Small Numbers Quotes & Sayings

Self-interest is an inexhaustible source of convenient illusions. The number of beings who wish to see truly is extraordinarily small. — Henri Frederic Amiel

True the greater part of the Irish people was close to starvation. The numbers of weakened people dying from disease were rising. So few potatoes had been planted that, even if they escaped bight, they would not be enough to feed the poor folk who relied upon them. More and more of those small tenants and cottagers, besides, were being forced off the land and into a condition of helpless destitution. Ireland, that is to say, was a country utterly prostrated.
Yet the Famine came to an end. And how was this wonderful thing accomplished? Why, in the simplest way imaginable. The famine was legislated out of existence. It had to be. The Whigs were facing a General Election. — Edward Rutherfurd

Let no one ever shy away from the claim that Jews have power, that Jews have influence. We have learned the terrible lesson of history; that unless we have influence and power, disproportionate to our small numbers - immoral results will occur. We need power. And we must continue to use our power. Power which we earned, power which no one gave us on a silver platter, power which we worked hard for - use that power in the interests of justice. — Alan Dershowitz

Most lives are not distinguished by great achievements. They are measured by an infinite number of small ones. Each time you do a kindness for someone or bring a smile to his face, it gives your life meaning. Never doubt your value, little friend. The world would be a dismal place without you in it. (tweaked version of a passage from Scandal in Spring) — Lisa Kleypas

Never underestimate the power of a loosely knit group working for a good cause. All of us who work for peace together, all of us who pray for peace together, are a small minority, but a powerful spiritual fellowship. Our power is beyond our numbers. — Peace Pilgrim

A very high fraction of America's economic problems come not from our difficulties with education or globalization or competition with the Chinese or whatever. But they come from the fact that a small number of wealthy and powerful people who run dangerous and/or inefficient companies are able, through the use of money in the political process, to prevent the government from regulating them properly. — Charles Ferguson

The secrets of evolution are death and time - the deaths of enormous numbers of lifeforms that were imperfectly adapted to the environment; and time for a long succession of small mutations. — Carl Sagan

When you're facing down multiple attackers, you always want to make the first move. It lets them know that you're ready to fight and that you're crazy enough to get the party started. One rule of thumb in fighting is that crazy can often overcome skill and numbers, because, while a trained fighter might actually enjoy going up against another trained fighter, no one really wants to wrestle with crazy. Crazy doesn't know when it's winning. And crazy doesn't know when to stop. If you can't pull off crazy, if, for instance, you're handcuffed in a small van with six armed assailants, stupid is a decent substitute for crazy. — Richard Kadrey

I believe most Afghan men, on an individual level, are far from extremist or fundamentalist.
Hope rests with those men, who control what happens to their daughters. Behind every discreetly ambitious young Afghan woman with budding plans to take on the world, there is an interesting father. And in every successful grown woman who has managed to break new ground and do something women usually do not, there is a determined father, who is redefining honor and society by promoting his daughter. There will always be a small group of elite women with wealthy parents who can choose to go abroad or to take high positions in politics. They will certainly inspire others, but in order for significant numbers of women to take advantage of higher education and participate in the economy on a larger scale, it will take powerful men educating many other men — Jenny Nordberg

However, in the twenty-first century the majority of both men and women might lose their military and economic value. Gone is the mass conscription of the two world wars. The most advanced armies of the twenty-first century rely far more on cutting-edge technology. Instead of limitless cannon fodder, countries now need only small numbers of highly trained soldiers, even smaller numbers of special forces super-warriors and a handful of experts who know how to produce and use sophisticated technology. Hi-tech forces 'manned' by pilotless drones and cyber-worms are replacing the mass armies of the twentieth century, and generals delegate more and more critical decisions to algorithms. — Yuval Noah Harari

To me, one of the most profound questions we can ask is: "So what?" And so what if there's an indefinite number of worlds with alternate "us-es" in them? The "so what," to me, comes alive when I ask myself: "What if I could find a way to get in touch with those alternate mes who made those choices?" That is, persons who, if I saw them now, I wouldn't even recognize because their choices, once small, have multiplied to make them such different people. — Richard Bach

