Quotes about average
page 6

“My experience indicates that most managers receive much more data (if not information) than they can possibly absorb even if they spend all of their time trying to do so. Hence they already suffer from an information overload. They must spend a great deal of time separating the relevant documents. For example, I have found that I receive an average of 43 hours of unsolicited reading material each week. The solicited material is usually half again this amount.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Source: 1960s, Management misinformation systems, 1967, p. 148.

Suffering, Time, Reading

“For average working folks, America was becoming a puzzle. Who was buying all these two-hundred-dollar copper saucepans, anyway? And how was everyone paying for these BMWs? Were people shrewd or just stupefyingly irresponsible?”

Daniel Suarez Daemon

Source: Daemon (2006), Chapter 2: Rogue Process

People

“In most cases the favorable price performance will be accompanied by a well-defined improvement in the average earnings, in the dividend, and in the balance-sheet position. Thus in the long run the market test and the ordinary business test of a successful equity commitment tend to be largely identical.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 25

Business, Success

“As immigration trends suggest, anti-Americanism is not deeply rooted as a popular prejudice. In Europe, anti-Americanism is much more a hobgoblin of the political, cultural, and religious elites. According to a SOFRES survey of May 2000, only 10 percent of French feel dislike for the U. S. After September 11, according to another poll, 52 percent of French people interviewed said they had always felt warmly toward the U. S., against 32 percent who said the opposite. Historian Michel Winock concludes that "anti-Americanism is not an attitude of the average French person; it is typical of a certain segment of the elites."”

Jean-François Revel (1924–2006) French writer and philosopher

2000s, Europe's Anti-American Obsession (2003)

People, Feeling, Personality

“The average guy is smart enough to know the difference between what works and what doesn't, and if you have bad information, sooner or later, you figure it out and you get onto something else.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

2000s, Larry King Live (2000)

Guy

“It is quite easy to include a weight for empty space in the equations of gravity. Einstein did so in 1917, introducing what came to be known as the cosmological constant into his equations. His motivation was to construct a static model of the universe. To achieve this, he had to introduce a negative mass density for empty space, which just canceled the average positive density due to matter. With zero total density, gravitational forces can be in static equilibrium. Hubble's subsequent discovery of the expansion of the universe, of course, made Einstein's static model universe obsolete. …The fact is that to this day we do not understand in a deep way why the vacuum doesn't weigh, or (to say the same thing in another way) why the cosmological constant vanishes, or (to say it in yet another way) why Einstein's greatest blunder was a mistake.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Way, Motivation, Understanding, Universe

“Off in his head, he solved extraordinary problems of mathematics, science, medicine, the humanities. He wrote poetry, saw music. … People have told him, with your IQ you should be a genius. I was a genius and have long since abused myself into a state of average and like it better that way. Now there comes a momentary clearing, a moment of satorial splendor, and then it goes oblique. It fades away like blown dust.”

Robert Olmstead (1954) American writer

America By Land (1993)

People, Music, Way, Mathematics

“Plowboy: In your opinion, what are mankind's prospects for the near future?
Asimov: To tell the truth, I don't think the odds are very good that we can solve our immediate problems. I think the chances that civilization will survive more than another 30 years—that it will still be flourishing in 2010—are less than 50 percent.
Plowboy: What sort of disaster do you foresee?
Asimov: I imagine that as population continues to increase—and as the available resources decrease—there will be less energy and food, so we'll all enter a stage of scrounging. The average person's only concerns will be where he or she can get the next meal, the next cigarette, the next means of transportation. In such a universal scramble, the Earth will be just plain desolated, because everyone will be striving merely to survive regardless of the cost to the environment. Put it this way: If I have to choose between saving myself and saving a tree, I'm going to choose me.
Terrorism will also become a way of life in a world marked by severe shortages. Finally, some government will be bound to decide that the only way to get what its people need is to destroy another nation and take its goods … by pushing the nuclear button.
And this absolute chaos is going to develop—even if nobody wants nuclear war and even if everybody sincerely wants peace and social justice—if the number of mouths to feed continues to grow. Nothing will be able to stand up against the pressure of the whole of humankind simply trying to stay alive!”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Mother Earth News interview (1980)

Life, War, People, Truth

“The reduction of poverty is the over-arching objective of the MDGs. Progress is not measured by national or global averages, but by how well the health of the poor improves. If we miss the poor, we miss the point. A health system that lacks commodities for managing high-mortality infectious diseases and the main killers of mothers and young children will not have an adequate impact.”

Margaret Chan (1947) Director-General of the World Health Organization

"Exclusive Interview with WHO's Dr. Margaret Chan" http://www.usaid.gov/news-information/frontlines/global-healthiraq/exclusive-interview-whos-dr-margaret-chan, April-May 2011.

Children, Health, Disease

“he seldom or never spoke except actually to convey an idea. Measured by quantity of words, he was a talker of fully average copiousness; by extent of meaning communicated, he was the most copious I have listened to. How in few sentences he would sketch you off an entire biography, an entire object or transaction, keen, clear, rugged, genuine, completely rounded In! His words came direct from the heart by the inspiration of the moment.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1880s, Reminiscences (1881)

Communication, Idea, Heart

“With regard to certain other fallacies with which the farmers have been beset, and latterly more so than ever; the farmer has been told that if there was a free trade in corn, wheat would be so cheap, that he would not be able to carry on his farm. He is directed only to look at Dantzic, where corn, he is told, was once selling at 15s. 11d. per quarter, and on this the Essex Protection Society put out their circulars, stating that Dantzic wheat is but 15s. 11d. per quarter, and how would the British farmer contend against this? …As far as I can obtain information from the books of merchants, the cost of transit from Dantzic, during an average of ten years, may be put down at 10s. 6d. a quarter, including in this, freight, landing, loading, insurance, and other items of every kind. This is the natural protection enjoyed by the farmers of this country.”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1844/mar/12/protective-duties-the-agricultural in the House of Commons (12 March 1844). 1840s

Books, Nature, Country

“The average Christian confuses the Law of Rebirth with what he calls "the transmigration of souls", and frequently believes that the Law of Rebirth signifies the passing of human beings into the bodies of animals or of lower forms of life. Such is by no means the case.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Source: The Reappearance of the Christ (1948), p. 324

Life, Law, Soul, Animals

“It is psychology, not soil or climate, that enables a man to raise five times as many potatoes per acre as the average in his own state.”

