Quotes about number (3111 quotes, page 14)

“1. The human mind is so constructed that it must see every perception in a time-relation—in an order—and every perception of an object in a space-relation—as outside or beside our perceiving selves.
2. These necessary time-relations are reducible to Number, and they are studied in the theory of number, arithmetic and algebra.
3. These necessary space-relations are reducible to Position and Form, and they are studied in geometry.
Mathematics, therefore, studies an aspect of all knowing, and reveals to us the universe as it presents itself, in one form, to mind. To apprehend this and to be conversant with the higher developments of mathematical reasoning, are to have at hand the means of vitalizing all teaching of elementary mathematics.”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

David Eugene Smith, "Editor's Introduction," in: The Teaching of Elementary Mathematics https://books.google.com/books?id=NKoAAAAAMAAJ (1906)

Mathematics , Study , Universe , Time

“It has been estimated that about one-fifth of Nazi voters and members were drawn from the manual work-force. After 1933 the number of workers in the Nazi Party went up, a product of opportunism perhaps as much as conviction.”

Richard Overy (1947) British historian

Source: The Nazi economic recovery 1931-1938 (1996), p. 58

“In arithmetic the Arabs took one step backward. Though they were familiar with negative numbers and the rules for operating with them through the work of the Hindus, they rejected negative numbers.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 192.

“For well over a century business cycles have run an unceasing round. They have persisted through vast economic and social changes; they have withstood countless experiments in industry, agriculture, banking, industrial relations, and public policy; they have confounded forecasters without number, belied repeated prophecies of a "new era of prosperity" and outlived repeated forebodings of "chronic depression."”

Arthur F. Burns (1904–1987) American economist and diplomat

Arthur F. Burns (1947). Stepping stones towards the future. Annual Report 27. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research. p. 27; Cited in: Gordon (1986; 1)

Business , Change

“I would resign the words of praise which now
Make my cheek crimson and my pulses beat.
Could I but deem that when my heart is cold
And my lip passionless, my songs would be
Numbered 'mid the young minstrels' first delights,
And murmured by the lover where his suit
Calls upon poetry to breathe of love.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

[This passage is in Erinna, altered]
The London Literary Gazette, 1825

Love , Lovers , Heart

“A great deal of talent is lost to the world for the want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves a number of obscure men who have only remained obscure because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Lecture IX : On the Conduct of the Understanding
Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy (1849)

Men , World , Courage , Effort

“It is number which regulates everything and it is measure which establishes universal order…. A quiet peace, an inviolable order, an inflexible security amidst all change and turmoil characterize the world which mathematics discloses and whose depths it unlocks.”

Christian Heinrich von Dillmann (1829–1899) German educationist

Source: Die Mathematik die Fackelträgerin einer neuen Zeit (Stuttgart, 1889), p. 12.

World , Peace , Mathematics , Universe

“Sharpe could feel the excitement of the Company, their confidence, and he marvelled at it. They were enjoying it, taking on sixteen times their number, and he did not understand that it was because of him. Harper knew, Knowles knew, that the tall Rifle Captain who was not given to rousing speeches could nevertheless make men feel that the impossible was just a little troublesome and that victory was a commonplace where he led.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Narrator, p. 68
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Gold (1981)

Men , Feeling , Confidence , Understanding

“In how many and which of these senses of the word does equality exist in the United States? Not as regards material conditions. Till about the middle of last century there were no great fortunes in America, few large fortunes, no poverty. Now there is some poverty (though only in a few places can it be called pauperism), many large fortunes, and a greater number of gigantic fortunes than in any other country of the world.”

James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce (1838–1922) British academic, jurist, historian and Liberal politician

The American Commonwealth: Volume II (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1910), pp. 810–811.
1910s

World , Sense , Country

“Number theory is useful, since one can graduate with it.”

Edmund Landau (1877–1938) German Jewish mathematician

Die Zahlentheorie ist nützlich, weil man mit ihr promovieren kann.
Foreword to Vorlesungen über Zahlentheorie (Lectures on Number Theory) (1927).

“I had sampled several such brotherhoods, including the Rosey Cross and the Orange Lodge, during the period in which I examined the Supernatural and found it not merely uninstructive but damnably dull, its members possessing nothing in the way of individual imagination and a great need to seek confirmation in numbers for the merits of miserable little madnesses…. Such people as a rule were lonely, confounded misfits, attempting to alter the surrounding evidence of Nature by inventing abstractions to explain why common facts were false and ordinary reality a poor illusion.”

Michael Moorcock book The City in the Autumn Stars

Source: The City in the Autumn Stars (1986), Chapter 3 (p. 210; ellipsis represents a minor elision of description)

People , Way , Imagination , Nature

“Laws never become theories! The theory of gravity includes a number of Newtonian laws. There is not one law of gravity; there are several laws included within the theory. The same goes for Relativity and even for evolution for that matter.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Orwellian Legislative Duplicity on HB 1485 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2017/05/05/orwellian-legislative-duplicity-hb-1485/ (May 5, 2017)

Law

“I can't screw up Alabama… We are number 48 in everything and Arkansas and Mississippi aren't going anywhere.”

Charles Barkley (1963) American basketball player

About running for governor of Alabama, on Campbell Brown, CNN, October 27, 2008 http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/27/brown.barkley/index.html.