I never acted in anything I've directed but I have produced a number of films and I have acted in some of the movies I've produced. Usually with first time filmmakers and pushing a move forward I have played a small role but never the lead. — Forest Whitaker

The band may be small in terms of numbers with only two members, but Halifax rockers The Town Heroes are mighty in sound. — Ken Kelly

The small stores were just destined to disappear, at least in the numbers they once existed, because the whole thing is driven by the customers, who are free to choose where to shop. — Sam Walton

It is my huge pleasure that my novels are translated into languages that are read among small numbers of people. — Haruki Murakami

We got interested in aesthetics, and then at the end of all of it we fell off the precipice. It's almost like crawling back because so many techniques are lost, and so we're going to have a [small] reserve of teachers who can teach the vast number of interested students. We have these poor, hungry, starving people who want to learn something and no place to get it. It's a tragedy. — Nelson Shanks

Concussions is one of these pack journalism issues, frankly. There's no increase in concussions. The number is relatively small. The problem is, it is a journalist issue. — Paul Tagliabue

The whole issue was almost unbelievably meaningless and small. He thought about the word "meaning" and tried to summon up his baby's face without looking at the photo, but all he could get was the heft of a full diaper and the plastic mobile over his crib turning in the breeze that the box fan in the doorway made. He imagined that the clock's second hand possessed awareness and knew that it was a second hand and that its job was to go around and around inside a circle of numbers forever at the same slow, unvarying machinelike rate, going no place it hadn't already been a million times before, and imagining the second hand was so awful it made his breath catch in his throat, and he looked quickly around to see if any of the examiners near him had heard it or were looking at him. — David Foster Wallace

I hear women are posting their phone numbers on the site for you." Accompanied by sexy videos and photos.
Judd's eyes gleamed. "Not after Brenna hacked the site and plastered a message on their homepage pointing out that I'm very happily mated to a wolf with sharp teeth, razored claws, and a wild case of insane jealousy." A small smile that was nonetheless, quietly satisfied. "She also uploaded several gruesome photos of feral wolf kills. — Nalini Singh

As long as man was small in numbers and limited in technology, he could realistically regard the earth as an infinite reservoir, an infinite source of inputs and an infinite cesspool for outputs. Today we can no longer make this assumption. Earth has become a space ship, not only in our imagination but also in the hard realities of the social, biological, and physical system in which man is enmeshed. — Kenneth E. Boulding

Nevertheless, the number of farmers, small as well as large, who are adopting the new seeds and new technology is increasing very rapidly, and the increase in numbers during the past three years has been phenomenal. — Norman Borlaug

I lifted my wand, hoping she would see this as a dramatic move, not a threat. "Why once, in my bunker at Charing Cross Station, I stalked the
deadly prey known as Jelly Babies."
Neith's eyes widened. "They are dangerous?"
"Horrible," I agreed. "Oh, they seem small alone, but they always appear in great numbers. Sticky, fattening - quite deadly. There I was, alone
with only two quid and a Tube pass, beset by Jelly Babies, when ... Ah, but never mind. When the Jelly Babies come for you ... you will find out on
your own."
She lowered her bow. "Tell me. I must know how to hunt Jelly Babies."
I looked at Walt gravely. "How many months have I trained you, Walt?"
"Seven," he said. "Almost eight."
"And have I ever deemed you worthy of hunting Jelly Babies with me?"
"Uh ... no. — Rick Riordan

I believe that for the small numbers of Jewish people in the United States, they exercise a tremendous amount of influence on the affairs of government. — Louis Farrakhan

Maybe it will be a great thing when the Baby Boomers finally die out. In real life, it's not a matter of the good guys or the bad guys. Rather, it's big numbers and small numbers that do the counting. — Jack Bowman

In any series of elements to be controlled, a selected small fraction, in terms of numbers of elements, always accounts for a large fraction in terms of effect. — Vilfredo Pareto

It just seems logical that sticking to investing in only a small number of companies that you understand well, rather than moving down the list to your thirtieth or fiftieth favorite pick, would create a much greater potential to earn above-average investment returns. — Joel Greenblatt

