You Are One In Million Quotes & Sayings

Practice being fully present with something. Perhaps you may find something of God there. Go outside and look at the stars. Not for just a few seconds - lay a blanket in the yard, lie on your back and really look at the stars. Try to let your heart feel the incomprehensible size and grandeur of the universe. Take the time to really attend to a meal, a good book, a piece of music, or a sunrise. The point is to be fully present, to not be swept up into the distraction of a thousand voices, but to learn how to simply and fully attend to one. Then, when one enters back into the noisy world that we live in, even the million colors together are more vibrant because you have learned to better see color in its essence. To truly see is to find hope. — Michael Gungor

He is only one of a million no, a billion stories you could tell about the living beings on just this side of the mountain. The fact is that there are more stories in the space of a single second, in a single square foot of dirt and air and water, then we could tell in a hundred years. The word amazing isn't much of a word for how amazing it is. The fact is that there are more stories in the world than there are fish in the sea or birds in the air or lies among politicians. You could be sad at how many stories go untold, but you could also be delighted at how many stories we catch and share in delight and wonder and astonishment and illumination and sometimes even epiphany. — Brian Doyle

Rory: "People are being serious."
Jazza: "There's a serial killer out there. Of course people are being serious."
Rory: "Yeah, but what are the chances?"
Jazza: "I bet all of the victims thought that."
Rory: "But still, what are the chances?"
Jazza: "Well, I imagine they are several million to one."
Jerome: "Not that high. You're only dealing with a small part of London. And while there might be a million or more people in that area, the Ripper is probably focusing on women, because all of the original victims were women. So halve that
"
Jazza: "You really need another hobby. — Maureen Johnson

There is something ironic in prejudice against the disabled and their families, because their plight might befall anybody. Straight men are unlikely to wake up gay one morning, and white children don't become black; but any of us could be disabled in an instant. People with disabilities make up the largest minority in America; they constitute 15 percent of the population, though only 15 percent of those were born with their disability and about a third are over sixty-five. Worldwide, some 550 million people are disabled. The disability-rights scholar Tobin Siebers has written, The cycle of life runs in actuality from disability to temporary ability back to disablity, and that only if you are among the most fortunate. — Andrew Solomon

People's destinies are so different. Some people drag along, unnoticed and boring - they're all alike, and they're all unhappy. Then there are others, like for instance you - you're one in a million. You're happy - — Anton Chekhov

[ ... ]when you read a book, what you see are black squiggles on pulped wood or, increasingly, dark pixels on a pale screen. To transform these icons into characters and events, you must imagine. And when you imagine, you create. It's in reading that a book becomes a book, and in each of a million different readings a book becomes one of a million different books[ ... ] — Mohsin Hamid

There is evidence that we are headed into what would be the planet's sixth mass extinction. It's hard to know for sure if you're in one because a mass extinction is an event where over 75 percent of the species on the planet die out over a - usually about a million-year period. The fastest it might happen is in hundreds of thousands of years. — Annalee Newitz

So we wait?" asked Severard.
"We wait, and we look to our defences. That and we try to find some money. Do you have any cash, Severard?"
"I did have some. I gave it to a girl, down in the slums."
"Ah. Shame."
"Not really, she fucks like a madman. I'd thoroughly recommend her, if you're interested."
Glokta winced as his knee clicked. "What a thoroughly heartwarming tale, Severard, I never had you down for a romantic. I'd sing a ballad if I wasn't so short of funds."
"I could ask around. How much are we talking about?"
"Oh, not much. Say, half a million marks?"
One of the Practical's eyebrows went up sharply. He reached into his pocket, dug around for a moment, pulled his hand out and opened it. A few copper coins shone in his palm.
"Twelve bits," he said. "Twelve bits is all I can raise. — Joe Abercrombie

Sadhana You may have noticed this about yourself: when you are feeling pleasant, you want to expand; when you are fearful, you want to contract. Try this. Sit for a few minutes in front of a plant or tree. Remind yourself that you are inhaling what the tree is exhaling, and exhaling what the tree is inhaling. Even if you are not yet experientially aware of it, establish a psychological connection with the plant. You could repeat this several times a day. After a few days, you will start connecting with everything around you differently. You won't limit yourself to a tree. Using this simple process, we at the Isha Yoga Center have unleashed an environmental initiative in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, under which twenty-one million trees have been planted since 2004. We spent several years planting trees in people's minds, which is the most difficult terrain! Now transplanting those onto land happens that much more effortlessly. — Sadhguru

An astronomer once explained to me that the galaxy we live in, the Milky Way, is vast, too vast to be understood without metaphor, so he gave me one. He said if you picture the Milky Way as being the size of mainland Europe, our solar system - that's Mars, Venus, Saturn, us here on Earth (you remember from school) - in a Milky Way the size of Europe our solar system would fit inside a single teacup somewhere in Belgium. He paused for my amazement, which I duly offered. But really what can you say? "Ooh, a teacup." "Blimey, Belgium." "Cor, it makes you think, doesn't it?" Then he added, clearly sensing I was at a bit of a loss for words, having just been reduced to a dot on a speck in a teacup in a continent: "Russell, there are 400 million KNOWN galaxies in our universe. — Russell Brand