“Protocols:
Number 15, para. 6
You cannot imagine to what extent the wisest of the goyim can be brought to a state of unconscious naivete in the presence of this condition of high conceit of themselves, and at the same time how easy it is to take the heart out of them…. These tigers in appearance have the souls of sheep and the wind blows freely through their heads. We have set them on the hobby-horse of an idea about the absorbtion of individuality by the symbolic unit of Collectivism….”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Soul , Imagination , Idea , Appearance

“The university is being called upon to educate previously unimagined numbers of students; to respond to the expanding claims of national service; to merge its activities with industry as never before. Characteristic of this transformation is the growth of the knowledge industry, which is coming to permeate government and business, and to draw into it more and more people raised to higher and higher levels of skill. The production, distribution and consumption of knowledge is said to account for 29 percent of gross national product, and knowledge production is growing at about twice the rate of the rest of the economy. What the railroads did for the second half of the last century, and the automobile for the first half of this century, may be done for the second half of this century by the knowledge industry; and that is, to serve as the focal point for national growth.”

Clark Kerr (1911–2003) American academic

David Lance Goines, 1993, The Free Speech Movement: Coming of Age in the 1960's, Ten Speed Press, p. 49.

People , Education , Business , Knowledge

“In the early summer, the Russians started to train or exercise along the border with Czechoslovakia. I started looking at the communications they were using to move around and that's when I started to pick up some very small number of unique things that was different from a normal training programme. So I started to capture that, and I said: it's obvious that they're going to invade. It was only two days later that they actually invaded”

William Binney former U.S. intelligence official and cryptoanalyst; whistleblower

A Good American, 2015 documentary

Exercises , Communication , Summer , Training

“A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas; but the pairing of a certain number of acoustical signs with as many cuts made from the mass of thought engenders a system of values.”

Ferdinand de Saussure book Course in General Linguistics

Source: Cours de linguistique générale (1916), p. 120

Idea

“The question of relative atrocities may be illustrated by this fact: a close examination by the author of newspaper files for 1966 alone disclosed somewhere between 600 and 1,000 reported South Vietnamese civilian deaths attributed to “errors” in the use of “allied” firepower. During the same year the number of NLF killings, including paramilitary personnel, according to official Saigon estimates, was 1,000. That is, our acknowledged accidental civilian killings were of the same order of magnitude as official claims of NLF killings. It should be obvious that U. S. bombings and killings in “unfriendly” villages were many times greater than killings by mistake.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: Atrocities in Vietnam: Myths and Realities, 1970, p. 58.

Death , Error , Question , Time

“I liked quantum mechanics very much. The subject was hard to understand but easy to apply to a large number of interesting problems.”

Willis Lamb (1913–2008) American Physicist

W. E. Lamb, Super classical quantum mechanics: the best interpretation of non relativistic quantum mechanics, Am. J. Phys. 69, 413-422 (2001).

Understanding , Problem

“The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, convinced by general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks incessantly occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies—between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridæ—between the elephant and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and other mammals. But all these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”

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

volume I, chapter VI: "On the Affinities and Genealogy of Man", pages 200-201 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=213&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image
The sentence "At some future period … the savage races" is often quoted out of context to suggest that Darwin desired this outcome, whereas in fact Darwin simply held that it would occur.
The Descent of Man (1871)

World , Hope , Distant , Appearance

“Among civilized and thriving nations, on the contrary, though a great number of people do no labor at all, many of whom consume the produce of ten times, frequently of a hundred times more labour than the greater part of those who work; yet the produce of the whole labour of the society is so great, that all are often abundantly supplied, and a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and conveniencies of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Introduction and Plan of the Work, p. 2.
(1776)

Life , People , Time , Parting

“I want you to hear me tonight, I am not saying that President Obama is the Antichrist, I am not saying that at all. One reason I know he's not the Antichrist is the Antichrist is going to have much higher poll numbers when he comes. President Obama is not the Antichrist. But what I am saying is this: the course he is choosing to lead our nation is paving the way for the future reign of the Antichrist.”

Robert Jeffress (1955) Pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas

quoted in * 2012-11-08
Texas Megachurch Pastor Says Obama Will 'Pave Way' for Antichrist
Michael
Gryboski
The Christian Post
http://www.christianpost.com/news/texas-megachurch-pastor-says-obama-will-pave-way-for-antichrist-84639/

Way , Future

“It’s a map of a non-existent coast under an imaginary constellation on an impossible sky in—” he grunted, twisting something—“the middle of a ring of meaningless numbers. That’s why it’s powerful. That’s why it’s magic.”

Samuel R. Delany book Neveryóna

Source: Neveryóna (1983), Chapter 12, “Of Models, Monsters, Night, and the Numinous” (p. 365)

“Does not even the most sexually democratic of us, among which number I unquestionably count myself, not choke back the tiniest sob at the sight of poor old Denis stumbling along behind, struggling pitifully to hold his trilby on, as the PM strides across Goose Green with the wind managing only to make her hair look more Medusan, and the very mines praying she will not crush them under-heel?”

Alan Coren (1938–2007) humorist and writer from the United Kingdom

"Subordinate Claus", Bumf (1984).

“You will not find much about what the Prime Minister does in the text-books. What he does is partly made up of convention and custom, but the nature of the office depends a great deal on the person who holds it. … Make it [the Cabinet] as small as possible. Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking. Some of my early Cabinets were very small, but I arrived at the conclusion that 16 is the right number.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Address to the Oxford University Law Society (14 June 1957), quoted in The Times (15 June 1957), p. 4.
Later life

People , Books , Democracy , Nature

“The greater the number of conjectured theories that are confronted by the realities of the world, and the more speculative those conjectures are, the greater will be the chances of major advances in science.”

Alan Chalmers book What Is This Thing Called Science?

Source: What Is This Thing Called Science? (Third Edition; 1999), Chapter 5, Introducing falsification, p. 67.

World , Reality , Science , Chance

“Seventeen seconds from game seven or from championship number six. Jordan…open…CHICAGO WITH THE LEAD!”