Unfortunately, there is something of a flaw in this idealized picture of the way the scientific community discovers truth. And the flaw is that most scientific work never gets noticed. Study after study has shown that most scientific papers are read by almost no one, while a small number of papers are read by many people. — James Surowiecki

Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirrour of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world; by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions: they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find. His persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species. — Samuel Johnson

We are the most focused company that I know of or have read of or have any knowledge of. We say no to good ideas every day. We say no to great ideas in order to keep the amount of things we focus on very small in number, so that we can put enormous energy behind the ones we do choose ... It's not just saying yes to the right products, it's saying no to many products that are good ideas, but just not nearly as good as other ones. — Tim Cook

The purists are small in number but, you know hardy of voice. — Chris Thile

The trouble with integers is that we have examined only the very small ones. Maybe all the exciting stuff happens at really big numbers, ones we can't even begin to think about in any very definite way. Our brains have evolved to get us out of the rain, find where the berries are, and keep us from getting killed. Our brains did not evolve to help us grasp really large numbers or to look at things in a hundred thousand dimensions. — Ronald Graham

Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations
all these have given birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism. — Vladimir Lenin

And since the portions of the great and the small are equal in number, so too all things would be in everything. Nor is it possible that they should exist apart, but all things have a portion of everything. — Anaxagoras

Little by little, I've reached the stage of using only a small number of forms and colors. It's not the first time that painting has been done with a very narrow range of colors. The frescoes of the tenth century are painted like this. For me, they are magnificent things. — Joan Miro

Only small minds are impressed by large numbers. — Arthur C. Clarke

And yet I would not freely exchange my science for those of my fellow laureates. They are forever confined in their professional discussions to the small numbers of their fellow scientists. — George Stigler

Donald Westlake's Parker novels are among the small number of books I read over and over. Forget all that crap you've been telling yourself about War and Peace and Proust-these are the books you'll want on that desert island. — Lawrence Block

We need only view a Dissection of that large Mass, the Brain, to have ground to bewail our Ignorance ... We admire ... the Fibres of every Muscle, and ought still more to admire their disposition in the Brain, where an infinite number of them contained in a very small Space, do each execute their particular Offices without confusion or disorder. — Nicolas Steno

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country ... We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society ... In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind. — Edward L. Bernays

Each situation has to be evaluated separately, for all are different. In general, I believe in non-violent direct action, which involve organizing large numbers of people, whereas too often violent uprisings are the product of a small group. If enough people are organized, violence can be minimized in bringing about social change. — Howard Zinn

PRESIDENT, n. The leading figure in a small group of men of whom - and of whom only - it is positively known that immense numbers of their countrymen did not want any of them for President. — Ambrose Bierce

I've always thought cemeteries were like cities. There are streets, avenues - you've seen them, I think, Michael. There are blocks, too, and house numbers, slums and ghettos, middle-class sections and small palaces. — Peter S. Beagle

The roads that lead young men to war are not political roads, or national and international roads, but individual roads. What propels young men to combat is not the draft. Those who are not destined for armed combat usually will not be drafted for armed combat. The pool of human resources is vast, and the number of riflemen is small. The person who wants to avoid the draft will avoid it. And, in Vietnam, as the war went on, the numbers who successfully avoided the draft increased. So who fights? The fools, the uneducated, the knaves? I was none of these - or so I maintain. But I fought. — James R. McDonough

Remember, there are two things that keep us oppressed: them and us. We are half of the equation. There will not be a magic day when we wake up and it's now OK to express ourselves publicly. We must make that day ourselves, by speaking out publicly
first in small numbers, then in greater numbers, until it's simply the way things are and no one thinks twice. Never doubt that we will create this world, because, my friends, we are fortunate to live in a democracy, and in a democracy, we decide what's possible. — Tammy Baldwin