She was talking too loud now, shouting almost, and a long silence followed. Why was she being like this? He was only trying to help. In what way did he benefit from this friendship? He should get up and walk away, that's what he should do. They turned to look at each other at the same time.
"Sorry," he said.
"No, I'm sorry."
"What are you sorry for?"
"Rattling on like a ... .mad cow. I'm sorry, I'm tired, bad day, and I'm sorry for being ... so boring."
"You're not that boring."
"I am, Dex. God, I swear, I bore myself."
"Well you don't bore me." He took her hand in his. "You couldd never bore me. You're one in a million, Em."
"I'm not even one in three."
He kicked her foot with his. "Em?"
"What?"
"Just take it, will you? Just shut up and take it. — David Nicholls

I hate being clever, thought the captain, when you don't really feel clever and don't want to be clever. To sneak around and
make plans and feel big about making them. I hate this feeling of thinking I'm doing right when I'm not really certain I am. Who
are we, anyway? The majority? Is that the answer? The majority is always holy, is it not? Always, always; just never wrong for
one little insignificant tiny moment, is it? Never ever wrong in ten million years? He thought: What is this majority and who are in
it? And what do they think and how did they get that way and will they ever change and how the devil did I get caught in this
rotten majority? I don't feel comfortable. Is it claustrophobia, fear of crowds, or common sense? Can one man be right, while all
the world thinks they are right? Let's not think about it. Let's crawl around and act exciting and pull the trigger. There, and there! — Ray Bradbury

In this single galaxy of ours there are eighty-seven thousand million suns. [ ... ] In challenging it, you would be like ants attempting to label and classify all the grains of sand in all the deserts of the world. [ ... ] It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day possess. But the stars are not for man. — Arthur C. Clarke

Did you know that when a guy comes, he comes 200 million sperm? And you're trying to tell me that your child is special because one out of 200 million
that load! we're talking one load!
connected. Gee, what are the fucking odds? 200 million; you know what that means? I have wiped civilizations off my chest with a gray gym sock. That is special. Entire nations have flaked and crusted in the hair around my navel! That is special. And I want you to remember that, you two egg-carrying beings out there, with that holier-than-thou "we have the gift of life" attitude. I've tossed universes ... in my underpants ... while napping! Boom! A milky way shoots into my jockey shorts, "Aaaah, what's for fucking breakfast? — Bill Hicks

The fact was, there wasn't room on earth for a couple million gold-farmers to turn into high-paid video-game executives. The fact was, if you had to slice the pie into enough pieces to give one to everyone, you'd end up slicing them so thin you could see through them. "When 30,000 people share an apple, no one benefits
especially not the apple." It was a quote one of his economics profs had kept written in the corner of his white-board, and any time a student started droning on about compassion for the poor, the old prof would just tap the board and say, "Are you willing to share your lunch with 30,000 people? — Cory Doctorow

You only get one album. You only get one single. You get one shot in music. But I have a million different dreams. Why can't I go out and try to achieve them all? Who are you to say I can't? — Lucy Hale

Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you'll never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. Even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope for something good to come along. Something to make you feel connected, to make you feel whole, to make you feel loved. — Charlie Kaufman

Very few people are accepted as creative: A few painters, a few poets - one in a million. This is foolish! Every human being is a born creator. Watch children and you will see: all children are creative. By and by, we destroy their creativity. — Rajneesh

Another federal law makes it a felony for any person "knowingly to deliver or cause to be delivered for transmission through the mails or interstate commerce by telegraph, telephone, wireless, or other means of communication false or misleading or knowingly inaccurate reports concerning crop or market information or conditions that affect or tend to affect the price of any commodity in interstate commerce."21 For this "crime," you can be fined up to one million dollars and imprisoned for up to ten years. If you are ever prosecuted for a violation of this law, the way it is written, all the government needs to do to put you behind bars is to prove that you sent anybody a single — James Duane

Do you vote? If not, is it because you think it doesn't matter because things never change, or politicians are evil on both sides, or one vote in several million doesn't count? Yeah, that's learned helplessness. — David McRaney

J. E. Littlewood, a mathematician at Cambridge University, wrote about the law of truly large numbers in his 1986 book, "Littlewood's Miscellany." He said the average person is alert for about eight hours every day, and something happens to the average person about once a second. At this rate, you will experience 1 million events every thirty-five days. This means when you say the chances of something happening are one in a million, it also means about once a month. The monthly miracle is called Littlewood's Law. — David McRaney

There are a billion people in China. It's not easy to be an individual in a crowd of more than a billion people. Think of it. More than a billion people. That means even if you're a one-in-a-million type of guy, there are still a thousand guys exactly like you. — A. Whitney Brown

HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR YOU. HATE. HATE. — Harlan Ellison

Brain researchers estimate that your unconscious data base outweighs the conscious on an order exceeding ten million to one. This data base is the source of you hidden, natural genius. In other words, a part of you is much smarter than you are. — Michael J. Gelb

Currently, the Library of Congress houses eighteen million books. American publishers add another two hundred thousand titles to this stack each year. This means that at the current publishing rate, ten million new books will be added in the next fifty years. Add together the dusty LOC volumes with the shiny new and forthcoming books, and you get a bookshelf-warping total of twenty-eight million books available for an English reader in the next fifty years! But you can read only 2,600 - because you are a wildly ambitious book devourer ... For every one book that you choose to read, you must ignore ten thousand other books simply because you don't have the time (or money!). — Tony Reinke