Harrington Emerson (1853–1931) American efficiency engineer and business theorist

Source: The twelve principles of efficiency (1912), p. 107 ; cited in: Hugo Münsterberg. Psychology and Industrial Efficiency, 1913, p. 52

Time

“The newspapers still talk about glory but the average man, thank God, has got rid of that illusion. It is a damned bore, with a stall mate as the most probable outcome, but one has to see it through, and see it through with the knowledge that whichever side wins, civilisation in Europe will be pipped for the next 30 years. Don't indulge in Romance here, Malcolm, or suppose that an era of jolly little nationalities is dawning. We shall be much too much occupied with pestilence and poverty to reconstruct.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Letter 136, to Malcolm Darling, 6 November 1914
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

God, Knowledge

“President Herbert Hoover promised “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage.” With warnings about global warming reaching feverish levels, many are having second thoughts about all those cars. It seems they should instead be worrying about the chickens. … It turns out that raising animals for food is a primary cause of land degradation, air pollution, water shortage, water pollution, loss of biodiversity, and not least of all, global warming. …The researchers found that, when it’s all added up, the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by going vegetarian than by switching to a Prius. … Now that we know a greener diet is even more effective than a greener car, we can make a difference at every single meal, simply by leaving the animals off of our plates. Who would have thought: what’s good for our health is also good for the health of the planet!”

Kathy Freston American self-help writer

"Vegetarian is the New Prius", in the HuffPost (18 January 2007) https://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/vegetarian-is-the-new-pri_b_39014.html.

Health, Food, Cars, Water

“Unless you think that the majority of people are living successful lives, chances are that at some point you will have to act differently from those around you. Success can take many forms and it is often about standing out from the crowd or being above average, spotting when the crowd moves one way and making sure that you move the other.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

People, Way, Thinking, Chance

“If you take a look back at the history of man, you will not find one instance where an average woman’s advice about dating or relationships was better than an average man’s.”

Roosh Valizadeh (1979) American writer and men's rights activist

6 November 2006 http://www.rooshv.com/womanly-advice

History

“My proposal is this: once this technology [genetically engineered intelligence] becomes available, why not offer it free of charge to parents on low incomes with below-average IQs? Provided there is sufficient take-up, it could help to address the problem of flat-lining inter-generational social mobility and serve as a counterweight to the tendency for the meritocratic elite to become a hereditary elite. It might make all the difference when it comes to the long-term sustainability of advanced meritocratic societies.”

Toby Young (1963) British journalist

The Quadrant (2015)

Intelligence, Problem, Parent, Help

“Listen, when I arrived in Los Angeles in the early '40s, there were just 640,000 people. Every loser in the world headed there because there was no competition. The keynote was mediocrity because the film, radio and music businesses had defined that the average mental age of the audience was 12. They handed me the bloodstained hat of a guy who'd fallen off his horse and suddenly I was in the movies—in a Hopalong Cassidy picture. I give hope to the hopeless. People say, "If he can make it, I can be Queen of England.”

Robert Mitchum (1917–1997) American film actor, author, composer and singer

As quoted in "Roberto Mitchum: After all these years, still one of a kind"

People, Age, World, Hope

“Now here’s a thought to consider. Every twenty minutes on the Appalachian Trail, Katz and I walked farther than the average American does in a week. For 93 percent of all trips outside the home, for whatever distance or whatever purpose, Americans now get in a car. On average the total walking of an American these days—that’s walking of all types: from car to office, from office to car, around the supermarket and shopping malls—adds up to 1.4 miles a week, barely 350 yards a day. That’s ridiculous.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 11 (p. 128)

Cars, Home

“And I do know about body image. About worrying about it. I made my living being 20 or 30 pounds heavier than the average model. And that's where I got famous. Victoria's Secret said I sold more bras and panties than anybody else, and I was traipsing down that runway with 30 pounds more booty than the other girls. So it had a lot to do with my success, my weight, but it's also always been an issue for me, so I can relate.”

Tyra Banks (1973) American model, author and television personality

Euan Ferguson (April 15, 2007) "Interview: Tyra Banks - The supermodel turned spokeswoman" http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2007/apr/15/fashion.features5, The Guardian, Guardian News and Media Limited.

Secret, Girl, Success

“If 22 bushels (1,300 pounds) of rice and 22 bushels of winter grain are harvested from a quarter acre field such as one of these, then the field will support five to ten people each investing an average of less than one hour of labor per day. But if the field were turned over to pasturage, or if the grain were fed to cattle, only one person could be supported per quarter acre. Meat becomes a luxury food when its production requires land which could provide food directly for human consumption. This has been shown clearly and definitely. Each person should ponder seriously how much hardship he is causing by indulging in food so expensively produced.”

Masanobu Fukuoka book The One-Straw Revolution

Source: The One-Straw Revolution (1975), Chapter 3, pp. 103-104

People, Food, Support, Winter

“Janeway Smithson was a little, insane, grey-haired bantam rooster of a man. He loaded five or six of us in one cab, and we rolled down to the bed of the L. A. River. Now in those days the L. A. River was a fake - there was no water, just a wide, flat, dry cement runway. The bums lived down there by the hundreds in little cement alcoves under the bridges and overpasses. Some of them even had potted plants in front of their places. All they needed to live like kings was canned heat (Sterno) and what they picked out of the nearby garbage dump. They were tan and relaxed and most of them looked a hell of a lot healthier than the average Los Angeles business man. Those guys down there had no problems with women, income tax, landlords, burial expenses, dentists, time payments, car repairs, or with climbing into a voting booth and pulling the curtain closed.”

Charles Bukowski book Factotum

Source: Factotum (1975), Ch. 71

Women, Angels, Cars, Guy

“If assets are priced rationally, variables that are related to average returns, such as size and book-to-market equity, must proxy for sensitivity to common (shared and thus undiversifiable) risk factors in returns. The time-series regressions give direct evidence on this issue. In particular, the slopes and R2 values show whether mimicking portfolios for risk factors related to size and [book-to-market] capture shared variation in stock and bond returns not explained by other factors.”