Neighborhood folk still came, in small vanquished numbers and mostly in the afternoon, before the two small dining rooms and the bar were taken over by the educated classes, an ill-dressed, underfed, overdrunken group of squatters with minds so highly developed that they were excused from good manners, tastes so refined in one direction that they were excused for having none in any other, emotions so cultivated that the only aberration was normality, all afloat here on sodden pools of depravity calculated only to manifest the pricelessness of what they were throwing away, the three sexes in two colors, a group of people all mentally and physically the wrong size. — William Gaddis

The sun's rays reflected beautifully upon the water, creating a magnificent glistening effect over the waves. The pier to the left was docking ships, while on the right, a ferry took off into the open waters. It was a beautiful sight to watch; how small everything looked in something as big as the ocean. It reminded me of people, how we were just a small part of what made up the world. Our numbers might be large, but we were not alone in this world. We were insignificant to nature. — Nicole Sobon

No country can sustain, in idleness, more than a small percentage of its numbers. The great majority must labor at something productive. — Abraham Lincoln

Unfortunately, only a small number of patients with peptic ulcer are financially able to make a pet of an ulcer. — William James Mayo

The number of those men who know how to use wholly irresponsible power humanely and generously is small. Everybody knows this, and the slave knows it best of all. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Unlike Chicago or New York, small-town Minnesota did not allow a man's failings to disappear beneath a veil of numbers. People talked. Secrets did not stay secret. — Tim O'Brien

Holiness is not reserved for a small number of exceptional persons. It is for everyone. It is the Lord who brings us to holiness when we are willing to collaborate in the salvation of the world for the glory of God, despite our sin and our sometimes rebellious temperament. — Pope John Paul II

Clearly, we were hoping to get some competitive proposals, but the reality is there are only a small number of firms that would be interested and have the wherewithal to bid. — Michael Perrin

We may be aware of small increments of getting older; we may meet an increasing number of people who make us uneasy with their youth; but the fact of being old ourselves comes as a surprise, and is often accompanied by the belief that there has been some mistake. — Terri E Apter

Notes are part of life for any composer for hire. There's no way around it. I think anyone who has done even a small number of films as a professional composer gets used to that idea pretty quickly. — Christophe Beck

A canny reader here may object that there's some kind of Zenoid sleight of hand going on in the above proof, and might ask why a similar hankie procedure and series couldn't be applied to the irrational numbers to quote-unquote prove that the total % of Line-space taken up by the irrationals is also 2*(Infinitesimally small symbol). The reason such a proof can't work is that, no matter how infinitely or even (Infinity to the Infinity symbol) ly many red hankies you drape, there will always be more irrational numbers than hankies. Always. Cantor proved this, too. — David Foster Wallace

To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself. — Pope Leo XIII

Others make a point of trying to attain the precision and poise they see in those who have the ability to choose from a great number of horses those with [ ... ] qualities found in only a very small number of horses. This leads to a circumstance in which these imitators of such studied poise mortify the spirit of a noble horse, and remove from it all of the goodness of temperament Nature has given it. — Francois Robichon De La Gueriniere

Success comes from hard work and the accumulation of small numbers. — Sean Platt

You are more likely to acquire power by narrowing your focus and applying your energies, like the sun's rays, to a limited range of activities in a small number of domains. — Jeffrey Pfeffer

Taste is the best judge. It is rare. Art only addresses itself to an excessively small number of individuals. — Paul Cezanne

Let us thank God for having called us to His holy faith. It is a great gift, and the number of those who thank God for it is small. — Alphonsus Liguori

Madness, like small fish, runs in hosts, in vast numbers of instances. — Philip K. Dick

Amos and I called our first joint article "Belief in the Law of Small Numbers." We explained, tongue-in-cheek, that "intuitions about random sampling appear to satisfy the law of small numbers, which asserts that the law of large numbers applies to small numbers as well." We also included a strongly worded recommendation that researchers regard their "statistical intuitions with proper suspicion and replace impression formation by computation whenever possible. — Daniel Kahneman

Zero invites imagination, but small numbers invite questions about whether large numbers will ever materialize. — Eric Ries

Modern novels have become part of the do-it-yourself business, and they come in a very small number of standard kits. ( ... ) In this wilderness cries the voice of Patrick White, Australian extraordinary, who has quite other, more austere and indeed prophetic ambitions. ( ... ) (H)is failures are certainly the equivalent, and perhaps the measure, of other men's success. — David Pryce-Jones