Bob Costas (1952) American sportscaster

Calling Michael Jordan's championship-clinching shot in Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals.

Game

“Addition is the combination of any arbitrary repetitions of the above-mentioned simplest act into a single act; from it in a similar way arises multiplication. While the performance of these two operations is always possible, that of the inverse operations, subtraction and division, proves to be limited. Whatever the immediate occasion may have been, whatever comparisons or analogies with experience, or intuition, may have led thereto; it is certainly true that just this limitation in performing the indirect operations has in each case been the real motive for a new creative act; thus negative and fractional numbers have been created by the human mind; and in the system of all rational numbers there has been gained an instrument of infinitely greater perfection. This system, which I shall denote by R, possesses first of all a completeness and self-containedness which I have designated… as characteristic of a body of numbers [Zahlkőrper] and which consists in this, that the four fundamental operations are always performable with any two individuals in R, i. e., the result is always an individual of R, the single case of division by the number zero being excepted.”

Richard Dedekind (1831–1916) German mathematician

p, 125
Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen (1872)

Way , Motivation , Perfection

“The problem you have put me will remain a problem till the globe of the world and the globe of the sun meet in their common center and the one consumes the other. This answer I have proposed, however, humanity will know and forget, know and forget, know and forget again. And that knowing and forgetting will approximate the peaks and depths of civilization as closely as the quotient of your tosses approximates that number which, rationally, we know is not there.”

Samuel R. Delany book Neveryóna

Source: Neveryóna (1983), Chapter 12, “Of Models, Monsters, Night, and the Numinous” (p. 358)

World , Problem , Sun , Forgetting

“The decisive weakness in neoclassical and neo-Keynesian economics is not the error in the assumptions by which it elides the problem of power. The capacity for erroneous belief is very great, especially where it coincides with convenience. Rather, in eliding power — in making economics a nonpolitical subject — neoclassical theory destroys its relation to the real world. In that world, power is decisive in what happens. And the problems of that world are increasing both in number and in the depth of their social affliction. In consequence, neoclassical and neo-Keynesian economics is relegating its players to the social sidelines where they either call no plays or use the wrong ones. To change the metaphor, they manipulate levers to which no machinery is attached.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

Power and the Useful Economist (1973)

World , Error , Problem , Decision

“About ancient mathematics (whether Greek or Mesopotamian) and medieval mathematics (Western or Oriental), the would-be historian must of necessity confine himself to the description of a comparatively small number of islands accidentally emerging from an ocean of ignorance, and to tenuous conjectural reconstructions of the submerged continents which at one time must have bridged the gaps between them.”

André Weil (1906–1998) French mathematician

Number Theory: An approach through history from Hammurapi to Legendre (Springer, 2006), p. 3 https://books.google.com/books?id=XSV0hDFj3loC&pg=PA3

Mathematics , Time

“I disapproved of the number of men she had traipsing into her bedroom and suggested she should have a turnstile on her bedroom door.”

Jani Allan (1952) South African columnist and broadcaster

Describing Linda Shaw, her former flatmate and defence witness in 1992 in the London High Court to George Carman, defence lawyer representing Channel 4 during the libel case she filed against the broadcaster. http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/courtroom-14-the-owl-has-landed-1535309.html
Other

Men

“You see by what has happened that we are superior to you in intelligence, in size of army, and in number of supporters. Surely you were easily trapped, captured without a struggle. It is in my power to do with you what I wish when I wish. Helpless and prostrate, you lie before us now, victims of our might. But if one looks for a punishment equal to the crimes you have committed, it is impossible to find a suitable one. You murdered your revered and benevolent old emperor, the man whom it was your sworn duty to protect. The empire of the Roman people, eternally respected, which our forefathers obtained by their valiant courage or inherited because of their noble birth, this empire you shamefully and disgracefully sold for silver as if it were your personal property. But you were unable to defend the man whom you yourselves had chosen as emperor. No, you betrayed him like the cowards you are. For these monstrous acts and crimes you deserve a thousand deaths, if one wished to do to you what you have earned. You see clearly what it is right you should suffer. But I will be merciful. I will not butcher you. My hands shall not do what your hands did. But I say that it is in no way fit or proper for you to continue to serve as the emperor's bodyguard, you who have violated your oath and stained your hands with the blood of your emperor and fellow Roman, betraying the trust placed in you and the security offered by your protection. Still, compassion leads me to spare your lives and your persons. But I order the soldiers who have you surrounded to cashier you, to strip off any military uniform or equipment you are wearing, and drive you off naked. 9. And I order you to get yourselves as far from the city of Rome as is humanly possible, and I promise you and I swear it on solemn oath and I proclaim it publicly that if any one of you is found within a hundred miles of Rome, he shall pay for it with his head.”

Septimius Severus (145–211) Emperor of Ancient Rome

Herodian, Book II.

Death , People , Lie , Way

“That the German people were spared this final catastrophe was due to -- aside from the rapid advances of the Allied troops, which made the carrying out of such a gigantic demolition impossible -- the superhuman efforts of Speer and a number of Army officers who, in direct disobedience (finally!) of Hitler's orders, raced about the country to make sure that vital communications, plants and stores were not blown up by zealously obedient Army officers and party hacks.”

