“A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.”

Source: The Godfather

As quoted by Baruch Sienna in a 2006 review http://www.kolel.org/pages/blogger/2009/01/nothing-sacred-douglas-rushkoff-crown.html of Nothing Sacred : The Truth about Judaism (2003) by Douglas Rushkoff, and in "Across The Great Divide" by Jonathan Mark in The Jewish Week (3 September 2008) http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a13303/News/New_York.html.

Like a Great Family.
Other

Adams quotes — and takes the title of this chapter — from Karl Pearson's classic work The Grammar of Science: "In the chaos behind sensations, in the 'beyond' of sense-impressions, we cannot infer necessity, order or routine, for these are concepts formed by the mind of man on this side of sense-impressions." "Briefly chaos is all that science can logically assert of the supersensuous."
The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Economic Development (1964), ch. 2
Context: People are the common denominator of progress. So, paucis verbis, no improvement is possible with unimproved people, and advance is certain when people are liberated and educated. It would be wrong to dismiss the importance of roads, railroads, power plants, mills, and the other familiar furniture of economic development. At some stages of development — the stage that India and Pakistan have reached, for example — they are central to the strategy of development. But we are coming to realize, I think, that there is a certain sterility in economic monuments that stand alone in a sea of illiteracy. Conquest of illiteracy comes first.

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 565.