I think what's happening with the veterans is a gift from God to show us what happens when you take layers and layers of bureaucracy and place them between the patients and the health care provider. And if we can't get it right, with the relatively small number of veterans, how in the world are you going to do it with the entire population? — Benjamin Carson

ANT (ANT) n.s.[aemett, Sax. which Junius imagines, not without probability, to have been first contracted to aemt, and then softened to ant.]An emmet; a pismire. A small insect that lives in great numbers together in hillocks. — Samuel Johnson

But in general, for the purposes of most novelists, the number of objects genuinely necessary for ... describing a scene will be found to be very small. — Elizabeth Bowen

The control of large numbers is possible, and like unto that of small numbers, if we subdivide them. — Sun Tzu

Over a very small number of rolls of the dice, the uncertainty principle is very important. — Stephen Hawking

Unfortunately, we are living in an era where plenty of songs with vulgar, objectionable lyrics are also becoming popular. It's a disturbing trend, and I feel really sad when I see small kids dancing to such numbers in television shows. In my career so far, I have refused any song whose lyrics I haven't been comfortable with. — Shreya Ghoshal

Death itself is too big to take in, she already sees that; the loss comes at you instead in an infinite number of small installments that can never be paid off. — Allison Pearson

I cannot escape from the conclusion that the great ages of progress have depended upon a small number of individuals of transcendent ability. — Bertrand Russell

In the past, there was active discrimination against women in science. That has now gone, and although there are residual effects, these are not enough to account for the small numbers of women, particularly in mathematics and physics. — Stephen Hawking

What makes someone an artist? I don't think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren't artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artist who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances. — Seth Godin

How we react to the tragedy of one small person accurately reflects our attitude towards a whole nationality, and increasing the numbers doesn't change much. — Anna Politkovskaya

Ehlena was naturally lovely, with fine small features and that strawberry blond hair and those long, lean limbs.
Her lips were pink because they were pink - not from some eighteen-hour, glossy, frosted grease coat.
And her toffee-colored eyes were luminescent because they were yellow and red and gold all mixed together - not from a whole lot of paint-by-numbers shimmery shadow and slathered-on mascara.
And her cheeks were flushed because he was getting under her skin.

-Rehv's thoughts — J.R. Ward

Many newly public companies are able to post a year or two of strong sales growth off a small base, but their growth almost always slows over time, thanks to what investment professionals call 'the law of large numbers.' — Alex Berenson

The Reader may here observe the Force of Numbers, which can be successfully applied, even to those things, which one would imagine are subject to no Rules. There are very few things which we know, which are not capable of being reduc'd to a Mathematical Reasoning, and when they cannot, it's a sign our Knowledge of them is very small and confus'd; and where a mathematical reasoning can be had, it's as great folly to make use of any other, as to grope for a thing in the dark when you have a Candle standing by you. — John Arbuthnot

Books proliferate, and occasionally sell in very large numbers, which claim to have found the rule, or small set of rules, which will guarantee business success. But business is far too complicated, far too difficult an activity to distil into a few simple commands ... It is failure rather than success which is the distinguishing feature of corporate life. — Paul Ormerod

The awful discretion, which a court of impeachments must necessarily have, to doom to honor or to infamy the most confidential and the most distinguished characters of the community, forbids the commitment of the trust to a small number of persons. — Alexander Hamilton

You end up with a machine which knows that by its mildest estimate it must have terrible enemies all around and within it, but it can't find them. It therefore deduces that they are well-concealed and expert, likely professional agitators and terrorists. Thus, more stringent and probing methods are called for. Those who transgress in the slightest, or of whom even small suspicions are harboured, must be treated as terrible foes. A lot of rather ordinary people will get repeatedly investigated with increasing severity until the Government Machine either finds enemies or someone very high up indeed personally turns the tide ... And these people under the microscope are in fact just taking up space in the machine's numerical model. In short, innocent people are treated as hellish fiends of ingenuity and bile because there's a gap in the numbers. — Nick Harkaway