Eugene Fama (1939) American economist and Nobel laureate in Economics

Source: Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds, 1993, p. 4-5

Books, Time

“What the Big Bang theory tells us, is that at least our region of the universe 13.82 years ago, was an extremely hot, dense uniform soup of particles which in the conventional standard Big Bang model filled literally all of space—and now we certainly believe that it filled essentially all of the space that we have access to—uniformly. …This is contrary to a popular cartoon image of the Big Bang, which is just plain wrong. The cartoon image of the Big Bang is the image of a small egg of highly dense matter that then exploded and spewed out into empty space. That is not the scientific picture of the Big Bang. …If there was a small egg that exploded into empty space, you would certainly expect that today you would see something different if you were looking towards where the egg was, versus looking the opposite direction, but we don't see any effect like that. When we look around the sky the universe looks completely uniform, on average, in all directions, to a very high degree of accuracy… So we don't see a sign of an egg having happened anywhere. Rather, the Big Bang seems to have happened everywhere, uniformly.”

Alan Guth (1947) American theoretical physicist and cosmologist

Lecture 1: Inflationary Cosmology: Is Our Universe Part of a Multiverse? Part I.
The Early Universe (2012)

Universe

“"Average" isn't so hot at the race track given those steep track takes. "Average" is pretty decent for stocks, something like 6 percent above the inflation rate. For a buy-and -hold investor, commissions and taxes are small.”

William Poundstone (1955) American writer

Part Three, Arbitrage, This Is Not the Time To Buy Stocks, p. 134
Fortune's Formula (2005)

“This faulty intuition as well as many modern applications of probability theory are under the strong influence of traditional misconceptions concerning the meaning of the law of large numbers and of a popular mystique concerning a so-called law of averages.”

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Source: An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition), Chapter X, Law Of large Numbers, p. 250.

Law, Strong

“Why can stars do better than the big bang? …During the big bang, there were only a few minutes when nuclei could form. Very rare processes, or slow ones, played little role. A case in point is the key process from which the sun derives its energy. In this reaction, two protons collide to produce a deuterium nucleus, a neutrino, and a positron. …This reaction belongs to the family of weak interactions. …It remains… a remarkable—and for humanity, remarkably fortunate—circumstance that the central reaction that drives the sun is so rare. It is only this extraordinary rarity that allows the average proton in the sun to last so long, billions of years, even though it is colliding with other protons millions of times a second. …an entertaining example of Treiman's theorem.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Family, Star, Time, Sun

“Sociology is the science whose object is to interpret the meaning of social action and thereby give a causal explanation of the way in which the action proceeds and the effects which it produces. By "action" in this definition is meant the human behaviour when and to the extent that the agent or agents see it as subjectively meaningful […] the meaning to which we refer may be either (a) the meaning actually intended either by an individual agent on a particular historical occasion or by a number of agents on an approximate average in a given set of cases, or (b) the meaning attributed to the agent or agents, as types, in a pure type constructed in the abstract. In neither case is the "meaning" to be thought of as somehow objectively "correct" or "true" by some metaphysical criterion. This is the difference between the empirical sciences of action, such as sociology and history and any kind of a priori discipline, such as jurisprudence, logic, ethics, or aesthetics whose aim is to extract from their subject-matter "correct" or "valid" meaning.”

Max Weber (1864–1920) German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist

Max Weber, The Nature of Social Action, 1922

Way, History, Science

“I have not long to live. I have lasted more than a man’s average allotted span, and while I still am hale and hearty, I know full well the hand of time, while it may miss a man at one reaping, will get him at the next.”

Clifford D. Simak book Time and Again

Source: Time and Again (1951), Chapter XXI (p. 107)

Time

“Don't blame me for the fact that competent programming, as I view it as an intellectual possibility, will be too difficult for "the average programmer" — you must not fall into the trap of rejecting a surgical technique because it is beyond the capabilities of the barber in his shop around the corner.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (1975) Comments at a Symposium http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD05xx/EWD512.html (EWD 512). 1970s

“One of the things that pushed me to change my diet is that the average football player dies at 56 years of age. That's because they're constantly drinking milk and whey protein shakes, eating steak and chicken. … We thought, 'We're big dudes, we need to eat meat to be men.' I thought that too. But you're screwing your insides up. You're taking advantage of a helpless animal. You're killing a life that you don't need to take. With dairy, you're stealing breast milk that's meant for the baby cows and drinking it yourself. How is that manly? Men are supposed to be protectors.”

David Carter (1987) Player of American Football

Interview in the book What the Health https://books.google.it/books?id=FIY8DgAAQBAJ&pg=PT0 by Eunice Wong (Xlibris, 2017).

Life, Men, Age, Drink

“There are huge differences in the way male and female actors are perceived. Women have to be a certain size, in order to get good roles. The only successful, larger-than-average female actor I can think of is Kathy Bates. And once women reach a certain age, they can only expect one or two good roles per year, whereas male actors can continue working regularly well into their forties. Then there are the types of roles available to women. We're constantly depicted as sidekicks, ingenues, and hangers-on, rarely as independent and capable individuals. And the enormous, huge discrepancies in pay…. the amounts that some male actors make are astronomically obscene. Women in Hollywood are constantly shown that there's a difference between them and men, and that that's okay. But it's not okay.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

On inequality in Hollywood — reported in Lynne Melcombe, BC Woman "Supernatural SuXXess" http://www.gilliananderson.ws/transcripts/94_95/95bcwoman.shtml (October, 1995) 1990s

Women, Men, Age, Way

“When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans. Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations, and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Deficits Make You Poorer http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul238.html (March 15, 2005). 2000s, 2001-2005

Money, Future

“There is no salvation for Britain unless the special privileges granted to the trade unions in 1906 are revoked. The average level of real wages of British workers would undoubtedly be higher, and their chances of finding employment better, if the wages of different occupations were again determined by the market and all limitations on the work an individual is allowed to do were removed.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

"Trade Unions — The Biggest Obstacle", Economic Affairs (October 1980)
1980s and later

Chance

“The average consumer does not know the difference between browser, Internet and search box.”

Mitchell Baker (1959) Chairwoman; former CEO

Questions For: Mitchell Baker, Mozilla Chairman http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/03/04/questions-for-mitchell-baker-mozilla-chairman/ (Andrew LaVallee, Digits, Wall Street Journal, 04 March 2009)

Search, Box

“[I]s this not an advantage? Is it not a sign of immense progress that the masses should have "ideas," that is to say, should be cultured? By no means. The "ideas" of the average man are not genuine ideas, nor is their possession culture. An idea is a putting truth in checkmate. Whoever wishes to have ideas must first prepare himself to desire truth and to accept the rules of the game imposed by it. It is no use speaking of ideas when there is no acceptance of a higher authority to regulate them, a series of standards to which it is possible to appeal in a discussion. These standards are the principles on which culture rests.”