William L. Shirer book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

Source: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960), pp. 1103,1104

People , Communication , Effort , Country

“It is a consolation to remember that corruption pushed beyond a certain point provides its own remedy, and that this sort of thing cannot indefinitely continue; but it is less consoling to remember another truth, to wit, that the correction of political and social evil may come in the form of irremediable catastrophe, and that the innocent, who are the greater number, would then suffer most. It is still less consoling to remember the universal human experience that when evil is redressed by the only partly conscious force of reaction, it is not succeeded by a corresponding good, but by some other new and unexpected evil.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Source: The Cruise of the 'Nona (1925), pp. 248–9

Truth , Suffering , Universe , Evil

“The solution of the measurement problem is twofold. First, any observation or measurement requires a macroscopic measuring apparatus. A macroscopic object is also governed by quantum mechanics, but has a large number of constituents, so that each macroscopic state is a combination of an enormous number of quantum mechanical eigenstates. As a consequence the quantum mechanical interference terms between two macroscopic states virtually cancel and only probabilities survive. That is the explanation why our familiar macroscopic physics, concerned with billiard balls, deals with probabilities rather than probability amplitudes.”

Nico van Kampen (1921–2013) Dutch theoretical physicist

The Scandal of Quantum Mechanics (2008)

Problem

“To paraphrase Mark Twain, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and the number of Armenians who are claimed by Armenians and their echo chambers to have died in an alleged World War I genocide.”

Bruce Fein (1947) American lawyer

Lies, Damn Lies, and Armenian Deaths (2009)

War , World

“We usually find a considerable degree of correlation between indicators and also between different sets of weights that we should ever think of using. Consequently we are likely to find that alternative index numbers using different weights show similar and often approximately proportionate movements. That this is so in most economic applications is due to the nature of the actual world and not simply to the formal characteristics of index number techniques.”

Richard Stone (1913–1991) British economist, Nobel Memorial Prize winner

Source: The Role of Measurement in Economics. 1951, p. 7; As cited in: Chao, Hsiang-Ke. Representation and structure: The methodology of econometric models of consumption. 2002.

World , Nature , Thinking

“Everywhere, when societies originate, we see the strongest, most warlike races seizing the exclusive government of the society. Everywhere we see these races seizing a monopoly on security within certain more or less extensive boundaries, depending on their number and strength.And, this monopoly being, by its very nature, extraordinarily profitable, everywhere we see the races invested with the monopoly on security devoting themselves to bitter struggles, in order to add to the extent of their market, the number of their forced consumers, and hence the amount of their gains.War has been the necessary and inevitable consequence of the establishment of a monopoly on security.Another inevitable consequence has been that this monopoly has engendered all other monopolies.”

Gustave de Molinari (1819–1912) Belgian political economist and classical liberal theorist

Source: The Production of Security (1849), p. 34-35

Nature , Dependency

“I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

SRC (Students Representative Council) student paper, Sydney University, 1979.
Quoted in ABC Four Corners, "The Authentic Mr Abbott" http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2010/s2846485.htm on abc.net.au, March 15, 2010.
1979

Women , Thinking

“There are a number of people in the universe I'd be willing to double-cross, but my own wounded aren't among 'em.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Brothers in Arms (1989)

People , Universe

“Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.”

Samuel Johnson The Idler

No. 30 (November 11, 1758)
The Idler (1758–1760)

Love , War , Truth

“[Y]ou have expressed my inward conviction, though far more vividly and clearly than I could have done, that the Universe is not the result of chance. … Lastly, I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

volume I, chapter VIII: "Religion", page 316 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=334&itemID=F1452.1&viewtype=image; letter to William Graham (3 July 1881)
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887)

World , Idea , Nature , Universe

“It appeared as if the whole nation stood up to greet me in Ahmedabad on my taking the 432nd wicket. The country was proud and that made me really happy…This was the first time in my life I realized what it is to be the number 1 in the world. It is a heady feeling almost out of the world.”

Kapil Dev (1959) Indian cricketer

Quoted in [Dev, Romi, Kapil Dev: Triumph of the Spirit, http://books.google.com/books?id=EF_jESQMqTgC, 1994, Allied Publishers, 978-81-7023-402-9]

Life , World , Feeling , Appearance

“The complexity for minimum component costs has increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year… Certainly over the short term this rate can be expected to continue, if not to increase. Over the longer term, the rate of increase is a bit more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least 10 years. That means by 1975, the number of components per integrated circuit for minimum cost will be 65,000. I believe that such a large circuit can be built on a single wafer.”

Gordon Moore (1929) American businessman, co-founder of Intel and author of the eponym law

[1965, ftp://download.intel.com/museum/Moores_Law/Articles-Press_Releases/Gordon_Moore_1965_Article.pdf, Cramming more components onto integrated circuits, PDF, 4, Electronics Magazine, 3 February 2010]

“The genius of the corporation as a business form, and the reason for its remarkable rise over the last three centuries, was - and is - its capacity to combine the capital, and thus the economic power, of unlimited numbers of people.”

Joel Bakan (1959) Canadian writer, musician, filmmaker and legal scholar

Source: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (2004), Chapter 1, The Corporation's Rise To Dominance, p. 8

People , Business

“Historically … it is traditional and habitual for us to be inadequately prepared. This is the combined result of a number factors, the character of which is only indicated: democracy, which tends to make everyone believe that he knows it all; the preponderance (inherent in democracy) of people whose real interest is in their own welfare as individuals; the glorification of our own victories in war and the corresponding ignorance of our defeats (and disgraces) and of their basic causes; the inability of the average individual (the man in the street) to understand the cause and effect not only in foreign but domestic affairs, as well as his lack of interest in such matters. Added to these elements is the manner in which our representative (republican) form of government has developed as to put a premium on mediocrity and to emphasise the defects of the electorate already mentioned.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

p. 236-237.