There are certain mystical belief systems that believe that taking pictures takes an aspect of the soul, but beyond that it's just the idea that once you're captured in a photograph, then a million presumptions are made of you, and you are forever frozen in that one moment, and you are perceived to be the embodiment of that moment, and that, of course, is an illusion. — Madonna Ciccone

I went down, giving you my arm, at least one million of stairs
and now that you are no more here it's the void on every step.
Also in such way our long journey has been short too.
Mine still goes on, and I need no more
coincidences, reservations,
traps, shames of those who think
that reality is that what you see.
I went down millions of stairs giving you my arm
not just because it's better to see with four eyes than two.
With you I went down because I knew that between us
the only true pupils, though so much darkened,
were yours — Eugenio Montale

I think that an anthill is better than a nest ... that in the anthill among a hundred thousand or a million you are freer than in a nest, where all sit around and look at one another, waiting until scientists finally discover ways to make us mind readers ... the psychology of the nest is loathsome to me, and I always sympathize with one who flees his nest, even if he flees into an anthill, where it may be crowded but one can find solitude - that most natural, most worthy state of man, that precious and intense state of being conscious of the world and of oneself. — Nina Berberova

There are many examples that show that events with very small probability are not miraculous. In fact, they're commonplace. Mathematician J.E. Littlewood suggested that each one of us should expect one-in-a-million events to happen to us about once every month. Failing to recognize this is due to us ignoring the astronomically high number of events that occur which we find insignificant. Events that we do find significant, such as winning a lottery or dreaming about your mother calling you right before waking up to her call are just a tiny fraction of many other insignificant events with the same or even lower probability of occurring, such as the chance that you had a dream of your mother calling you and also running out of milk five days after at 7:21 am. — Armin Navabi

Ten million new millionaires will be created by 2016, and you can become one of them
especiall y if you are in direct selling, technology or home-based business.. — Paul Zane Pilzer

Imagine you are a member of a tour visiting Greece. The group goes to the Parthenon. It is a bore. Few people even bother to look - it looked better in the brochure. So people take half a look, mostly take pictures, remark on serious erosion by acid rain. You are puzzled. Why should one of the glories and fonts of Western civilization, viewed under pleasant conditions - good weather, good hotel room, good food, good guide - be a bore?
Now imagine under what set of circumstances a viewing of the Parthenon would not be a bore. For example, you are a NATO colonel defending Greece against a Soviet assault. You are in a bunker in downtown Athens, binoculars propped up on sandbags. It is dawn. A medium-range missile attack is under way. Half a million Greeks are dead. Two missiles bracket the Parthenon. The next will surely be a hit. Between columns of smoke, a ray of golden light catches the portico.
Are you bored? Can you see the Parthenon?
Explain. — Walker Percy

We call them impact songs, and people buy impact songs. But you just never know what those songs are going to be. One of those songs that really went through the roof for us was 'Big Green Tractor,' which I thought was kind of a fun little ditty song that I never in a million years thought would be as big as it was. But it was. — Jason Aldean

When you run with the Doctor, it feels like it'll never end. But however hard you try you can't run forever. Everybody knows that everybody dies and nobody knows it like the Doctor. But I do think that all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark if he ever for one moment, accepts it. Everybody knows that everybody dies. But not every day. Not today. Some days are special. Some days are so, so blessed. Some days, nobody dies at all. (In the library, the Doctor walks back to the TARDIS. He stops, looking at the doors. Then he raises his hand, and stands there poised like that for a long moment. Finally he snaps his fingers. The doors open. He smiles slowly and walks in, joining Donna. Then he snaps his fingers again, and the doors close. River's voice continues over this.) Now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days, when the wind stands fair, and the Doctor comes to call ... everybody lives. — Steven Moffat

I was thinking, there are 5 million people, and I am just one of those 5 million. In the build-up to the war you see children playing in the street, and you think, ah, I'm going to be okay. — Asne Seierstad

Why do cats sleep so much? Perhaps they've been trusted with some major cosmic task, an essential law of physics - such as: if there are less than 5 million cats sleeping at any one time the world will stop spinning. So that when you look at them and think, "what a lazy, good-for-nothing animal," they are, in fact, working very, very hard. — Kate Atkinson

In the United States of America there are twenty-seven million people under twenty-one years of age who receive no Christian training at all. Juvenile crime in the big cities is tremendous - sometimes it seems absolutely out of control. Every week one million people are dying without Jesus. In one minute, eighty-five people pass into eternity. In just the brief span of a church service hundreds are passing out into the presence of God. Does that mean anything to you? — Alan Redpath

Krebs, who knew some Russian and at one stage in his career had been embraced by Stalin, was "a smooth, surviving type." And so, with almost incredible effrontery, he tried to talk to Chuikov as an equal, opening the conversation with the general comment:
"Today is the first of May, a great holiday for our two nations ... "
With seven million Russian dead, half his country devastated, and fresh evidence mounting daily of the unspeakable barbarity with which the Germans had treated Soviet captives and civilians, Chuikov's answer was a model of restraint, a standing testimony to the cool head and dry wit of that remarkable man. He said:
"We have a great holiday today. How things are with you over there it is less easy to say. — Alan Clark

