“There must be times, in the world of business, when two Peale-powered personalities find themselves in opposition. Number One is determined to achieve success by selling Number Two a great gross of non-molting dust mops; Number Two is equally determined not to have the mops. Both have affirmed an equal number of times that he can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth him. What happens? Theologians will scratch their heads over this, and Immensity itself may feel a tremor.”

— Robertson Davies , book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Robertson Davies 282

Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and nov… 1913–1995

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Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

Moreover, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
I. 1. as translated by William Whewell and as quoted by Florian Cajori, A History of Physics in its Elementary Branches (1899) as Aristotle's proof that the world is perfect.
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“Look out for number one and try not to step in number two.”

Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) American actor and comedian

“Number one is "Do you have curiosity?" Number two is "Does it translate to imagination?" But number three is "Did it translate to action?" That’s the difference between someone with an idea and someone who is an entrepreneur.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

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“Communists, when in control of a nation, have murdered more than 3.6 times the number of people killed in combat in all wars, including the two world wars.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p. 99

“He could remember the idiosyncrasies of numbers in an almost uncanny way. It was Littlewood who said that every positive integer was one of Ramanujan's personal friends. I remember once going to see him when he was ill at Putney. I had ridden in taxi cab number 1729 and remarked that the number seemed to me rather a dull one, and that I hoped it was not an unfavorable omen. "No," he replied, "it is a very interesting number; it is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."”

G. H. Hardy (1877–1947) British mathematician

Source: Ramanujan (1940), Ch. I : The Indian mathematician Ramanujan.

“If a is any definite number, then all numbers of the system R fall into two classes, A1 and A2, each of which contains infinitely many individuals; the first class A1 comprises all numbers a1 that are < a, the second class A2 comprises all numbers a2 that are > a; the number a itself may be assigned at pleasure to the first or second class, being respectively the greatest number of the first class or the least of the second. In every case the separation of the system R into the two classes A1, A2 is such that every number of the first class A1 is less than every number of the second class A2.”

Richard Dedekind (1831–1916) German mathematician

p, 125
Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen (1872)

“If one proves the equality of two numbers a and b by showing first that a \leqq b and then that a \geqq b, it is unfair; one should instead show that they are really equal by disclosing the inner ground for their equality.”

Emmy Noether (1882–1935) German mathematician

As quoted in Hermann Weyl, "Emmy Noether" (April 26, 1935) in Weyl's Levels of Infinity: Selected Writings on Mathematics and Philosophy (2012) p. 64.

“Only if the third necessary thing could be given us. Number one, as I said: quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

“1. Zero is a number.
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Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932) Italian mathematician

As expressed in "The Mathematical Philosophy of Giuseppe Peano" by Hubert C. Kennedy, in Philosophy of Science Vol. 30, No. 3 (July 1963)
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Georg Cantor (1845–1918) mathematician, inventor of set theory

From Kant to Hilbert (1996)

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