War , People , Democracy , Understanding

“What, exactly, is the cost of this inaction? Estimates of the total national cost of medical malpractice range from $20 billion to $45 billion annually. But this number hardly tells the whole story. There also is the more hidden cost of defensive medicine, including unnecessary testing and second opinions that send patients scurrying through processes that would not otherwise be ordered and deepen the financial burden of America’s health care system by an estimated three percent of our country’s total health care expenditures. Who ultimately pays these costs? Reckless doctors? Faceless insurance companies? Seldom mentioned, the totality of these expenses ultimately falls exclusively on the consumer, since each malpractice award translates ultimately to increased malpractice insurance premiums, which, in turn, translates to either higher health care costs, fewer physicians (with less competitive pricing pressure), or both.”

Michael Johns (1964) American businessman

"Malpractice: Where Will It End?" Orthopedic Technology Review, September/October 2003, by Michael Johns: Advocating Statutory Constraints on Medical Malpractice

Health , Country

“The old get older
And the young get stronger
May take a week
And it may take longer
They got the guns
But we got the numbers
Gonna win, yeah
We're takin' over
Come on!”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

"Five to One" on the album Waiting for the Sun (1968)

“While there are a number of ways to combat terrorism, attempting to cure the symptoms without tackling the root causes is like waging a losing war on drugs.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Counterterrorism and Cybersecurity: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2015

War , Way

“I do feel strongly that this is nonsense! … So perhaps I could entertain future historians by saying I think all this superstring stuff is crazy and is in the wrong direction. I think all this superstring stuff is crazy and is in the wrong direction. … I don’t like it that they’re not calculating anything. … why are the masses of the various particles such as quarks what they are? All these numbers … have no explanations in these string theories – absolutely none! … I don’t like that they don’t check their ideas. I don’t like that for anything that disagrees with an experiment, they cook up an explanation—a fix-up to say, “Well, it might be true.” For example, the theory requires ten dimensions. Well, maybe there’s a way of wrapping up six of the dimensions. Yes, that’s all possible mathematically, but why not seven? When they write their equation, the equation should decide how many of these things get wrapped up, not the desire to agree with experiment. In other words, there’s no reason whatsoever in superstring theory that it isn’t eight out of the ten dimensions that get wrapped up and that the result is only two dimensions, which would be completely in disagreement with experience. So the fact that it might disagree with experience is very tenuous, it doesn’t produce anything.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

interview published in Superstrings: A Theory of Everything? (1988) edited by Paul C. W. Davies and Julian R. Brown, p. 193-194

Way , Feeling , Mathematics , Idea

“Which of us has, at this day, the ability to discover those true and vivific numbers whereby the elements are united and bound to one another?”

Robert Fludd (1574–1637) British mathematician and astrologer

Robert Fludd, cited in: Waite (1887, p. 291); On arithmetic

“After a vast research program, which depended very heavily upon the use of a number of highspeed computers, I am pleased to offer you the result: "Space is that in which everything else is." In other words, "Space is the hole that we are in."”

James Van Allen (1914–2006) American nuclear physicist

On the definition of space: Reach Into Space http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,892531,00.html, Time, 1959-05-04.

Dependency

“We cannot take Gaelic's future for granted, particularly when the number of speakers continues to diminish. As the stewards of Gaelic in Scotland, we are responsible for ensuring that the language is able to flourish.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Sabhal Mòr Ostaig Lecture (December 19, 2007)

Future

“It is the duty of all troops and police in my command to adopt the severest measures. Every act of violence committed by partisans must be punished immediately. Reports submitted must also give details of countermeasures taken. Wherever there is evidence of a considerable number of partisan groups a proportion of the male population of the area will be arrested, and in the event of an act of violence being committed these men will be shot.”

Albert Kesselring (1885–1960) German Luftwaffe Generalfeldmarschall during World War II

June 20, 1944. Quoted in "Mussolini: The Last 600 Days of Il Duce" - Page 131 - by Ray Moseley - History - 2004.

Men

“Arithmetic and geometry, according to Plato, are the two wings of the mathematician. The object indeed of all mathematical questions, is to determine the ratios of numbers, or of magnitudes; and it may even be said, to continue the comparison of the ancient philosopher, that arithmetic is the mathematician's right wing; for it is an incontestable truth, that geometrical determinations would, for the most part, present nothing satisfactory to the mind, if the ratios thus determined could not be reduced to numerical ratios. This justifies the common practice, which we shall here follow, of beginning with arithmetic.”

Jacques Ozanam (1640–1718) French mathematician

Source: Recreations in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, (1803), p. 2

Truth , Mathematics , Question , Parting

“The use of practically any computing technique itself raises a number of mathematical problems. There is thus a very considerable impact of computation on mathematics itself, and this may be expected to influence mathematical research to an increasing degree.”

George Forsythe (1917–1972) Stanford University computer scientist

George Forsythe (1958) cited in: Computers and people Vol 23. (1974). p. 11 Pagina 11

Mathematics , Problem

“Halliburton is not a "company" doing business in Iraq. It is a WAR PROFITEER, bilking millions from the pockets of average Americans. In past wars they would have been arrested — or worse.
The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win. Get it, Mr. Bush?”

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

2004

War , Business , Past

“Therefore, Sir, let it be your Majesty's continuall study (as called and charged thereunto by God) to reforme the universall enormities of your country, and first (taking example of the princely prophet David) to begin at your Majesty's owne house, familie and court, and purge the same of all suspicion of Papists and Atheists and Newtrals, whereof this Revelation foretelleth that the number shall greatly increase in these latter daies. For shall any Prince be able to be one of the destroyers of that great seate, and a purger of the world from Antichristianisme, who purgeth not his owne countrie? Shall he purge his whole countrie who purgeth not his owne house? Or shall he purge his house, who is not purged himself by private meditations with his God?”

