Quotes about count

A collection of quotes on the topic of count, doing, use, people.

Quotes about count

“More than anything else, I want to make every day count now. I want to make every single normal day, every ice show, every practice and every competition count. That's what I have been thinking about the most since the day of the earthquake.”

Yuzuru Hanyu (1994) Japanese figure skater (1994-)

Page: 165.
Blue Flame
Original: (ja) 今はとにかく、一日一日を大事にしたいと思う。何気ない日常の一日一日、アイスショーの日々、練習の日々、試合の日々をすべて大切にしたい。そんなことを、あの日を境により強く感じるようになりました。

Thinking

“Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Happy, Birthday, Wise, Life

“Beware when making a woman cry. God is counting her tears.”

Paulo Coelho book Adultery

Source: Adultery

God, Tear, Cry

“People who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Variant: Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.

People

“Every drop in the ocean counts.”

Yoko Ono (1933) Japanese artist, author, and peace activist

“Im giving you
On a count three
Just show your stuff
Or let it be
Im telling you
Just watch your mouth
I know your game
What you're about!
Well, they say the sky's the limit,
And to me that's really true,
But, my friend you have seen nothing,
Just wait 'til I get through.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Bad (1987)

Game, Waiting

“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering its a feather bed. ”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Love, World, Dreams, Courage

“I have one life and one chance to make it count for something… My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Variant: My faith demands - this is not optional - my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I can, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.

Life, Faith, Chance

“If you're happy in a dream, does that count?”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

Dreams, Happiness

“It isn't where you came from; it's where you're going that counts.”

Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1996) American jazz singer

Motivational, Wise, Deep, Inspirational

“Do not count the days, do not count the miles. Count only the Germans you have killed. Kill the German - this is your old mother's prayer. Kill the German - this is what your children beseech you to do. Kill the German - this is the cry of your Russian earth. Do not waver. Do not let up. Kill.”

Ilya Ehrenburg (1891–1967) Russian-Soviet writer and poet

Children, Cry

“And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

This quote is often misattributed to Lincoln. The earliest instance that Quote Investigator could locate was "in an advertisement in 1947 for a book about aging by Edward J. Stieglitz, M.D". The advertisement for “The Second Forty Years” which ran in the Chicago Tribune newspaper read like this: The important thing to you is not how many years in your life, but how much life in your years! (Compare 1947 March 16, Chicago Tribune, “How Long Do You Plan to Live?”, [Advertisement for the book "The Second Forty Years" by Edward J. Stieglitz, M.D.], p. C7, Chicago, Illinois. (ProQuest)). Source of misattribution: It’s Not the Years in Your Life That Count. It’s the Life in Your Years - Abraham Lincoln? Adlai Stevenson? Edward J. Stieglitz? Anonymous? by Quote Investigator on July 14, 2012 http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/14/life-years-count/ To my way of thinking it is not the years in your life but the life in your years that count in the long run. Adlai Stevenson II, Address at Princeton University, "The Educated Citizen" (22 March 1954) http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone/rbsc/mudd/online_ex/stevenson/adlai1954.html. This has also been paraphrased "What matters most is not the years in your life, but the life in your years" and misattributed to Abraham Lincoln and Mae West. Adlai Stevenson II, "If I Were Twenty-One" in Coronet (December 1955). Misattributed Variant: It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts.

Deep, Birthday, Life, Positive

“I wanted no part of politics. And I wasn't in Berlin to compete against any one athlete. The purpose of the Olympics, anyway, was to do your best. As I'd learned long ago… the only victory that counts is the one over yourself.”

Jesse Owens (1913–1980) American track and field athlete

Jesse Owens, Champion Athlete (1990)

Learning, Victory, Parting

“It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

“You put up with your voice and speak with it because you haven't any choice. But it's what you say that counts.”