José Ortega Y Gasset book The Revolt of the Masses

Chap. VIII: The Masses Intervene In Everything, And Why Their Intervention Is Solely By Violence
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

Truth, Game, Idea

“The gene code was still pure in Cain's time; there would be no defects in children from marrying close to the bloodline like there would be today. The average person today has about 3,500 defective genes, making close kin marriages dangerous to the offspring. Adam married his own rib!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 52

Marriage, Children, Time, Personality

“Let's go out and buy a statistically average meal from a large multinational restaurant chain. That usually fixes about seventy-five percent of life's problems.”

Douglas Coupland book JPod

JPod (2006)

Life, Problem

“The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain — whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands. If two lists were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music, — comprising composition and performance, history, science, and philosophy, with half-a-dozen names under each subject, the two lists would not bear comparison. We may also infer, from the law of the deviation of averages, so well illustrated by Mr. Galton, in his work on 'Hereditary Genius,' that if men are capable of decided eminence over women in many subjects, the average standard of mental power in man must be above that of woman. … Thus man has ultimately become superior to woman.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume II, chapter XIX: "Secondary Sexual Characters of Man", pages 327-328 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=344&itemID=F937.2&viewtype=image The Descent of Man (1871)

Women, Men, Law, Music

“Your average game show host on TV, for instance, doesn't believe himself to be banal. He actually thinks that he's quite interesting. And if you look at the viewing figures, so do an enormous number of people in this country.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

American Heroes #174

People, Game, Thinking, Country

“Daberlohn's diagnosis [about the etching she made as his portrait] holds encouragement for Charlotte…. Daberlohn (in his letter) 'In my opinion you are destined to create something above average.'
….'Above average.' She is elated by his letter and really feels quite proud… While beginning to paint the buttercup-strewn meadow where she happens to be sitting, she decides to make his prophecy come true and actually create something 'above average'.”

Charlotte Salomon (1917–1943) German painter

written text with brush, in her paintings JHM no. 4599 https://charlotte.jck.nl/detail/M004599/part/character/theme/keyword/M004599 + 4600 https://charlotte.jck.nl/detail/M004600/part/character/theme/keyword/M004600: in 'Life? or Theater..', p. 482-483 Charlotte Salomon - Life? or Theater?

Feeling, Painting

“Nobles’ sons are one of nature’s great destructive forces, like floods or tornadoes. When you’re struck with one of these catastrophes, the only thing an average man can do is grit his teeth and try to minimize the damage.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 31, “The Nature of Nobility” (p. 222)

Nature

“"The year is 2098", he said, "with 69 billion inhabitants legally registered and approximately another 26 billion in hiding. The average annual temperature has fallen four degrees. In fifteen or twenty years there will be glaciers here. We have no way of averting or halting their advance - we can only keep them secret."
"I always thought there would be ice in hell," I said. "And so you paint the gates with pretty pictures?"”

Stanisław Lem book The Futurological Congress

The Futurological Congress (1971)

Secret, Way, Hell, Painting

“The basic ideals and concepts of rationalist metaphysics were rooted in the concept of the universally human, of mankind, and their formalization implies that they have been severed from their human content. How this dehumanization of thinking affects the very foundations of our civilization can be illustrated by analysis of the principle of the majority, which is inseparable from the principle of democracy. In the eyes of the average man, the principle of the majority is often not only a substitute for but an improvement upon objective reason: since men are after all the best judges of their own interests, the resolutions of a majority, it is thought, are certainly as valuable to a community as the intuitions of a so-called superior reason. … What does it mean to say that “a man knows his own interests best”—how does he gain this knowledge, what evidences that his knowledge is correct? In the proposition, “A man knows [his own interests] best,” there is an implicit reference to an agency that is not totally arbitrary … to some sort of reason underlying not only means but ends as well. If that agency should turn out to be again merely the majority, the whole argument would constitute a tautology. The great philosophical tradition that contributed to the founding of modern democracy was not guilty of this tautology, for it based the principles of government upon … the assumption that the same spiritual substance or moral consciousness is present in each human being. In other words, respect for the majority was based on a conviction that did not itself depend on the resolutions of the majority.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Source: Eclipse of Reason (1947), pp. 26-27.

Men, Democracy, Communication, Knowledge

“"The American man is a failure! You are all failures!" he said. "Has not my sister here more sense than my brother Brooks? Is not Bessie worth two of Bay? Wouldn't we all elect Mrs. Lodge Senator against Cabot? Would the President have a ghost of a chance if Mrs. Roosevelt ran against him? Do you want to stop at the Embassy, on your way home, and ask which would run it best — Herbert or his wife?" The men laughed a little — not much! Each probably made allowance for his own wife as an unusually superior woman. Some one afterwards remarked that these half-dozen women were not a fair average. Adams replied that the half-dozen men were above all possible average; he could not lay his hands on another half-dozen their equals.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Women, Men, Way, Home

“It is an admitted fact that the ordinary tomtit of commerce has a sounder aesthetic taste than the average female relative in the country.”