This pen is my only outlet, my only voice, because I have no one else to speak to, no mind but my own to drown in and all the lifeboats are taken and all the life preservers are broken and I don't know how to swim I can't swim I can't swim and it's getting so hard. It's getting so hard. It's like there are a million screams caught inside of my chest but I have to keep them all in because what's the point of screaming if you'll never be heard and no one will ever hear me in here. No one will ever hear me again. — Tahereh Mafi

In fact, when some wedding guest inevitably complains about the seating arrangements, you might point out how long it would have taken you to consider every possibility: assuming you spent one second considering each one, it would come to more than half a million years. The unhappy guest will assume, of course, that you are being histrionic. — Leonard Mlodinow

No [other rappers are on my level], none of them. Here, let me put it like this in the sky, there are a million stars, but when the sun appears, you see none of them. I am the sun. — KRS-One

There are a million things one might do with a block of wood. But what do you think might happen if someone, just once, believed in it? — Suzanne Weyn

It seems impossible to find one man hiding in a city populated by more than a million people."
"Nearly two million," Westcliff said. "However, I have no doubt that he will be found. We have resources and the will to accomplish it."
Despite her concern, Evie could not prevent a smile as she reflected that he sounded very much like Lillian, who never accepted defeat. Seeing that Westcliff's brows had quirked slightly at the sight of her smile, she explained, "I was just thinking what a perfect match you are for a strong-willed woman like Lillian."
The mention of his adored wife brought a glow to the earl's eyes. "I would say she is no more determined or strong-willed than you," he replied, and added with a swift grin, "She merely happens to be noisier about it. — Lisa Kleypas

Voodou isn't like that. It isn't concerned with notions of salvation and transcendence. What it's about is getting things done. You follow me? In out system, there are many gods, spirits. Part of one big family, with all the virtues, all the vices. There's a ritual tradition of communal manifestation, understand? Voodou says, there's a God, sure, Gran Met, but He's big, too big and too far away to worry Himself if your ass is poor, or you can't get laid. Come on, man, you know how this works, it's street religion, came out of dirt poor places a million years ago. Voodou's like the street. Some duster chops out your sister, you don't go camp on the Yakuza's doorstep, do you? No way. You go to somebody, though, who can get the thing done. Right? — William Gibson

Padma shook her head and sighed loudly. Her friend was foolish to think evil would simply disappear and leave them alone. "There is talk of a syndicate rising up. They are not happy with what you have set up here." "Of course they're not. But that's just too bad." Charlie sat across from her and frowned. "Before I was abducted, I was aware of poverty in the general sense, but the personal stories of bondage are so real and so heart wrenching." "Charlie, please, you need to focus on the matter at hand," Padma urged. "But don't you see, it's all connected. More than thirty million people are in some form of slavery worldwide. Thirty million!" Drumming her fingers on the desk, Charlie gave a weak smile. "I cannot stand by and do nothing. India has my heart and sadly it is one of the worst countries for human trafficking. You and I can attest to that. — Tracey Hoffmann

REMEMBER YOUR GREATNESS

Before you were born,
And were still too tiny for
The human eye to see,
You won the race for life
From among 250 million competitors.
And yet,
How fast you have forgotten
Your strength,
When your very existence
Is proof of your greatness.
You were born a winner,
A warrior,
One who defied the odds
By surviving the most gruesome
Battle of them all.
And now that you are a giant,
Why do you even doubt victory
Against smaller numbers,
And wider margins?
The only walls that exist,
Are those you have placed in your mind.
And whatever obstacles you conceive,
Exist only because you have forgotten
What you have already
Achieved. — Suzy Kassem

It's like there are a million screams caught inside of my chest but I have to keep them all in because what's the point of screaming if you'll never be heard and no one will ever hear me in her. No one will ever hear me again. — Tahereh Mafi

Legacies are not just for legends. Whether a million people know your name, or only one person does, you still have the right to leave your mark on the world, even if it's only in your tiny corner of it, in the tiniest of ways.

Not all of us will achieve great heights and feats. Most of us will never leave our hometown or country, let alone conquer Everest. And you know what? That's okay.

Because real life is what happens in between moments of greatness. It's the little things that at the end of it all, you realize were greater than the sum of their parts. It's the amount of times you laughed, or cried, danced, sang, created, inspired, and made someone smile.