John Fowles book The Collector

Source: The Collector

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Attributed to Winston Churchill in The Prodigal Project : Book I : Genesis (2003) by Ken Abraham and Daniel Hart, p. 224 and other places, though no source attribution is given. It actually derives from an advertising campaign for Budweiser beer in the late 1930s.
Misattributed
Variant: Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Source: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/09/03/success-final/

Inspirational, Success, Attitude, For Team

“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."
General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, translated by John Beverly Robinson (London: Freedom Press, 1923), pp. 293-294.”

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) French politician, mutualist philosopher, economist, and socialist

Wisdom, Justice, Law, Idea

“Don't count the days, make the days count.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Birthday

“it's not how far you fall, but how high you bounce that counts.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

Wise

“I don't count my sit-ups; I only start counting when it starts hurting because they’re the only ones that count.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Hurt

“I think computer viruses should count as life … I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Speech at Macworld Expo in Boston, as quoted in The Daily News (4 August 1994) http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=bD8PAAAAIBAJ&sjid=IoYDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4837%2C5338590. A nearly identical quote can be found at the end of the second paragraph of his lecture Life in the Universe http://hawking.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=65 (1996).

Life, Nature, Thinking

“Democracy is a system in which heads are counted but not weighed.”

Muhammad Iqbál (1877–1938) Urdu poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement

Quoted from Elst, Koenraad. Hindu dharma and the culture wars. (2019). New Delhi : Rupa.

Democracy

“The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself — the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us — that's where it's at.”

Jesse Owens (1913–1980) American track and field athlete

As quoted in Blackthink: My Life as Black Man and White Man https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0688011632 (1970) 1970s

Motivational, Success, Inspirational, Life

“Nothing someone says before the world 'but' really counts. - Benjen Stark”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

World

“It is not my ability, but my response to God’s ability, that counts.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

God

“Oh, my friend, it's not what they take away from you that counts. It's what you do with what you have left.”

Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978) Vice-President of the USA under Lyndon B. Johnson

“The most common one-liner in the Bible is, "Do not be afraid." Someone counted, and it occurs 365 times.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

Time

“She was dull, unattractive, couldn't tell the time, count money or tie her own shoe laces… But I loved her”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Love, Money, Shoe, Time

“All good tales are true tales, at least for those who read them, which is all that counts.”

Javier Cercas (1962) Spanish writer, journalist and professor of Spanish literature

Reading

“What one does is what counts. Not what one had the intention of doing.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

“Anni, amori e bicchieri di vino, nun se contano mai.”’ ‘“Years, lovers and glasses of wine; these things must not be counted.”

Anthony Capella (1962) British writer

Source: The Food of Love

Lovers, Wine

“I count myself in nothing else so happy as in a soul remembering my good Friends”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Soul, Happiness

“It's the family you choose that counts.”

Andrew Vachss (1942) American writer and lawyer

Family

“What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight — it's the size of the fight in the dog.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Remarks at Republican National Committee Breakfast (31 January 1958) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=11229; Eisenhower hear delivers his particular variation of a pre-existing proverb, which has since become widely dispersed as simply "It's not the size of the dog in the fight; it's the size of the fight in the dog." In that form it has become widely attributed to Mark Twain on the internet, as early as 1998, but no contemporary evidence of Twain ever using it has been located. The earliest known variants of it occur in 1911, one in a collection of sayings "Stub Ends of Thoughts" by Arthur G. Lewis, in Book of the Royal Blue Vol. 14, No. 7 (April 1911): "It is not the size of the dog in the fight that counts, but the fight in the dog that matters", as cited in The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs, edited by Charles Clay Doyle, Wolfgang Mieder, and Fred R. Shapiro, p. 232, and the other as "It is not the size of the dog in the fight that counts, but the fight in the dog that wins" in the evening edition of the East Oregonian (20 April 1911) http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2015-October/139250.html 1950s

Attitude, Dogs, Fight

“… exclude the need for appearances: what counts is not appearances; the value of life does not depend on the approval of others or on success, but on what we have inside us.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

As quoted in "Imposition of the Ashes - Homily of pope Francis" at www.vatican.va (5 March 2014) http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/homilies/2014/documents/papa-francesco_20140305_omelia-ceneri_en.html 2010s, 2014

Life, Appearance, Success, Dependency

“Though God hath raised me high, yet this I count the glory of my Crown, that I have reigned with your loves.”