John Napier (1550–1617) Scottish mathematician

A Plaine Discovery of the Whole Revelation of St. John (1593) as quoted by Cargill Gilston Knott, Napier Tercentenary Memorial Volume (1915)

God , World , Family , Study

“Every transfinite consistent multiplicity, that is, every transfinite set, must have a definite aleph as its cardinal number.”

Georg Cantor (1845–1918) mathematician, inventor of set theory

Letter to Richard Dedekind (1899), as translated in From Frege to Gödel : A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879-1931 (1967) by Jean Van Heijenoort, p. 117

“Mr. Parnell said the other night, that Ireland is a "nation". Well, if a nation only means a certain number of individuals collected between certain latitudes and longitudes, I admit in that sense Ireland is a nation. But if there is anything further necessary— if to make a nation you require a past united history, traditions in which you can all join, achievements of which you all are proud, interests which you share in common, and sympathies which belong to all— then emphatically Ireland is not a nation; Ireland is two nations.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Source: Speech to the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations in St. James's Hall, London (15 May 1886), quoted in The Times (17 May 1886), p. 6

History , Sense , Past , Night

“[T]he wall of separation between public and private higher education has been eroding for the last half-century. Funding from public sources now constitutes the bulk of higher-education resources in the United States, whether in the form of government subventions for research and programs, or in the much vaster influx of government-guaranteed student loans. For all realistic purposes, the distinction between public and private higher education has ceased to exist. Further, the vast numbers of young American adults being drawn in to the college and university system (some 20.4 million, up by 25 percent from 2000 alone)—on the assumption that college degrees are virtually a sine qua non of entrance into profitable commerce or lucrative professions—has evaporated what little is left of the pretense that academe constitutes some monastic realm, beyond the orbit of civil society.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2010s, Free Speech and Its Present Crisis (2018)

Education , Universe

“While going through training in the army, I was very puzzled about the number of things which we had to do… why learn to lace our shoes a particular way, walk back and forth through puddles, salute commissioned officers… Only much later did I realize that, in audition to combat training, basic training was a stage setting device, especially for the establishment of legitimate position power. Those in command were not ready to put their trust in informational power: Particularly in combat conditions, officers would not be able to give us reasons. Coercive power, under limited surveillance, would also not be sufficient. We must learn, as Tennyson said of the Light Brigade, that when ordered to do something, "ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die."”

Bertram Raven (1926) American psychologist

So it was important that we were ordered to do meaningless things, and learn to obey legitimate authority without question, while coercive power was still hovering in the background.
Source: "Influence, Power, Religion, and the Mechanisms of Social Control," 1999, p. 176, as cited in: Rick Houser et al. Gaining Power and Control Through Diversity and Group Affiliation, 2004, p. 12

Shoe , Way , Question , Light

“The Triumph of Wit is to make your good Nature subdue your Censure; to be quick in seeing Faults, and slow in exposing them. You are to consider, that the invisible thing called a Good Name, is made up of the Breath of Numbers that speak well of you; so that if by a disobliging Word you silence the meanest, the Gale will be less strong which is to bear up your Esteem.”

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician

The Lady's New Year's Gift: or Advice to a Daughter (1688)

Nature , Strong , Silence

“It is not true that a rose by any other name will smell as sweet. Were it true, I should call this story "The Great Orley Farm Case." But who would ask for the ninth number of a serial work burthened with so very uncouth an appellation? Thence, and therefore, — Orley Farm.”

Anthony Trollope book Orley Farm

Source: Orley Farm (1862), Ch. 1, first lines.

“The brutal nature of the extremists increasingly clear, the coalition of nations confronting terror is growing stronger. Over the past 7 years, Afghanistan and Iraq have been transformed from regimes that actively sponsored terror to democracies that fight terror. Libya has renounced its support for terror and its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Nations like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are actively pursuing the terrorists. A few nations – regimes like Syria and Iran – continue to sponsor terror. Yet their numbers are growing fewer, and they're growing more isolated from the world.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2008, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2008)

World , Democracy , Support , Nature

“If my history lesson has done nothing else, it should have reminded you that, during any given period in the evolving history of physics, the prevailing, main line, climate of opinion was likely as not to be wrong, as seen in the light of later developments. And yet, in those earlier times, with relatively few individuals involved, change did occur, but slowly… What is fundamentally different in the present day situation in high energy physics is that large numbers of workers are involved, with corresponding pressures to conformity and resistance to any deflection in direction of the main stream, and that the time scale of one scientific generation is much too long for the rapid pace of experimental discovery. I also have a secret fear that new generations may not necessarily have the opportunity to become familiar with dissident ideas.”

Julian Schwinger (1918–1994) American theoretical physicist

as quoted by Sameer Shah in "If you can't join 'em, beat 'em": Julian Schwinger's Conflicts in Physics. Directions in Cultural History, The UCLA Historical Journal, Volume 21, 2005-2006, p. 50

Secret , Fear , History , Idea

“On the bright side, maybe sending men in dresses into women's bathrooms will reduce number of women in our fighting forces.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Twitter
2017-07-17
Twitter
https://twitter.com/anncoulter/status/886802136448847872
2017

Women , Men , Fight

“Out of the savage tribe grew up the barbarian village community; and a new, still wider, circle of social customs, habits, and institutions, numbers of which are still alive among ourselves, was developed under the principles of common possession of a given territory and common defence of it, under the jurisdiction of the village folkmote, and in the federation of villages belonging, or supposed to belong, to one stem. And when new requirements induced men to make a new start, they made it in the city, which represented a double network of territorial units (village communities) connected with guilds, these latter arising out of the common prosecution of a given art or craft, or for mutual support and defence.”