The best kind of legacies are the ones that are unseen. You'll never fully be able to measure the effect of a smile or a kind word, but I promise you, the most whispered phrase can send a shockwave around the world that lasts for centuries, or even an eternity. — A.J. Compton

But life is not like that. You are not an airline. You can't remove a single olive from every salad served in first class and save one point two million dollars. — Lynn Messina

I didn't say, You are such a stuffy asshole. And he didn't say, If you ever burn one of my quarter-of-a-million dollar rugs again I'll take it out of your hide, and I didn't say, Oh, honey, wouldn't you like to? And he didn't say Grow up, Ms. Lane, I don't take little girls to my bed, and I didn't say I wouldn't go there if it was the only safe place from the Lord Master in all of Dublin. — Karen Marie Moning

It was fantastic to dive from the side of the boat into the dark waters, for as you hit them they burst into a firework display of greeny-gold phosphorescence so that you felt as though you were diving into a fire. Swimming under water, people left trails of phosphorescence behind them like a million tiny stars and when finally Leonora, who was the last one to come aboard, hauled herself up, her whole body for a brief moment looked as though it was encased in gold.
"My God, she's lovely," said Larry admiringly, "but I'm sure she's a lesbian. She resists all my advances."
"She's certainly very lovely," said Sven, "so beautiful, in fact, that it almost makes me wish I weren't a homosexual. However, there are advantages to being homosexual."
"I think to be bisexual is best," said Larry, "then you've got the best of both worlds, as it were. — Gerald Durrell

Idea meets execution. Feeling becomes action.
I don't know why people find this idea so hard to get. I mean, you can throw any two people together, it doesn't mean they'll fall in love. Everyone knows this. No one quite understands how it works. It's just those people, where they are in their lives, how circumstance throws them together. Sure, it's happened before, but never quite in that way. Maybe they seem to come together all wrong. Maybe they've loved others. Maybe they don't always do right by each other ... but it's still there, the love. The event. And no one would dare criticize it just because it's common, it's a little asymmetrical, and anyone can do it. It is unique. It is theirs. It is beautiful. They have made something that has been made a million times before and has also never existed before that moment. — Maureen Johnson

I can't lie to you and tell you that standing in front of someone and offering them your soul and having them reject you is not gonna be one of the worst things that ever happens to you. You will wonder for days or weeks or months or years afterward what it is about you that was so wrong or broken or ugly that they couldn't love you the way you loved them. You will look for all the reasons inside yourself that they didn't want you and you will find a million.
Maybe it was the way you looked in the mornings when you first woke up and hadn't showered. Maybe it was the way you were too available, because despite what everyone says, playing hard to get is still attractive.
Some days you will believe that every atom of your being is defective somehow. What you need to remember, as I remembered as I watched Grace Town leave, is that you are extraordinary. — Krystal Sutherland

A woman is beaten every nine seconds in this country. Just to be clear: not nine minutes, but nine seconds. It's the number-one cause of injury to American women; of the two million injured annually, more than half a million of those injuries require medical attention while about 145,000 require overnight hospitalizations, according to the Center for Disease Control, and you don't want to know about the dentistry needed afterwards. Spouses are also the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the United States. — Rebecca Solnit

I was terrified to do 'G.I. Joe.' I had no idea how to do one of those movies. I was kind of scared. You know, if one of those doesn't work, it's a huge hit on your career. People are like, 'Well he couldn't make a $170 million movie work. I don't want him in my film.' — Channing Tatum

Here's what an e-reader is. A battery operated slab, about a pound, one half-inch thick, perhaps an aluminum border, rubberized back, plastic, metal, silicon, a bit of gold, plus rare metals such as columbite-tantalite (Google it) ripped from the earth, often in war-torn Africa. To make one e-reader requires 33 pounds of minerals, plus 79 gallons of water to produce the battery and printed writing and refine the minerals. The production of other e-reading devices such as cell phones, iPads and whatever new gizmo will pop up (and down) in the years ahead is similar. "The adverse health impacts from making one e-reader are estimated to be 70 times greater than those for making a single book," says the Times. Then you figure that the one hundred million e-readers will be outmoded in short order--to be replaced by one hundred million new and improved devices in the years ahead that will likewise be replace by new models ad infinitum, and you realize an environmental disaster is at hand. — Bill Henderson

But, in North Korea, it's just the opposite. There's one story. It's written by the Kim regime. And 23 million people are conscripted to be secondary characters. There, as a youth, your aptitude towards certain jobs is measured, and the rest of your life is dictated, whether you'll be a fisherman or a farmer or an opera singer. — Adam Johnson

But most of the time when I wear them, I don't know, I'm kind of hoping - foolishly, probably - that people will read it, get the message, change their lives for the better, even if it's only in the smallest of ways, and make the world a better place." Knox was still grinning as he buttered his toast. "So you're saying your shirts are like a butterfly effect?" "Pretty much, yeah. And when they hand me my Nobel Peace Prize in fifty years for changing the world, one snarky shirt at a time, I'm going to wave it in your face and chant 'Told ya so' about a million times. — Nicole Williams

Once, [Rabbi Chanoch] Teller was traveling with 16 of his [18] offspring ... while changing planes in Frankfurt, Teller noticed a German woman gaping.
'Are all of these your children?' the woman asked. 'From one wife?'
'Yes, God has blessed me with all these children,' the rabbi replied.
'Haven't you heard about the population problem?'the woman sniffed. 'How many more children do you want to have?'
Rabbi Teller paused and looked the woman in the eye: 'About 6 million,' he said. — Lynn Vincent

I have made decisions that turned out to be wrong, and went back and did it another way, and still took less time than many who procrastinated over the original decision. Your brain is capable of handling 140, 000 million bits of information in one second, and if you take hours or days or weeks to reach a vital decision, you are short-circuiting your most valuable property. — Jerry Gillies

I bet you one million in money," Rezvan said as he blew out smoke, "that the number of hours Americans spend per week in these - what do you call them? - therapy offices is exactly the same number of hours Romanians spend in line for bread. And for what? Nothing. To make their problems bigger. They talk about them all day so at night they are even bigger. — Rebecca Lee

For once in his life, Bailey felt like he couldn't keep up. He was blaming the long week and the relaxed interactions with Dan that had thrown him off his game, but still. The man was clearly not making any sense. First he was making a move on Bailey, and then he was probing about his stupid crush on John, and then he was offering to have rebound sex (not that Bailey had "bounced" against John, or however the analogy went; sports were definitely not his thing). And now Dan wanted to brainstorm seduction tactics so he could "get" John.