Elizabeth I of England (1533–1603) Queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until 1603

The Golden Speech (1601)

Love, God

“There were signs in England that the only way for me was down. The media turned against me. I was given a hard time because my outlook wasn't one of pure debauchery. I was a sensitive male and I was singing about spirituality; I didn't choose the loutish Oasis approach to my profession. Britpop was just building up at the time and my attitude somehow counted against me.”

Seal (musician) (1963) British singer-songwriter

On moving to the Unitied States, as quoted in "Seal: Still Crazy After All These Years" by Fiona Sturges in The Independent (11 October 2003)

Way, Singing, Time

“I am not insecure enough to count the bouquets I receive on my birthday, I don’t assess my popularity by the number of magazine covers I am on, I don’t get worried if my song is on the seventh position on countdown charts.”

Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality

From interview with Komal Nahta

Birthday

“If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars.”

J. Paul Getty (1892–1977) American industrialist

As quoted by Robert Lenzner in his book, The Great Getty (1985)

Money

“I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

In Russian: Я считаю, что совершенно неважно, кто и как будет в партии голосовать; но вот что чрезвычайно важно, это - кто и как будет считать голоса. Said in 1923, as quoted in The Memoirs of Stalin's Former Secretary http://www.panrus.com/books/details.php?langID=1&bookID=5905 (1992) by Boris Bazhanov [Saint Petersburg] (Борис Бажанов. Воспоминания бывшего секретаря Сталина). (Text online in Russian) http://lib.ru/MEMUARY/BAZHANOW/stalin.txt. Variant (loose) translation: The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything. Contemporary witnesses

“The gross materialists do not believe in the existence of God or the demigods. Nor do they believe that different planets are dominated by different demigods. They are creating a great commotion about reaching the closest celestial body, Candraloka, or the Moon, but even after much mechanical research they have only very scanty information of this Moon, and in spite of much false advertisement for selling land on the Moon, the puffed-up scientists or gross materialists cannot live there, and what to speak of reaching the other planets, which they are unable even to count.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. Canto 2, Chapter 3, verse 11, purport. Vedabase http://www.vedabase.com/en/sb/2/3/11 Quotes from Books: Loving God, Quotes from Books: Regression of Science

God, Falseness

“We must not count with certainty on a continuance of our present prosperity during such an interval [15 years]; but unquestionably there never was a time in the history of this country when, from the situation of Europe, we might more reasonably expect fifteen years of peace, than we may at the present moment.”

William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) British politician

"The War Speeches of William Pitt", Oxford University Press, 1915, p. 16
Speech in the House of Commons, 17 February 1792, introducing the Budget. His prediction was a vain hope.

Peace, History, Time, Country

“When the door closes you have two choices. Give up, or keep going. Let them shut you down or prove them wrong. We all start somewhere. It's where you end up that counts. Grammy 2013”

Rihanna (1988) Barbadian singer, songwriter, and actress

“Winning medals wasn’t the point of the Olympics. It’s the participating that counts.”

Pierre de Coubertin (1863–1937) Founder of modern Olympic Games, pedagogue and historian

As quoted in "The Olympics — Where Are They Headed?", in 'Awake!' magazine (8 February 1977)

“I watched him with some interest, for it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies — unless one counts journalists.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia (1938)
Context: The fat Russian agent was cornering all the foreign refugees in turn and explaining plausibly that this whole affair was an Anarchist plot. I watched him with some interest, for it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies — unless one counts journalists.