Peter Kropotkin book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution

Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902)

Men , Art , Communication , Support

“If you're ready to move beyond pure numbers, to a place where your right brain can envision the best in innovation and the best in gameplay improvement, well, you've come to the right place.”

Reggie Fils-Aimé (1961) American businessman

Source: E3 2005

“That's not really a number I'm terribly interested in.”

Colin Powell (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general

Reported as a comment on "the number of Iraqi dead from the combined allied air and ground campaign" by Tyler, Patrick. "After The War; Powell Says U.S. Will Stay In Iraq 'For Some Months.'" New York Times, March 23 1991, pp. 1,4. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/23/world/after-the-war-powell-says-us-will-stay-in-iraq-for-some-months.html
2000s

““On the 1st Rajab 990 [AD 1582] he (Husain Qulî Khãn) encamped by a field of maize near NagarkoT. The fortress (hissãr) of Bhîm, which is an idol temple of Mahãmãî, and in which none but her servants dwelt, was taken by the valour of the assailants at the first assault. A party of Rajpûts, who had resolved to die, fought most desperately till they were all cut down. A number of Brãhmans who for many years had served the temple, never gave one thought to flight, and were killed. Nearly 200 black cows belonging to Hindûs had, during the struggle, crowded together for shelter in the temple. Some savage Turks, while the arrows and bullets were falling like rain, killed those cows. They then took off their boots and filled them with the blood and cast it upon the roof and walls of the temple.”173”

Nizamuddin Ahmad (1551–1594) historian

Jalãlu’d-Dîn Muhammad Akbar Pãdshãh Ghãzî (AD 1556-1605) Nagarkot Kangra (Himachal Pradesh)
Tabqãt-i-Akharî

“There was a time not too long ago in this country that we used to walk through walls of fire to make sure we weren't funding Hamas or Hezbollah. I have news for ya: there are a lot of universities that are just as dangerous with indoctrination of our children as these terror groups are in Iran or North Korea. With the poll numbers continuing to slide for the new health care bill, our Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius just said, and I quote, "We need a [video: RE-EDUCATION in fullscreen boldface] re-education process [video of Beck resumes] on healthcare." Oh. Well, how very Kim Jong-Il of you. Or dare I say it? Mao is the "in" one now, isn't he? Re-education. — America, while you have been working hard, while you have been busting your butt, while you have thought we all generally agree on things, we have been setting up re-education camps. We call them 'universities'.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

2010s, 2010

Children , Health , Education , Quotes

“The prison therefore functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting those communities from which prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers. This is the ideological work that the prison performs—it relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism.”

Angela Davis Are Prisons Obsolete?

Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)

Communication , Problem , Thinking , Affliction

“We had all awakened X number of years past our youth feeling sleazy and harsh. Choices still existed, but they were no longer infinite. Fun had become a scrim, concealing the hysteria that lay behind it.”

Douglas Coupland book Girlfriend in a Coma

Girlfriend in a Coma (1998)

Youth , Feeling , Past

“And now, my classmates; ye remaining few
That number not the half of those we knew,
Ye, against whose familiar names not yet
The fatal asterisk of death is set,
Ye I salute!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

St. 13.
Morituri Salutamus http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/longfellow/19229 (1875)

Death

“Even the prospect of early annihilation should not keep us from making the most of our days on this unhappy planet. In the best of times, our days are numbered anyway. And it would be a crime against Nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were presumably designed in the first place, and which the gravest statesmen and the hoarsest politicians hope to make available to all men in the end: I mean the opportunity to do good work, to fall in love, to enjoy friends, to sit under trees, to read, to hit a ball and bounce the baby.”

Alistair Cooke (1908–2004) British journalist and broadcaster

One Man's America (1952).
Quoted in "The Very Moving Day", Season 6, Episode 1 of All in the Family (1975)

Love , Men , World , Hope

“It would be not only useless, but dangerous, to enumerate a number of rights which are not intended to be given up; because it would be implying, in the strongest manner, that every right not included in the exception might be impaired by the government without usurption; and it would be impossible to enumerate every one. Let any one make what collection or enumeration of rights he pleases, I will immediately mention twenty or thirty more rights not contained in it.”

James Iredell (1751–1799) one of the first Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States

July 28, 1788, p. 150.
North Carolina's Debates, in Convention, on the adoption of the Federal Constitution (1787)

“An object in OOA represents a single typical but unspecified instance of something in the real world - any airplane, I don't care which one, as long as it is typical. The object-oriented analyst distinguishes this concept from that of a specified instance: Airplane number N2713A, Air Force One, or The Spirit of St. Louis, for example.”

Sally Shlaer (1938–1998) American computer scientist

Source: Object-Oriented Systems Analysis: Modeling the World In Data (1988), p. 12

World

“I am one of what must be an increasing number who find the portentous moralisings of A. Solzhenitsyn a bore and an irritation. Scarcely any aspect of life in the countries where he passes his voluntary exile has failed to incur his pessimistic censure. Coming from Russia, where freedom of the press has been not so much unknown as uncomprehended since long before the Revolution, he is shocked to discover that a free press disseminated all kinds of false, partial and invented information and that journalists contradict themselves from one day to the next without shame and without apology. Only a Russian would find all that surprising, or fail to understand that freedom which is not misused is not freedom at all.