Saki (1870–1916) British writer

"Reginald on Christmas Presents"
Reginald (1904)

Country

“The growth in money and credit has outpaced both savings and economic growth. These inflationary pressures have been concentrated in asset prices, not consumer price inflation--keeping monetary policy too easy. This increase in asset prices has fueled domestic borrowing and spending. Government policy and the increase in securitization are largely responsible for this bubble. In addition to loose monetary policies by the Federal Reserve, government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have contributed to the problem. The fourfold increases in their balance sheets from 1997 to 1998 boosted new home borrowings to more than $1.5 trillion in 1998, two-thirds of which were refinances which put an extra $15,000 in the pockets of consumers on average--and reduce risk for individual institutions while increasing risk for the system as a whole.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

CONFERENCE REPORT ON S. 900, GRAMM-LEACH-BLILEY ACT, November 8, 1999 http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec99/cr110899-glb.htm 1990s

Money, Home, Problem

“My whole concept of economics is based on the idea that we have to explain how prices operate as signals, telling people what they ought to do in particular circumstances. The approach to this problem has been blocked by a cost or labor theory of value, which assumes that prices are determined by the technical conditions of production only. The important question is to explain how the interaction of a great number of people, each possessing only limited knowledge, will bring about an order that could only be achieved by deliberate direction taken by somebody who has the combined knowledge of all these individuals. However, central planning cannot take direct account of particular circumstances of time and place. Additionally, every individual has important bits of information which cannot possibly be conveyed to a central authority in statistical form. In a system in which the knowledge of relevant data is dispersed among millions of agents, prices can act to coordinate the separate actions of different individuals.
Given this context, it is intellectually not satisfactory to attempt to establish causal relations between aggregates or averages in the manner in which the discipline of macroeconomics has attempted to do. Individuals do not make decisions on the basis of partial knowledge of magnitudes such as the total amount of production, or the total quantity of money. Aggregative theorizing leads nowhere.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

1960s–1970s, A Conversation with Professor Friedrich A. Hayek (1979)

Money, People, Idea, Question

“My guess is that well over eighty per cent of the human race goes through life without ever having a single original thought. That is to say, they never think anything that has not been thought before, and by thousands.
A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable. The pressure of ideas would simply drive it frantic. The normal human society is very little troubled by them. Whenever a new one appears the average man displays signs of dismay and resentment. The only way he can take in such a new idea is by translating it crudely into terms of more familiar ideas. That translation is one of the chief functions of politicians, not to mention journalists. They devote themselves largely to debasing the ideas launched by their betters. This debasement is intellectually reprehensible, but probably necessary to carry on the business of the world.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

13
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

Life, World, Way, Idea

“I am 36 years old and I have been a criminal all of my life. I have 11 felony convictions against me. I have served 20 years of my life in Jails, Reform Schools and prisons. I know why I am a criminal. Others may have different theories as to my life but I have no theory about it. I know the facts. If any man ever was a habitual criminal. I am one. In my lifetime I have broken every law that was ever made by both Man and God. If either had made more, I should cheerfully have broken them also. The mere fact that I have done these things is quite sufficient for the average person. Very few peopel ever consider it worth while to wonder why I am what I am and do what I do. All that they think it is necessary to do is to catch me, try me convict me and send me to prison for a few years, make life miserable for me while in prison and then turn me loose again. That is the system that is in practice today in this country. The consequences are that such that any one and every one can see. crime and lots of it. Those who are sincere in thier desire to put down crime, are to be pitied for all of thier efforts which accomplish so little in the desired direction. They are the ones who are decieved by thier own ignorance and by the trickery and greed of others who profit the most by crime.”

Carl Panzram (1891–1930) American serial killer

sic
Lustmord: The Writings and Artifacts of Murderers, p. 187, (1997), Brian King, ed. ISBN 096503240X

Life, God, School, Law

“The ingenuity of the average worker is sufficient to outwit any system of controls devised by management.”

Douglas McGregor (1906–1964) American professor

Source: The Human Side of Enterprise (1960), p. 12 (in 2006 edition)

“The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic. His opinions are determined not by his reason -- 'the bulk of mankind' says Swift 'is as well qualified for flying as for thinking' -- but by his passions; and the faintest of all human passions is the love of truth. He believes that the text of ancient authors is generally sound, not because he has acquainted himself with the elements of the problem, but because he would feel uncomfortable if he did not believe it; just as he believes, on the same cogent evidence, that he is a fine fellow, and that he will rise again from the dead.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

Introduction to Astronomicon of Manilius, Lib I. (Cambridge University Press, [1903] 1937) p. xliii.

Love, Truth, Feeling, Problem

“I mean, it became particularly acute because Keynes, against his intentions, had stimulated the development of macroeconomics. And I was convinced that not only his particular conclusions, but the whole foundation of macroeconomics was wrong.
So I wanted to demonstrate that we had to return to microeconomics, that this whole prejudice supported by the natural scientists that could deduce anything from measurable magnitudes, the effects of aggregates and averages, came to fascinate me much more. I felt in a way, that the thing which I am now prepared to do, I don’t know as there’s anybody else who can do this particular task. And I rather hoped that what I had done in capital theory would be continued by others. This was a new opening which was much more fascinating. The other would have meant working for a result which I already knew, but had to prove it. Which was very dull.
The other thing was an open problem: How does economics really look like when you recognize it as the prototype of a new kind of science of complex phenomena which could not employ the simple model of mechanics or physics, but had to deal with what then I described as mere pattern predictions, certain limited prediction. That was so much more fascinating as an intellectual problem.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

In a 1985 interview with Gary North and Mark Skousen, in Hayek on Hayek (1994)
1980s and later

Hope, Way, Support, Nature

“Throughout our history - and that of the world - it's always come down to the friction between the haves and have-nots or between the average Joes and the large corporations. So that's a recurring theme in my work.”

Paul Conrad (1924–2010) German theologian

As cited in Longden, T. (2009, March 25). Famous Iowans - Paul Conrad http://data.desmoinesregister.com/dmr/famous-iowans/paul-conrad. The Des Moines Register.

World, History

“I’ve swum through some very cold and rough seas. I think that’s made me more determined than the average person.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

Website

Thinking, Personality, Sea

“You cannot get through the density of the propaganda with which the American people, through the dreaded media, have been filled and the horrible public educational system we have for the average person. It's just grotesque.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

On American Altruism http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=338 2000s, What I've Learned (2008), Gore Vidal's America (2009)

People, Education, Personality

“It is senseless to proclaim that it’s evil to make generalizations about groups. Generalization is a natural human mental process, and many generalizations are true—in average. What often does promote evil behavior is the lazy, nasty habit of believing that generalizations have anything at all to do with individuals. We have no right to pre-judge that a specific man can’t nurture, or a particular woman cannot fight.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Afterword (p. 562)
Glory Season (1993)

Behavior, Nature, Evil, Fight

“The following question had been much in my mind. How is it possible for a population to remain alike in its features, as a whole, during many successive generations, if the average produce of each couple resemble their parents? Their children are not alike but vary…”

Francis Galton (1822–1911) British polymath: geographer, statistician, pioneer in eugenics

Source: Memories of My Life (1908), Ch. XX Heredity (1909 ed.)