Time, Personality

“Have you felt it too? Have you seen how your best friends love everything about you- except the things that count? And your most important is nothing to them; nothing, not even a sound they can recognize.”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

Love

“But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

“Don't blame you," said Marvin and counted five hundred and ninety-seven thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a second later.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

“The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Time

“The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean-
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Thinking, Heart

“So, open your mouth, lad! For every voice counts!”

Dr. Seuss book One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish

Horton Hears a Who! (1954)
Source: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish
Context: "This", cried the Mayor, "is your town's darkest hour!
The time for all Whos who have blood that is red
To come to the aid of their country!", he said.
"We've GOT to make noises in greater amounts!
So, open your mouth, lad! For every voice counts!"

“You can't just sit there and put everyone's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things.”

Stephen Chbosky (1970) American writer

Love, Thinking

“Mistakes are a fact of life: It is the response to the error that counts.”

Nikki Giovanni (1943) American writer and academic

Life, Life, Error

“Life is glorious, but it can be counted on to be cruel.”

Noah Gordon book The Last Jew

Source: The Last Jew

Life

“Besides, rereading, not reading, is what counts.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Reading

“To have her here in bed with me, breathing on me, her hair in my mouth—I count that something of a miracle.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

“Adiyogi’s legacy offers you the licence to believe in the god of your choice, or not to believe at all. And if you do not find a god to your taste, it allows you the freedom to create one. That is how the Indian subcontinent arrived at an exuberant 330 million gods and goddesses at last count! To see the divine in a tree, rock or elephant is not considered absurd because every speck of creation is seen as a portal to the ultimate reality. These”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Adiyogi: The Source of Yoga

God, Reality, Tree, Freedom

“Don’t let yourself be. Find something new to try, something to change. Count how often it succeeds and how often it doesn’t. Write about it. Ask a patient or a colleague what they think about it. See if you can keep the conversation going.”

Atul Gawande (1965) American surgeon

Thinking, Change

“I have one life and one chance to make it count for something… I'm free to choose what that something is, and the something I've chosen is my faith. Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands -- this is not optional -- my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Life, Faith, Religion, Effort

“Jace shook his blond head in exasperation.
"You had to make a crazy jail friend, didn't you? You couldn't just count ceiling tiles or tame a pet mouse like normal prisoners do?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

“The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson Worship

Worship
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)
Variant: The louder they talked of their honor, the faster we counted our spoons.
Source: The Conduct of Life: A Philosophical Reading

“When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts.”

Michael Ende book The Neverending Story

Source: The Neverending Story

“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

“You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

Source: Lolita

“Actually, since I'm gay I think I should count for two guys instead of just one. I mean, in me you get the male point of view and you don't have to worry about me wanting to touch your boobies.”

P. C. Cast book Marked

Source: Marked

Guy, Thinking

“I'm very hard to catch," says Rue. "And if they can't catch me, they can't kill me. So don't count me out.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Variant: I'm hard to catch. If they can't catch me they cant kill me. So don't count me out.
Source: The Hunger Games

“It’s not what you are that counts, it’s what they think you are.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Moving On, Thinking

“I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Variant: O God, I could be bound in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space – were it not that I have bad dreams.
Source: Hamlet

“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.”

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

Victory

“Often on a wet day I begin counting up; what I've read and what I haven't read.”

Virginia Woolf book Between the Acts

Source: Between the Acts

Reading

“Never fall in love?"
"Always," said the count. "I am always in love.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Source: The Sun Also Rises

Love

“They have worries, they're counting the miles, they're thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they'll get there - and all the time they'll get there anyway, you see.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Source: On the Road: the Original Scroll

Money, Thinking, Sleep, Time

“You deserve the best, the very best, because you are one of the few people in this lousy world who are honest to themselves, and that is the only thing that really counts.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

People, World

“Only those moments count when the desire to remain by yourself is so powerful that you'd prefer to blow your brains out than to exchange a word with someone.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Source: The New Gods (1969)

“The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Section 172
Reflections on the Human Condition (1973)

Teachers' Day

“People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it's impossible to count them accurately.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Letter from Paris (May 1900)

People

“When angry, count four. When very angry, swear.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“I call him Pops because he is my true father; my creator. And we've had a special relationship. Whenever I felt lost or needed help or guidance, I could count on Pops.”