Now in those days, my brothers, the teaming up was mostly by fours and fives, these being like auto-teams, for being a comfy number for an auto, and six being the outside limit for gang-size. Sometimes gangs would gang up so as to make like malenky armies for big nightwar, but mostly it was best to roam in these like small numbers. — Anthony Burgess

It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already. — Peggy McIntosh

France is the only nation in which astoundingly small numbers of civilized patrons reside. — Gustave Courbet

One of our anxieties is de-focusing the relatively small number of engineers we have. Within our own core development, I am reluctant to fund projects that are way afield of where we are. — Howard Hughes

Had there been any existent vital and energetic institution left in Society after the Reformation for the use of small property in coordinated form-that is, in combination, so that the average man's holding could be put to useful purpose in company with the holdings of a great number of other men of his own sort, the new evils would not have arisen. — Hilaire Belloc

Men would make love with any number of women ... even total strangers, while females were selective. They were catering to the demands of one small egg. While males had millions of frantic sperms screaming: "Let us out, let us out!". — Woody Allen

The hallway was lined with numbered doors, odd numbers on one side and even numbers on the other, and large ornamental vases, too large to hold flowers and too small to hold spies. — Lemony Snicket

China's economy became more complex. By now there is a large number of small- and medium-sized companies that work quite differently from big, state-owned enterprises. They don't follow any long-term business plan and don't rent office space for years to come. They start out and need an office right away, for a week, a month or half a year, and they want to be among other entrepreneurs like themselves. — Zhang Xin

I was the only person in an infinite exploding universe who knew that this powder was made of opal. In a wide, wide world, full of unimaginable numbers of people, I was - in addition to being small and insufficient - special. I was not only a quirky bundle of genes, but I was also unique existentially, because of the tiny detail that I knew about Creation, because of what I had seen and then understood. Until I phoned someone, the concrete knowledge that opal was the mineral that fortified each seed on each hackberry tree was mine alone. Whether or not this was something worth knowing seemed another problem for another day. I stood and absorbed this revelation as my life turned a page, and my first scientific discovery shone, as even the cheapest plastic toy does when it is new. I — Hope Jahren

A small number of choice books are sufficient. — Voltaire

As soon as science has emerged from its initial stages, theoretical advances are no longer achieved merely by a process of arrangement. Guided by empirical data, the investigator rather develops a system of thought which, in general, is built up logically from a small number of fundamental assumptions, the so-called axioms. We call such a system of thought a theory. The theory finds the justification for its existence in the fact that it correlates a large number of single observations, and it is just here that the 'truth' of the theory lies. — Albert Einstein

Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all — George Washington

With God's help, you will continue to succeed in your leadership and in your duties, because Our Lord's work is accomplished not so much by the multitude of workers as by the fidelity of the small number whom He calls. — Vincent De Paul

Vermont is such a small state, and the most money that's ever been spent in the history of political campaigns there is $2 million. That number is going to be surpassed many times. Vermont remains a "cheap state" for the Republican National Committee. So putting $5 or $10 million into Vermont - compared to New York or California or Illinois - that's small potatoes. — Bernie Sanders

The economy is turning, and credit comes in with a lag, .. To the extent that a number of small firms are finding it difficult to get the credit they need at a price they can afford, that's likely to change for the better. — Alan Greenspan

On New Year's Day every calendar, large and small, has the same number of dates. But we soon learn that the years are of very different lengths. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

The God who created, names, and numbers the stars in the heavens also numbers the hairs of my head..He pays attention to very big things and to very small ones. What matters to me matters to Him, and that changes my life. — Elisabeth Elliot

The number of humble-bees in any district depends in a great degree on the number of field-mice, which destroy their combs and nests; and Mr. H. Newman, who has long attended to the habits of humble-bees, ... says "Near villages and small towns I have found the nests of humble-bees more numerous than elsewhere, which I attribute to the number of cats that destroy the mice." Hence it is quite credible that the presence of a feline animal in large numbers in a district might determine, through the intervention first of mice and then of bees, the frequency of certain flowers in that district! — Charles Darwin