Children, Question, Parent, Success

“One of the most ridiculous defenses of foreign aid is that it is a very small part of our national income. If the average American set fire to a five-dollar bill, it would be an even smaller percentage of his annual income. But everyone would consider him foolish for doing it.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

1980s–1990s, Barbarians inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (1999)

Parting

“Hector had always been known as a great shoemaker. In fact, customers from such far-off places as France claimed that Hector made the best shoes in the world. Yet for years, he had been frustrated with his small shoemaking business. Although Hector knew he was capable of making hundreds of shoes per week, he was averaging just 30 pairs. When a friend asked him why, Hector explained that while he was great at producing shoes, he was a poor salesman -- and terrible when it came to collecting payments. Yet he spent most of his time working in these areas of weakness.
So, Hector's friend introduced him to Sergio, a natural salesman and marketer. Just as Hector was known for his craftsmanship, Sergio could close deals and sell. Given the way their strengths complemented one another, Hector and Sergio decided to work together. A year later, this strengths-based duo was producing, selling, and collecting payment for more than 100 pairs of shoes per week -- a more than threefold increase.
While this story may seem simplistic, in many cases, aligning yourself with the right task can be this easy. When we're able to put most of our energy into developing our natural talents, extraordinary room for growth exists. So, a revision to the "You-can-be-anything-you-want-to-be" maxim might be more accurate.”

Tom Rath (1975) American author

StrengthsFinder 2.0, 2007
Source: Tom Rath, "The Fallacy Behind the American Dream," Business Journal, Feb. 8, 2007 (Excerpted from StrengthsFinder 2.0)

World, Shoe, Way, Business

“Average people seldom talked about anything interesting and often hurt each other savagely.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Axis

Source: Axis (2007), Chapter 8 (p. 107)

People, Hurt

“And so, uh, uh, a wonderful book, um, American Grace by, uh, Putnam and Campbell, um, uh, is the ultimate authority on this. What they find is that, um, it doesn’t matter what religion you are, and it doesn’t matter what you believe, if you are part of a religious community, then on average, you’re a better citizen, you give more to charity. Religion does bring out the good in people. Now, secular people can be perfectly good, too, but on average, they give less and they give less of their time. So, I’d like to think that I simply, as a secular atheist scientist, followed the evidence, and it showed me that I was wrong in thinking that religion was evil.”

Jonathan Haidt (1963) American psychologist

"The Psychology Behind Morality" (12 June 2014) http://www.onbeing.org/program/jonathan-haidt-the-psychology-behind-morality/transcript/6347#main_content

People, Books, Religion, Communication

“To me personally, the only function of philosophy is to teach us to take life more lightly and gayly than the average businessman does, for no businessman who does not retire at fifty, if he can, is in my eyes a philosopher.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 13

Life, Personality

“We know all those facts about Florida and what Katherine Harris did, and the private firm that took African-Americans off the voting rolls and prohibited them from voting. But I've been surprised in this first week how many average Americans were not aware of all of the trickery and deceit that took place in the year before the election to fix it for George W. Bush.”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

"BuzzFlash Interviews Michael Moore" (13 March 2002)
2002

“Coal being then the chief source of power, much industrial reconstruction depended on there being a plentiful and cheap supply. But the newly nationalized industry was not doing well. Productivity failed to increase in step with increases in mechanization. Men were leaving the mines in large numbers for more attractive opportunities in the factories. Among those who remained, absenteeism averaged 20 percent. Labor disputes were frequent despite improved conditions of employment. Some time earlier the National Coal Board had asked the Institute to make a comparative study of a high producing, high morale mine and a low producing, low morale, but otherwise equivalent mine.”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

Source: The evolution of socio-technical systems, (1981), p. 7

Men, Study, Time, Dependency

“The average person appreciates a value only “in the course of, and through comparison” with the possessions, condition, plight or quality of other persons. … The awareness that the acquisition and enjoyment of that value is beyond the person’s capacity … triggers two mutually opposite, but equally vigorous reactions: an overwhelming desire (all the more tormenting because of the suspicion that it might be impossible to fulfill); and ressentiment—a rancor caused by a desperate urge to ward off self-deprecation and self-contempt by demeaning, deriding and degrading the value in question, together with its possessors.”

Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) Polish philosopher and sociologist

Source: The Art of Life (2008), pp. 24-25 [Quote is from Max Scheler, “Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen”]

Question, Personality

“The concept that a person who has a lot holds his hand out to someone who has less, or someone who isn't hurting holds his hand out to someone who is, is simply a human trait that has nothing to do with celebrity. I am confounded at the stinginess of some institutions and some people. I'm bewildered by it. You can only put away so much stuff in your closet. In 1987, the average CEO against someone who was working in his factory was 70 times. It's now 410 times.”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in "Paul Newman's Road To Glory," http://www.filmmonthly.com/Profiles/Articles/PNewman/PNewman.html interview with Paul Fischer, Film Monthly (2002-07-01)

People, Time, Hurt, Personality

“About one-fifth of all the heat that enters the average house comes through windows. …external shading is by far the most efficient method for controlling interior heat build-up. The air-wash between the shading screen and the window is also very effective. The screen should have a light-colored finish… Insulation boards placed next to the window pane at night, will help prevent heat losses through glazed openings. Overhangs and horizontal sunshades placed above south-facing windows serve effectively as heat reducers.”

Ken Kern American writer

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

Color, Light, Loss, Help

“All that produces a strong excitation, all that modifies the preliminary state of the thoughts and the feelings, surely also modifies the mental and physical state of the individual, especially if it occurs with confidence, expectation, and concentration of mind. All these phenomena, however extraordinary they are, are only the result of a heightening of the intellectual functions or power, which we all have to an average degree in the ordinary or waking state.”