Nick Carter (1980) singer from the United States

Source: Facing the Music And Living To Talk About It

Help

“[Everyone needs] a woman who'll listen, take your side, tell the truth - or not, as you need it. A woman you can count on, no matter what, and who'll love you no matter how much you screw up.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Chasing Fire

Love, Truth

“While you are going through your trial, you can recall your past victories and count the blessings that you do have with a sure hope of greater ones to allow if you are faithful.”

Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Faith, Hope, Past, Victory

“In a crunch a man's reputation never counts for as much as it ought to. Most people are good-hearted and willing to give a man the benefit of the doubt, but the poisonous few are eager to see others brought down, ruined. … Envy, Bob. Envy eats them alive. If you had money, they'd envy you that. But since you don't, they envy you for having such a good, bright, loving daughter. They envy you for just being a happy man. They envy you for not envying them. One of the greatest sorrows of human existence is that some people aren't happy merely to be alive but find their happiness only in the misery of others.”

Dean Koontz book Lightning

Part I, Chapter 1.2, the mysterious stranger's words to Bob Shane
Lightning (1988)

Love, Money, People, Heart

“The social order of Islam is opposed to our Western values. Human rights and democracy are as incompatible with the Muslim religious doctrine as is the equality of women. In Islam, the individual and his free will count for nothing; faith and religious struggle – jihad, the holy war – for everything.”

Jörg Haider (1950–2008) Austrian politician

stated in the early 1990s, as quoted in "Towards a Community of Values?" by Hans-Georg Betz – in Austria in the European Union (2003), p. 434

Women, War, Faith, Democracy

“Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither. We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth, and we must behave as beseems a people with such responsibilities. Toward all other nations, large and small, our attitude must be one of cordial and sincere friendship. We must show not only in our words, but in our deeds, that we are earnestly desirous of securing their good will by acting toward them in a spirit of just and generous recognition of all their rights. But justice and generosity in a nation, as in an individual, count most when shown not by the weak but by the strong.”

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

1900s, Inaugural Address (1905)

Friendship, People, Justice, Strong

“I do not take any credit to my better-balanced head because I never went crazy on Presbyterianism. We go too slow for that. You never see us ranting and shouting and tearing up the ground, You never heard of a Presbyterian going crazy on religion. Notice us, and you will see how we do. We get up of a Sunday morning and put on the best harness we have got and trip cheerfully down town; we subside into solemnity and enter the church; we stand up and duck our heads and bear down on a hymn book propped on the pew in front when the minister prays; we stand up again while our hired choir are singing, and look in the hymn book and check off the verses to see that they don't shirk any of the stanzas; we sit silent and grave while the minister is preaching, and count the waterfalls and bonnets furtively, and catch flies; we grab our hats and bonnets when the benediction is begun; when it is finished, we shove, so to speak. No frenzy, no fanaticism --no skirmishing; everything perfectly serene. You never see any of us Presbyterians getting in a sweat about religion and trying to massacre the neighbors. Let us all be content with the tried and safe old regular religions, and take no chances on wildcat.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

"The New Wildcat Religion"

Books, Religion, Tear, Singing

“John, I counted myself so plain, so poorly made, no honest love could come to me! Suspicion kissed you when I did; I never knew how I should say my love. It were a cold house I kept!”