"Who the hell are you?" Baily asked, mystified.

Just like in the beginning, Dan gave hime one of those million-dollar smiles. "I'm the man who is going to get you a boyfriend. — Alix Bekins

We are in one galaxy called the Milky Way. When you look at the Milky Way's next-door neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy, your telescope is a time machine taking you back two and a half million years. There's a cluster of five galaxies called Stephan's Quintet, which we see through the Hubble telescope spectacularly colliding with each other. But we see them colliding 280 million years ago. If there are aliens in one of those colliding galaxies with a telescope powerful enough to see us, what they are seeing on Earth, at this very moment, here and now, is the early ancestors of the dinosaurs. Are — Richard Dawkins

The outside conditions of your life do not make you feel either secure or insecure. One person may feel secure with practically no money at all, while another may feel insecure with a million dollars in the bank. Your feelings of security or insecurity are due to your emotional programming. — Ken Keyes Jr.

And one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor people in America?" And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. — Martin Luther King Jr.

I may ... pass for being a relatively successful man. People occasionally stare at me in the streets-that's fame. I can fairly easily earn enough to qualify for admission to the higher slopes of the Inland Revenue-that's success. Furnished with money and a little fame ... [I] may partake of trendy diversions-that's pleasure. It might happen once in a while that something I said or wrote ... represented a serious impact on our time-that's fulfillment. Yet I say to you, and I beg you to believe me, multiply these tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together, and they are nothing-less than nothing, a positive impediment-measured against one draught of that living water Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty.8 — Richard D. Phillips

Since I am a loyal American, I am not supposed to tell you why this has taken place, but then it is not usual for us to examine why anything happens; we simply accuse others of motiveless malignity. "We are good," G.W. proclaims, "They are evil," which wraps that one up in a neat package. Later, Bush himself put, as it were, the bow on the package in an address to a joint session of Congress where he shared with them - as well as with the rest of us somewhere over the Beltway - his profound knowledge of Islam's wiles and ways: "They hate what they see right here in this Chamber." I suspect a million Americans nodded sadly in front of their TV sets. "Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms, our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." At this plangent moment what American's gorge did not rise like a Florida chad to the bait? — Gore Vidal

I think the truth is that we are in love with the fantasy of being that one person who could inspire, arouse, or affect someone who is so untouchable to the rest of the world. It makes us feel special; like we're the diamond in the rough, the one in a million, the one that everyone else couldn't be, and do what everyone else couldn't do. Imagine being that significant to someone? To never have to doubt that he loves you, or needs you, or more importantly, wants you more than any other. — Christine Zolendz

In china when you're one in a million, there are 1300 people just like you — Bill Gates

You don't have to be young. You don't have to be thin. You don't have to be "hot" in a way that some dumbfuckedly narrow mindset has construed that word. You don't have to have taut flesh or a tight ass or an eternally upright set of tits. You have to find a way to inhabit your body while enacting your deepest desires. You have to be brave enough to build the intimacy you deserve. You have to take off all of your clothes and say, "I'm right here." There are so many tiny revolutions in a life, a million ways we have to circle around ourselves to grow and change and be okay. And perhaps the body is our final frontier. It's the one place we can't leave. We're there till it goes. Most women and some men spend their lives trying to alter it, hide it, prettify it, make it what it isn't, or conceal it for what it is. But what if we didn't do that? That's the question you need to answer, — Cheryl Strayed

I think that America certainly has racism, I think that any industrialized country does. But when you see how many million fans Barack Obama has who are not black, it would lead one to the conclusion that millions of Americans are in fact not burdened by the albatross of racism. — Henry Rollins

It's amazing to me that not only can we put a probe around Saturn and get images of its moons, but our math and physics are so freaking accurate we can say, "Hey, you know what? On this date at this time if we turn Cassini that way we'll see a moon over 2 million kilometers away pass in front of another one nearly 3 million kilometers away."Every morning, I have a 50/50 chance of finding my keys. That kinda puts things in perspective. — Phil Plait

There are a million things in this world that can end you, that can in one second obliterate the life you work so hard to keep alive. Our lives are structured around not dying. Eating, sleeping, looking both ways before you cross the street. It's all, all of it, to keep us safe from the thing that we know is going to get us anyway. It doesn't even make sense, if you think about it. It's the world's biggest joke. Our entire lives are set up around not dying, knowing all the while that it's the one thing we can't avoid. — Rebecca Serle

If, for even one moment, you can look at someone with the eyes of true love, you'll know those eyes are not yours. Your eyes could never look with that amount of love. Your eyes could never be that unconditional. Your eyes could never, even in a million years, see only beauty and total perfection in your beloved. Those are the eyes of God looking down through you. — Michael A. Singer