James Braid (1795–1860) Scottish surgeon, hypnotist, and hypnotherapist

Original Philosophy of Hypnotism The International College of Hypnosis & Hypnotherapy

Feeling, Confidence, Strong

“This whole edifice of civilization is in its foundations and in all its stones nothing else than the result of the creative capacity, the achievement, the intelligence, the industry, of individuals: in its greatest triumphs it represents the great crowning achievement of individual God-favored geniuses, in its average accomplishment the achievement of men of average capacity, and in its sum doubtless the result of the use of human labor-force in order to turn to account the creations of genius and of talent. So it is only natural that when the capable intelligences of a nation, which are always in a minority, are regarded only as of the same value as all the rest, then genius, capacity, the value of personality are slowly subjected to the majority and this process is then falsely named the rule of the people. For this is not rule of the people, but in reality the rule of stupidity, of mediocrity, of half-heartedness, of cowardice, of weakness, and of inadequacy”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech to the Industry Club (21 January 1932) as quoted in The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922 – August 1939 (1994) by Norman Hepburn Baynes, Oxford University Press, p.783
1930s

Men, God, People, Stupidity

“Politicians are out of control. Their yearly salaries are more than an average person will see in a lifetime. They have been entrusted with the power to regulate their own salaries, and have grossly violated that trust to live in their own luxury.”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

1990s, Letter to the Union-Sun & Journal (1992)

Personality

“It seems to me that people of talent and of genius serve better than average examples for making us understand the laws of character, because they present more extreme traits.”

Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test

Alfred Binet (1903). "La creation litteraire. Portrait psychologique de M. Paul Hervieu", L’Anne´e psychologique (10), p. 3; As cited in: Carson (1999, 361-2)

People, Law, Understanding

“If religion makes a society happier, there’s no data to show that. All we see is that on average countries that are well off are less religious and are happier; and that goes for U. S. states as well. Checkmate, religionists.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" 2018 data: Across countries, the happiest ones are the least religious https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2018/03/22/2018-data-across-countries-the-happiest-ones-are-the-least-religious/" March 22, 2018

Religion, Country

“An invariable accompaniment of growth in developed countries is the shift away from agriculture, a process usually referred to as industrialization and urbanization. The income distribution of the total population, in the simplest model, may therefore be viewed as a combination of the income distributions of the rural and of the urban populations. What little we know of the structures of these two component income distributions reveals that: (a) the average per capita income of the rural population is usually lower than that of the urban;' (b) inequality in the percentage shares within the distribution for the rural population is somewhat narrower than in that for the urban population… Operating with this simple model, what conclusions do we reach? First, all other conditions being equal, the increasing weight of urban population means an increasing share for the more unequal of the two component distributions. Second, the relative difference in per capita income between the rural and urban populations does not necessarily drift downward in the process of economic growth: indeed, there is some evidence to suggest that it is stable at best, and tends to widen because per capita productivity in urban pursuits increases more rapidly than in agriculture. If this is so, inequality in the total income distribution should increase”

Simon Kuznets (1901–1985) economist

Source: "Economic growth and income inequality," 1955, p. 7 as cited in: Anthony Barnes Atkinson, François Bourguignon, Handbook of Income Distribution, Vol. 1. Elsevier, 2000 p. 799

Country

“I never thought of that, really, when I was younger, but when I started doing some of the autobiographical picture books, I realized that my family was a great treasure trove. We were pretty ordinary — we weren't really exceptional. I don't think my life growing up was really too much different from the average kid in Meriden, Connecticut at that time. But it's very different from young people today, so I like it that older people my age feel that it's helping them to remember their childhood. Little kids think it's like life on a different planet.”

Tomie dePaola (1934) American children's illustrator and writer

An Interview with Tomie dePaola http://katybeebe.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/car-2000-05-12-b-013.pdf (May 2000)

Life, People, Books, Age

“…education is the key to health and to social progress. The fact is that the average expectation of life of an Indian has doubled since Independence. In fact, it is 61 years now as against 28 or 30 years at the time of Independence.”

K. R. Narayanan (1920–2005) 9th Vice President and the 10th President of India

Shri K. R. Narayanan President of India in Conversation with N. Ram on Doordarshan and All India Radio

Life, Health, Education, Time

“What's next? Orgy rooms? Menage a trois rooms? All this coedness is outside normal life. Most average American adults don't use coed bathrooms — if they had the option of a coed bathroom at a public restaurant, they wouldn't choose it.”

Christine O'Donnell (1969) American Tea Party politician and former Republican Party candidate

Taming Animal House; Students find ways to keep morals in college life.
2003-09-18
Washington Times
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-3130739/Taming-Animal-House-Students-find.html
on coed dormitory rooms

Life

“In 1976, the average supermarket stocked 9,000 unique products; today that number has ballooned to 40,000 of them, yet the average person gets 80%–85% of their needs in only 150 different supermarket items. That means that we need to ignore 39,850 items in the store.”

Daniel Levitin book The Organized Mind

The Organized Mind (2014)

Personality

“On media consideration to be a reluctant rock star: I'm not a reluctant rock star, I am not one at all. I haven't an ounce of rock star in me. […] What I despise about the rock star lifestyle is the lack of music in it. The average day is spent travelling to hotels, giving interviews, being nice to people you're told to be nice to, and maybe if you're lucky you might squeeze a bit of music in. The musician's day is music. […] I am in that unique little club, where I went into music because I love music, not because I wanted to be rich and famous. I've always knocked on the door of the musicians' room, not the rock stars' room. The British press refuses to see the difference between them, mainly because of the capers of people like Phil Collins, a musician who behaves like a rock star. But there are people who love music and have no interest in being a rock star at all.”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

John Henry Walsh (1997 May 2) " The reluctant rocker https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/the-reluctant-rocker-1259348.html" by The Independent 1997

Love, People, Music, Travel

“The leader is one who knows with greater than average strength of intuition what he wants to get done and where he wants to go. 'The world stands aside to let pass the man who knows whither he is going.'
This means that he possesses clarity and precision as to the objectives, purposes or aims that he desires for himself and his group, and that he holds these deeply enough and permanently enough to see them well on the way to being realized. Purposefulness to be effective requires that the aims are: (1) definite; (2) readily communicable to others; (3) potentially attractive to others; and (4) vigor¬ously, persistently and enthusiastically sustained by the leader.”

Ordway Tead (1891–1973) American academic

Source: The art of leadership (1935), p. 91; as cited in: William Sykes " Visions Of Hope: Leadership http://www.openwriting.com/archives/2012/08/leadership_2.php." Published on August 12, 2012.

World, Way

“I was sort of a hellraiser with a bunch of friends, most of whom were squeaking by with C's and D's while I was getting an A-average and should have been doing better. I did a lot of things on my own. I liked to make things with my hands. There was a lot of woodworking, model building, and model railroading. I collected stamps, and did various things in chemistry. I used to make things that exploded, and all that sort of thing. So I evidently got quite a good background in science. I always had a knack for that sort of thing. The hospital had a subscription to Scientific American and Science.”