Arthur Miller The Crucible

Elizabeth Proctor
The Crucible (1953)

Love, Kiss, Housing

“There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration — and regret. The weather is always doing something there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on people to see how they will go. But it gets through more business in spring than in any other season. In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of twenty-four hours.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

New England Weather, speech to the New England Society (December 22, 1876)

People, Spring, Business, Weather

“How would the world respond if a European prime minister called for the mass deportation of all Turks? Yet Erdogan's xenophobic demagoguery attracted precisely no condemnation from Washington or Brussels. He probably overestimated the number of "tolerated" economic refugees from neighboring and former Soviet Armenia, but is it not interesting that he keeps a count in his head? And a count of the tiny number of surviving Turkish Armenians as well? The outburst strengthens the already strong case for considering Erdogan to be somewhat personally unhinged.”

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (1954) 12th President of Turkey from 2014

Christopher Hitchens, "Shut Up About Armenians or We'll Hurt Them Again" http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2010/04/shut_up_about_armenians_or_well_hurt_them_again.html, Slate (April 5, 2010) About

World, Strong, Personality

“Who is the third who walks always beside you
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 359 et seq.

Eliot's note: Stimulated by Shackleton's Antarctic expedition where the explorers at the extremity of their strength believed there was another who walked with them across South Georgia!

“The only respect in which man is superior to animals is that he can die when he wants to, not just when he has to. Maybe it's the one freedom you can always count on — the freedom to throw your life away.”

Stefan Zweig book The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

Life, Freedom, Animals

“Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles away from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes.
Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes.
And everyday my government gives me a count of corpses created by the military service in Vietnam. So it goes.
My father died many years ago now — of natural causes. So it goes. He was a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Slaughterhouse-Five

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

Home, Nature, Summer, Night

“Notwithstanding the eminent difficulties of the mathematical theory of sonorous vibrations, we owe to it such progress as has yet been made in acoustics. The formation of the differential equations proper to the phenomena is, independent of their integration, a very important acquisition, on account of the approximations which mathematical analysis allows between questions, otherwise heterogeneous, which lead to similar equations. This fundamental property, whose value we have so often to recognize, applies remarkably in the present case; and especially since the creation of mathematical thermology, whose principal equations are strongly analogous to those of vibratory motion. This means of investigation is all the more valuable on account of the difficulties in the way of direct inquiry into the phenomena of sound. We may decide the necessity of the atmospheric medium for the transmission of sonorous vibrations; and we may conceive of the possibility of determining by experiment the duration of the propagation, in the air, and then through other media; but the general laws of the vibrations of sonorous bodies escape immediate observation. We should know almost nothing of the whole case if the mathematical theory did not come in to connect the different phenomena of sound, enabling us to substitute for direct observation an equivalent examination of more favorable cases subjected to the same law. For instance, when the analysis of the problem of vibrating chords has shown us that, other things being equal, the number of oscillations is hi inverse proportion to the length of the chord, we see that the most rapid vibrations of a very short chord may be counted, since the law enables us to direct our attention to very slow vibrations. The same substitution is at our command in many cases in which it is less direct.”

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) French philosopher

Bk. 3, chap. 4; as cited in: Moritz (1914, 240)
System of positive polity (1852)

Law, Way, Mathematics, Question

“So long as you are secure you will count many friends; if your life becomes clouded you will be alone.”
Donec eris sospes, multos numerabis amicos: tempora si fuerint nubila, solus eris.

Ovid book Tristia

I, ix, 5
Tristia (Sorrows)

Life

“… people only count their misfortunes; their good luck they take no account of. But if they were to take everything into account, as they should, they'd find that they had their fair share of it.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book Notes from Underground

Part 2, Chapter 6 (page 86)
Notes from Underground (1864)

People

“I have no desire to die, but I count my death as nothing.”

