“The fate of a single man can be rich with significance, that of a few hundred less so, but the history of thousands and millions of men does not mean anything at all, in any adequate sense of the word.”

— Stanisław Lem , book Solaris

Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 8 "The Monsters", p. 120

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Stanisław Lem 74

Polish science fiction author 1921–2006

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

“What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa?”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

“To master the virtue of the long sword is to govern the world and oneself, thus the long sword is the basis of strategy. The principle is "strategy by means of the long sword". If he attains the virtue of the long sword, one man can beat ten men. Just as one man can beat ten, so a hundred men can beat a thousand, and a thousand men can beat ten thousand. In my strategy, one man is the same as ten thousand, so this strategy is the complete warrior's craft.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Ground Book
Context: To master the virtue of the long sword is to govern the world and oneself, thus the long sword is the basis of strategy. The principle is "strategy by means of the long sword". If he attains the virtue of the long sword, one man can beat ten men. Just as one man can beat ten, so a hundred men can beat a thousand, and a thousand men can beat ten thousand. In my strategy, one man is the same as ten thousand, so this strategy is the complete warrior's craft.
The Way of the warrior does not include other Ways, such as Confucianism, Buddhism, certain traditions, artistic accomplishments and dancing. But even though these are not part of the Way, if you know the Way broadly you will see it in everything. Men must polish their particular Way.

“that's it - hundreds of texts and conversations, thousands upon thousands of words spoken and sent, all boiled down into a single line. is that what relationships become?”

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“It took a couple of hundred million years to develop a thinking ape and you want a smart one in a lousy few hundred thousand?”

Spider Robinson (1948) Canadian author

God Is An Iron (1977)
Context: "It took a couple of hundred million years to develop a thinking ape and you want a smart one in a lousy few hundred thousand? That lemming drive you're talking about is there — but there's another kind of drive, another kind of force that's working against it. Or else there wouldn't still be any people and there wouldn't be the words to have this conversation and—" She paused, looked down at herself. "And I wouldn't be here to say them."

“It took less than an hour to make the atoms, a few hundred million years to make the stars and planets, but five billion years to make man!”

George Gamow (1904–1968) Russian-American physicist and science writer

Source: The Creation of the Universe (1952), p. 139

“Life can be better for women—economic and political conditions improved—and at the same time the status of women can remain resistant, in deed impervious, to change: so far in history this is precisely the paradigm for social change as it relates to the conditions of women. Reforms are made, important ones' but the status of women relative to men does not change. Women are still less significant, have less privacy, less integrity, less self-determination. This means that women have less freedom.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 7

“The man who receives five thousand dollars a year wants six thousand dollars a year, and the man who owns eight or nine hundred thousand dollars will want a hundred thousand dollars more to make it a million, while the man who has his millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day.”

Samuel Gompers (1850–1924) American Labor Leader[AFL]

What Does the Working Man Want? (speech), Louisville, KY (May 1890)

“The amount of organic matter that could have been produced in the first few hundred million years of Earth history”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)
Context: The amount of organic matter that could have been produced in the first few hundred million years of Earth history was sufficient to have produced in the present ocean a several-percent solution of organic matter. This is just about the dilution of Knorr's chicken soup, and not that different from the composition either. And chicken soup is widely known to be good for life.

“It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions, the head of a great industry, to be a man worthhearing; but as a rule they don't know anything outside their own business.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

“The fate of a single man can be rich with significance, that of a few hundred less so, but the history of thousands and millions of men does not mean anything at all, in any adequate sense of the word.”

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Stanisław Lem 74

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