Douglas T. Ross (1929–2007) American computer scientist

So things came every week and I consumed them...
Response to the question: Did you outstrip the offerings of the school, say in the sciences and mathematics?
An Interview with Douglas T. Ross (1984)

Science

“I never said money is freedom! I said money buys freedom. BUYS! What does that mean, money is freedom? This is ridiculous: Money is freedom. It means nothing. What do you think, that a dollar in a savings account is freedom? Maybe you have understood nothing I have said. You are trying to make me sound like an American average citizen.”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

Playboy interview

Money, Thinking, Freedom

“How is it that the average CEO in Japan receives an annual income of $300,000 while the average CEO in the United States earns $2.8 million?”

Andrew Zimbalist (1947) American economist

Source: Baseball And Billions - Updated edition - (1992), Chapter 4, Player Performance And Salaries, p. 78.

“The fact that a reasonable hypothesis has not been rigorously proved does not mean that it should be summarily dismissed. It only means that we need more appropriate research for putting it to the test. I believe such definitive research is entirely possible but has not yet been done. So all we are left with are various lines of evidence, no one of which is definitive alone, but which, viewed all together, make it a not unreasonable hypothesis that genetic factors are strongly implicated in the average Negro-white intelligence difference. The preponderance of the evidence is, in my opinion, less consistent with a strictly environmental hypothesis than with a genetic hypothesis, which, of course, does not exclude the influence of environment or its interaction with genetic factors.”

Arthur Jensen (1923–2012) professor of educational psychology

p. 82 of How Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic Achievement? (1969) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Much_Can_We_Boost_IQ_and_Scholastic_Achievement%3F, the invited paper that created much hostility towards Jensen.

Intelligence

“When we examine the moments, acts, and statements of all kinds of people- not only the grief and ecstasy of the greatest poets, but also the huge unhappiness of the average soul, as evidenced by the innumerable strident words of abuse, hatred, contempt, mistrust, and scorn that forever grate upon our ears as the manswarm passes us in the streets -- we find, I think, that they are all suffering from the same thing. The final cause of their complaint is loneliness.”

Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938) American writer

The Anatomy of Loneliness (1941)

People, Soul, Thinking, Suffering

“Since the late 1960s macroeconomic debates in the United States have centered on the competing interpretations of the new classical and new Keynesian macroeconomics. The initial new classical model developed in the early 1970s by Robert E. Lucas, Jr., combined market-clearing, imperfect information, and rational expectations. After much testing, it was eventually rejected in the late 1970s for failing to explain why business cycles lasted on average four years while information delays lasted only a few weeks. It was soon replaced by a second new classical approach, the Real Business Cycle (RBC) model, which was also based on continuous market clearing and competitive equilibrium, but now generated the business cycle through serially correlated procyclical technology shocks.”

Robert J. Gordon (1940) American economist

Robert J. Gordon, Are Procyclical Productivity Fluctuations a Figment of Measurement Error? (1992).

Business

“In the Clunie Public Library in Sacramento, in those last years of a legally segregated America, there was no segregated shelf for Negro writers. Frederick Douglass on the same casement with Alexis de Tocqueville, Benjamin Franklin. Today, when our habit is willfully to confuse literature with sociology, with sorting, with trading in skins, we imagine the point of a "life" is to address some sort of numerical average, common obstacle or persecution. Here is a book "about" teenaged Chinese-American girls. So it is shelved.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Life, Books, Imagination, Girl

“Men who have more muscle tend to have and maintain higher testosterone levels, and men who have higher testosterone levels tend to have an easier time getting bigger and stronger. Men who increase their testosterone levels- either through training and diet or via artificial means- tend to look more masculine. Put differently, men with more muscle look less like most women, and more like the least androgynous men. This has absolutely nothing to do with culture. There is no human culture where men who are weak are considered manlier while women who are muscular are considered more womanly. The importance of strength varies from society to society (usually in some relationship to available technologies and the kind of work that is required of average people) but strength has been a masculinity quality always and everywhere.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

Pg 27
The Way of Men (2012)

Women, Men, People, Time

“They pay for their ticket, let them do what they want to do. I get mad. One of these days, I’ll leave my uniform on the field and keep on walking. If I don’t hustle or something like that, I’d say that it would be good for me to be booed. The problem with me is hitting. You hit.280, it’s a pretty good average. But I used to hit.350, so.280 is not good enough. A lot of times in my career, I play when I shouldn’t play. I say as long as I can run and swing a bat, I play. That was my biggest mistake. One time I play with a shoulder – it hurts so bad, I can’t lift it. I hit into a double play. Then they hit a ball to the outfield and I can’t bend down to pick it up, so they boo me. The season start, I hurt my finger the last weekend of spring training. I couldn’t grip the bat right and I was trying to pull everything. They would like for you to start every year from the beginning, right on top, boom, boom, boom. Now I start a season a little bit slowly, so they boo.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in ".280 Not Good Enough: Clemente's Bat Answers Boos" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=TpcuAAAAIBAJ&sjid=kKEFAAAAIBAJ&pg=2309%2C1919830 by Ian McDonald, in The Montreal Gazette (Friday, May 21, 1971), p. 17 Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1971</big>

Spring, Problem, Time, Hurt

“For the time being I am enjoying my chance to enjoy civilian life off the road. If I combined all the months that I have lived out of a van or tour bus it would amount to twelve solid years. That would be twelve years of driving or flying an average of 100 to 400 miles per day and sleeping in a different city every night. It was a very unique lifestyle that I adapted to and even enjoyed with it’s surreal pace. It’s also a lifestyle that can take a toll on the body and relationships with the people that you are constantly leaving behind.”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Quotes from NatalieMerchant.com

Life, People, Sleep, Chance

“At this point, is the average person boarding a plane more fearful of Al Qaeda or TSA?”

Julian Sanchez

Twitter post https://twitter.com/normative/statuses/86027152612540416 (29 June 2011) as quoted in Mike Masnick, " When You're About To Fly, Who Do You Fear More: Al Qaeda... Or The TSA? http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110629/04255014908/when-youre-about-to-fly-who-do-you-fear-more-al-qaeda-tsa.shtml, Techdirt (2011).

Fear, Personality