If you are one in a million, there are seven thousand of you on the planet. — M.R. Mathias

Have you noticed how the Holocaust deniers only ever quibble over the number of Jewish deaths? Now why is that? The answer is very simple: Because they are anti-Semitic. It really is that simple. Anti-Semitism is one of the most aggressive forces on the planet, and has been since Biblical times. Had the Holocaust been a purge of any other race or group of people, everyone would most likely accept the facts. Who, for example, disputes that at least 800,000 Rwandans died in the genocide that occurred during the Rwandan civil war? Or that around 1.7 million Cambodians died in the Cambodian killing fields? — James Morcan

Everything in life turns out to be a distraction from the real thing you want to do. There are a million distractions and when I was a kid I was very disciplined. I knew that the other kids weren't. I was the one able to do the thing, not because I had more talent, maybe less, but because they simply weren't applying themselves. — Woody Allen

In a city of twenty million like New York, there might be one or two terrorists. Maybe ten of them at the outside. 10/20,000,000 = 0.00005 percent. One twenty-thousandth of a percent. That's pretty rare all right. Now, say you've got some software that can sift through all the bank records, or toll pass records, or public transit records, or phone call records in the city and catch terrorists 99 percent of the time. In a pool of twenty million people, a 99 percent accurate test will identify two hundred thousand people as being terrorists. But only ten of them are terrorists. To catch ten bad guys, you have to haul in and investigate two hundred thousand innocent people. — Cory Doctorow

Why are there such long words in the world, Miss?' enquires Sophie, when the mineralogy lesson is over.
'One long difficult word is the same as a whole sentence full of short easy ones, Sophie,' says Sugar. 'It saves time and paper.' Seeing that the child is unconvinced, she adds, 'If books were written in such a way that every person, no matter how young, could understand everything in them, they would be enormously long books. Would you wish to read a book that was a thousand pages long, Sophie?'
Sophie answers without hesitation.
'I would read a thousand million pages, Miss, if all the words were words I could understand. — Michel Faber

I think it's more, at least at the time, a sense of abstraction. My mind doesn't really work in a way where there's a definitive sense of something. I go one way and then it opens up into a million different ideas, and somehow, when you look at the art, Buddhist art, or particularly Tibetan art, you know, it's a similar thing. All of a sudden there are a million lotus leaves and you're following one to the next and to another, and I related to that, and it felt simple and easy to me. And it made me feel smart. — Jake Gyllenhaal

In the same way there is much, much in all of us, but we do not know it. No one ever calls it out in us, unless we are lucky enough to know intelligent, imaginative, sympathetic people who love us and have the magnanimity to encourage us, to believe in us, by listening, by praise, by appreciation, by laughing. If you are going to write, you must become aware of this richness in you and come to believe in it and know it is there so that you can write opulently with with self-trust. Once you become aware of it, have faith in it, you will be all right. But it is like this: if you have a million dollars in the bank and don't know, it doesn't so you any good. — Brenda Ueland

If we just worry about the big picture, we are powerless. So my secret is to start right away doing whatever little work I can do. I try to give joy to one person in the morning, and remove the suffering of one person in the afternoon. If you and your friends do not despise the small work, a million people will remove a lot of suffering. That is the secret. Start right now. — Chan Khong

If a man go into the London Docks sober without means of getting drunk, and comes out of one of the cellars very drunk wherein are a million gallons of wine, I think that would be reasonable evidence that he had stolen some of the wine in that cellar, though you could not prove that any wine was stolen, or any wine was missed. — William Henry Maule

Today was the absolute worst day ever
And don't try to convince me that
There's something good in every day
Because, when you take a closer look,
This world is a pretty evil place.
Even if
Some goodness does shine through once in a while
Satisfaction and happiness don't last.
And it's not true that
It's all in the mind and heart
Because
True happiness can be obtaind
Only if one's surroundings are good
It's not true that good exists
I'm sure you can agree that
The reality
Creates
My attitude
It's all beyond my control
And you'll never in a million years hear me say that
Today was a good day

(read from bottom up for a different perspective) — Unknown

You never know how things are gonna turn out, though, and that's the truth. You aim for one place, sure as an arrow, but before you hit the mark, the wind gets you. I don't believe I ever met one person who became what they wanted to be when they were your age." "I'd like to be everybody in the world," I said. "I'd like to live a million times. — Robert McCammon

Someone asked me very recently why I have 8 million views on TED - "your work resonates, what are you doing?" What I think my contribution is, what I do well, is I name experiences that are very universal that no one really talks about. That's the researcher in me; that's really part of being a grounded theory researcher - putting names to concepts and experiences that people have. That's the researcher part. — Brene Brown

There are eight million stories in the naked city," he intoned. "You remember that program? Used to be on television some years back."
"I remember."
"They had that line at the end of every show. 'There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.' "
"I remember it."
"Eight million stories," he said. "You know what you got in this city, this fucked-up toilet of a naked fucking city? You know what you got? You got eight million ways to die. — Lawrence Block

I'm good at looking good with weapons and stunts. But if you put a bull's eye in front of me and asked me to hit it, I'd say the chances of me hitting it are about one in a million! — Evangeline Lilly