Epicharmus of Kos (-524–-435 BC) ancient Greek dramatist and philosopher

As quoted by Cicero in Tusculan Disputations, Book 1 — On Living and Dying Well, trans. Thomas Habinek (Penguin Classics, 2012), "Against Fear of Death"

Death

“I think our preparation has been good, we’ve worked extremely hard individually and as a team, and when it’s come to games the guys have stepped up and performed under pressure. That’s exactly what we need if we are to be very successful at this tournament. Under pressure the bowlers performed very well at the death, but now it’s about doing it when it counts. The best thing is we’ve got these experiences to call on when the tournament starts and we’re actually under real pressure when it really matters. Fingers crossed the guys can take all that confidence forward into the group games.”

Joe Root (1990) English cricketer

On World T20, "World T20: Joe Root challenges England squad to keep their cool in India" http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/mar/14/world-t20-england-india-mumbai, March 14, 2016. Steve Smith

Death, Guy, Confidence, Game

“"We shall say to ourselves," says one, "'After all, why do we make war?' We don't know at all why, but we can say who we make it for. We shall be forced to see that if every nation every day brings the fresh bodies of fifteen hundred young men to the God of War to be lacerated, it's for the pleasure of a few ringleaders that we could easily count; that if whole nations go to slaughter marshaled in armies in order that the gold-striped caste may write their princely names in history, so that other gilded people of the same rank can contrive more business, and expand in the way of employees and shops — and we shall see, as soon as we open our eyes, that the divisions between mankind are not what we thought, and those one did believe in are not divisions."”

Henri Barbusse book Under Fire

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 24 - The Dawn

Men, God, War, People

“We simply do not consider it desirable that a realm of justice and concord should be established on earth (because it would certainly be the realm of the deepest leveling and chinoiserie); we are delighted with all who love, as we do, danger, war, and adventures, who refuse to compromise, to be captured, reconciled, and castrated; we count ourselves among conquerors; we think about the necessity for new orders, also for a new slavery — for every strengthening and enhancement of the human type also involves a new kind of enslavement.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

The term chinoiserie indicates "unnecessary complication" and some translations point out that this passage invokes ideas in the concluding poem of Beyond Good and Evil: "nur wer sich wandelt bleibt mit mir verwandt" : Only those who keep changing remain akin to me.
The Gay Science (1882)

Love, War, Justice, Thinking

“You say you want a revolution,
Well, you know, we all want to change the world…
But when you talk about destruction,
Don't you know that you can count me out.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

"Revolution" (Single version)
"Revolution 1" - The Beatles [White Album] version (in this recorded performance of the song, Lennon interjects "in", after saying "count me out").
Lyrics
Variant: You say you want a revolution,
Well, you know, we all want to change the world...
But when you talk about destruction,
Don't you know that you can count me out — in.

World, Change

“It now remains that we find the amount of time of descent through the channel. This we shall obtain from the marvelous property of the pendulum, which is that it makes all its vibrations, large or small, in equal times. This requires, once and for all, that two or three or four patient and curious friends, having noted a fixed star that stands against some fixed marker, taking a pendulum of any length, shall go counting its vibrations during the whole time of return of the fixed star to its original point, and this will be the number of vibrations in 24 hours. From the number of these we can find the number of vibrations of any other pendulums, longer or shorter, at will, so that if for example those counted by us in 24 hours were 234,567, then taking another shorter pendulum with which one counts 800 vibrations while another counts 150 of the longer pendulum, we already have, by the golden rule, the number of vibrations for the whole time of 24 hours; and if we want to know the time of descent through the channel, we can easily find not only the minutes, seconds, and sixtieths of seconds, but beyond that as we please. It is true that we can pass a more exact measure by having observed the flow of water through a thin passage, for by collecting this and having weighed what passes in one minute, for example, then by weighing what passes in the time of descent through the channel we can find the most exact measure and quantity of this time, especially by making use of a balance so precise as to weigh one sixtieth of a grain.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

Letter to Giovanni Battista Baliani (1639)

Star, Water, Time

“I count life just a stuff
To try the soul's strength on.”

Robert Browning In a Balcony

In a Balcony.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life, Soul