions to mere falsehood. More to the point, no one really acquainted with the metaphysical and spiritual claims of the major theistic faiths can fail to notice that on a host of fundamental philosophical issues, and especially on the issue of how divine transcendence should be understood, the areas of accord are quite vast. — David Bentley Hart

I grant we should add a third category: that of the true healers. But it is a fact one doesn't come across many of them, and anyhow it must be a hard vocation. That's why I decided to take, in every predicament, the victim's side, so as to reduce the damage done. Among them I can at least try to discover how on attains to the third category; in other words, to peace. — Albert Camus

The Commission agrees that the federal government should help alleviate these costs. The best way to do so is to reduce illegal immigration ... We recommend immediate reimbursement of criminal justice costs, because these conditions can now be met, but we urge further study of the costs of health care and education before impact aid is provided. — Barbara Jordan

Carbon dioxide does not cause or contribute to smog, and the Kyoto treaty would do nothing to reduce or prevent smog. — Stephen Harper

In the U.S. Senate, in the short term we need to reduce the tax burden on hard working individuals, families, and small businesses. — Joni Ernst

In our current distorted reality, land is often held speculatively without being put to productive use. Because people are able to profit from land and use it inefficiently, sprawl is an issue and farmland is constantly at risk of rezoning, thus forcing up the cost of all farmland.

Land contributions would remove the profit from land speculation and inefficient use, releasing more farmland and also ensuring existing farmland wasn't constantly under the shadow of rezoning. Labour and capital taxes would reduce and thus also farming costs. Overall, farming costs would reduce and farmland would be sustainably available for agriculture. — Martin Adams

Until I saw my drawings replayed on the iPad, I'd never seen myself draw. Someone watching me would be concentrating on the exact moment, but I'd always be thinking a little bit ahead. That's especially so in a drawing where you are limiting yourself, a line drawing for example. When you are doing them you are very tense, because you have to reduce everything to such simple terms. — David Hockney

Chewing gum actually lowers your cortisol levels, the hormone responsible for stress. But chewing gum doesn't just reduce stress, it also makes you more alert and improves your performance in memory-oriented tasks. It does so by increasing the blood flow to your brain and alerting your senses. — Travis Bradberry

Companies that only focus on expense reduction are all but dead as they will find themselves sooner or later unable to reduce anymore. — Grant Cardone

We have more moral, political and historical wisdom, than we know how to reduce into practice; we — Percy Bysshe Shelley

It is the censor's business to make a judgment about the propriety of the content or message of the proposed expressive activity. The regulation here does not authorize any judgment about the content of any speeches ... A park is a limited space, and to allow unregulated access to all comers could easily reduce rather than enlarge the park's utility as a forum for speech. Just imagine two rallies held at the same time in the same park area using public-address systems that drowned out each other's speakers. — Richard Posner

Studies have shown that inmate participation in education, vocational and job training, prison work skills development, drug abuse, mental health and other treatment programs, all reduce recidivism, significantly. — Bobby Scott

Imagine that the world had created a new 'dream product' to feed and immunize everyone born on earth. Imagine also that it was available everywhere, required no storage or delivery, and helped mothers plan their families and reduce the risk of cancer. Then imagine that the world refused to use it. — Frank A. Oski

I believe in fighting with investors to reduce the amount of equity they get and then being as generous as you possibly can with employees. — Sam Altman

The major changes that will be occurring within the new merged partnership are exciting in many ways. First, we will have the highest forecast distribution growth rate of any of the major MLPs. Second, our coverage will be above average for the same peer group with expected $1.1 billion of excess cash flow coverage through 2017 and the Access cash flows, along with our major new fee based projects continue to dramatically reduce exposure to commodity prices. — Alan Armstrong

Until we embrace our mutual brokenness, our work with low-income people is likely to do more harm than good. I sometimes unintentionally reduce poor people to objects that I use to fulfill my own need to accomplish something. I am not okay, and you are not okay. But Jesus can fix us both. — Steve Corbett

We have to reduce the burden placed on our economy by years of deficits and debt. — Jacob Lew

If we reduce human beings to being simply physical - as Western thought is prone to do - our poverty-alleviation efforts will tend to focus on material solutions. But if we remember that humans are spiritual, social, psychological, and physical beings, our poverty-alleviation efforts will be more holistic in their design and execution. — Steve Corbett

Myths, whether in written or visual form, serve a vital role of asking unanswerable questions and providing unquestionable answers. Most of us, most of the time, have a low tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. We want to reduce the cognitive dissonance of not knowing by filling the gaps with answers. Traditionally, religious myths have served that role, but today - the age of science - science fiction is our mythology. — Michael Shermer

Being an adult child was an awkward, inevitable position. You went about your business in the world: tooling around, giving orders, being taken seriously, but there were still these two people lurking somewhere who in a split second could reduce you to nothing. In their presence, you were a big-headed baby again, crawling instead of walking. — Meg Wolitzer

To reduce sensation to a science, to make psychological analysis into a microscopically precise method - that's the goal that occupies, like a steady thirst, the hub of my life's will. — Fernando Pessoa

Wise man doesn't need to be praised like one.
It can reduce the guts of him to be a better man. — Toba Beta