Remember, in China when you are one in a million, there are 1,300 other people just like you. — Thomas Friedman

Of the four billion life forms which have existed on this planet, three billion, nine hundred and sixty million are now extinct. We don't know why. Some by wanton extinction, some through natural catastrophe, some destroyed by meteorites and asteroids. In the light of these mass extinctions it really does seem unreasonable to suppose that Homo sapiens should be exempt. Our species will have been one of the shortest-lived of all, a mere blink, you may say, in the eye of time. — P.D. James

Sorry' he said. 'No, I'm sorry.' 'What are you sorry for?' 'Rattling on like a mad old cow. I'm sorry, I'm tired, bad day, and I'm sorry for being so ... boring.' 'You're not that boring.' 'I am, Dex. God, I swear I bore myself.' 'Well, you don't bore me.' He took her hand in his. 'You could never bore me. You're one in a million, Em. — David Nicholls

Cyber Leader: Daleks, be warned. You have declared war upon the Cybermen.
Dalek Sec: This is not war - this is pest control!
Cyber Leader: We have five million Cybermen. How many are you?
Dalek Sec: Four.
Cyber Leader: You would destroy the Cybermen with four Daleks?
Dalek Sec: We would destroy the Cybermen with one Dalek! You superior in only one respect.
Cyber Leader: What is that?
Dalek Sec: You are better at dying. — Russell T. Davies

The guest is inside you, and also inside me;
you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed.
We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.
Let your arrogance go, and look around inside.
The blue sky opens out farther and farther,
the daily sense of failure goes away,
the damage I have done to myself fades,
a million suns come forward with light,
when I sit firmly in that world.
I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken,
inside "love" there is more joy than we know of,
rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds,
there are whole rivers of light.
The universe is shot through in all parts by a single sort of love.
How hard it is to feel that joy in all our four bodies!
Those who hope to be reasonable about it fail.
The arrogance of reason has separated us from that love.
With the word "reason" you already feel miles away. — Kabir

Even though I can't tell others whether they should chase their marathon dreams, I highly recommend they do something completely out of character, something they never in a million years thought they'd do, something they may fail miserably at. Because sometimes the places where you end up finding your true self are the places you never thought to look. That, and I don't want to be the only one who sucks at something. — Dawn Dais

Walter Wagner, the man who had gone to court to stop the Large Hadron Collider from beginning operations. A serious charge had been leveled: the LHC was a hazard to the very existence of life on earth. JO: So, roughly speaking, what are the chances the world is going to be destroyed? Is it one in a million, one in a billion? WW: Well, the best we can say right now is about a one-in-two chance. JO: Hold on a second. It's ... fifty-fifty? WW: Yeah, fifty-fifty ... If you have something that can happen, and something that won't necessarily happen, it's going to either happen, or it's going to not happen, and, so, the best guess is one in two. JO: I'm not sure that's how probability works, Walter. — Sean Carroll

But I can tell you what I believe: When tens of thousands of innocent souls have perished in Darfur-when 11 million children are without health insurance-when our colossal debt subjects our economic future to the whims of Asian bankers-no one can tell me that faith demands this Senate spend its time arguing over a handful of judges. No one with those priorities can use my faith to intimidate me. — John F. Kerry

Open your mind. See the world in all its splendid color. Truly look at the uniqueness of the people around you and cherish the nuances. Before you make judgments of others and their lifestyles, always remember that there are a million ways to live and love and be loved, and no one way is right or wrong. — Ella Dominguez

If you're "one in a million", and the world is full of seven billion people, that means there are seven thousand people just like you. — Jeff Goins

Private listening really took off in 1979, with the popularity of the Walkman portable cassette player. Listening to music on a Walkman is a variation of the "sitting very still in a concert hall" experience (there are no acoustic distractions), combined with the virtual space (achieved by adding reverb and echo to the vocals and instruments) that studio recording allows. With headphones on, you can hear and appreciate extreme detail and subtlety, and the lack of uncontrollable reverb inherent in hearing music in a live room means that rhythmic material survives beautifully and completely intact; it doesn't get blurred or turned into sonic mush as it often does in a concert hall. You, and only you, the audience of one, can hear a million tiny details, even with the compression that MP3 technology adds to recordings. You can hear the singer's breath intake, their fingers on a guitar string. That said, extreme and sudden dynamic changes can be painful on a personal music player. As — David Byrne

The World Health Organization did a world health report in 2006. In the whole world about 60 countries are in dire situation in terms of having enough doctors. And many of these countries are in Sub-Saharan Africa. You know, that part of the world alone needs one million doctors. — Margaret Chan

Of course a miracle may happen, and you may be a great painter, but you must confess the chances are a million to one against it. It'll be an awful sell if at the end you have to acknowledge you've made a hash of it."
"I've got to paint," he repeated.
"Supposing you're never anything more than third-rate, do you think it will have been worth while to give up everything? After all, in any other walk in life it doesn't matter if you're not very good; you can get along quite comfortably if you're just adequate; but it's different with an artist."
"You blasted fool," he said.
"I don't see why, unless it's folly to say the obvious."
"I tell you I've got to paint. I can't help myself. When a man falls into the water it doesn't matter how he swims, well or badly: he's got to get out or else he'll drown. — W. Somerset Maugham