Like all travellers he misunderstands what he observes. It simply is not true that ‘within the Western countries the press has become more powerful than the legislative power, the executive and the judiciary’. The British electorate regularly disprove this by electing governments in the teeth of the hostility and misrepresentation of virtually the whole of the press. Our modern Munchhausen has, however, found a more remarkable mare’s nest still: he has discovered the ‘false slogan, characteristic of a false era, that everyone is entitled to know everything’. Excited by this discovery he announces a novel and profound moral principle, a new addendum to the catalogue of human rights. ‘People,’ he says, ‘have a right not to know, and it is a more valuable one.’ Not merely morality but theology illuminates the theme: people have, say Solzhenitsyn, ‘the right not to have their divine souls’ burdened with ‘the excessive flow of information’.

Just so. Whatever may be the case in Russia, we in the degenerate West can switch off the radio or television, or not buy a newspaper, or not read such parts of it as we do not wish to. I can assure Solzhenitsyn that the method works admirably, ‘right’ or ‘no right’. I know, because I have applied it with complete success to his own speeches and writings.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Letter in answer to Solzhenitsyn's Harvard statement (21 June 1978), from Reflections of a Statesman. The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell (London: Bellew, 1991), p. 577
1970s

Life , Hostility , People , Travel

“We've done some good work, but all of these products become obsolete so fast… It will be some finite number of years, and I don't know the number — before our doom comes.”

Bill Gates (1955) American business magnate and philanthropist

Forbes Greatest Business Stories of All Time (1997) by Daniel Gross ISBN 0471196533
1990s

“…in his case it went further and became indifference to social distinction. Never once in forty years of intimacy did his son notice in him a trace of snobbishness. He was one of the exceedingly small number of Americans to whom an English duke or duchess seemed to be indifferent, and royalty itself nothing more than a slightly inconvenient presence. This was, it is true, rather the tone of English society in his time, but Americans were largely responsible for changing it, and Mr. Adams had every possible reason for affecting the manner of a courtier even if he did not feel the sentiment. Never did his son see him flatter or vilify, or show a sign of envy or jealousy; never a shade of vanity or self-conceit. Never a tone of arrogance! Never a gesture of pride!”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Jealousy , Feeling , Change , Time

“Sweet in her green dell the flower of beauty slumbers,
Lull'd by the faint breezes sighing through her hair;
Sleeps she and hears not the melancholy numbers
Breathed to my sad lute 'mid the lonely air.”

George Darley (1795–1846) Irish poet, novelist, and critic

Poem Sweet in her green dell http://www.bartleby.com/101/640.html

Sadness , Beauty , Flowers , Sleep

“There were a significant number of questions I had asked myself and, as you know, when you really ask yourself the questions, you give better answers than if we merely read the conventional answers.”

Albert Messiah (1921–2013) French physicist

Il y avait un nombre important de questions que je m'étais posées et, comme vous le savez, lorsqu'on se pose vraiment les questions, on donne de meilleures réponses que si l'on se contente de lire les réponses convenues.
explaining how he came to write his textbook on quantum mechanics, in Descente au coeur de la matière, an interview edited by [Stéphane Deligeorges, Le monde quantique, Editions du Seuil, Sciences et Avenir, 1984, 2020089084, 111]

Question , Reading

“Among those [Syrian] refugees are no doubt a significant number of ISIS terrorists.”

James Clapper (1941) US government official

Misquoted by Ted Cruz. According to the source, "Clapper said it was a “huge concern” that ISIS could try to infiltrate the refugees. Clapper also expressed confidence in the United States’ ability to screen refugee applicants."
Misattributed
Source: [Farley, Robert, Cruz Misquotes Clapper on Refugees, https://www.factcheck.org/2015/10/cruz-misquotes-clapper-on-refugees/, factcheck.org, 27 July 2018]

“Whereas originally the hopes for string theory, and its descendants, were that some kind of uniqueness would be arrived at, whereby the theory would supply mathematical explanations for the measured numbers of experimental physics, the string theorists were driven to find refugee in the strong anthropic argument in an attempt to narrow down an absolutely vast number of alternatives. In my own view, this a very sad and unhelpful place for a theory to find itself.”

Roger Penrose book Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe

Source: Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe (2016), Ch. 3 Fantasy, p 322

Sadness , Hope , Mathematics , Strong

“Protocols:
Number 10, paras. 6,7
A scheme of government should come ready made from one brain, because it will never be clinched firmly if it is allowed to split into fractional parts in the minds of many. It is allowable, therefore, for us to have cognizance of the scheme of action but not to discuss it lest we disturb its artfulness, and interdependence of its component parts, the practical force of the secret meaning of each clause. To discuss and make alteration in a labor of this kind by means of numerous votings is to impress upon it the stamp of all ratiocinations and misunderstandings which have failed to penetrate the depth and nexus of its plottings….
These schemes will not turn existing institutions upside down just yet, They will only effect changes in their economy and consequently in the whole combined movement of their progress, which will thus be directed along the paths laid down in our schemes.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Secret , Art , Change , Parting

“When Muhammad bin Qasim invaded Sind, he took captives wherever he went and sent many prisoners, especially women prisoners, to his homeland. Parimal Devi and Suraj Devi, the two daughters of Raja Dahir, who were sent to Hajjaj to adorn the harem of the Caliph, were part of a large bunch of maidens remitted as one-fifth share of the state (Khums) from the booty of war (Ghanaim). The Chachnama gives the details. After the capture of the fort of Rawar, Muhammad bin Qasim “halted there for three day, during which time he masscered 6,000 …men. Their followers and dependents, as well as their women and children were taken prisoner.” When the (total) number of prisoners was calculated, it was found to amount to thirty thousand persons (Kalichbeg has sixty thousand), amongst whom thirty were the daughters of the chiefs. They were sent to Hajjaj. The head of Dahir and the fifth part of prisoners were forwarded in charge of the Black Slave Kaab, son of Mubarak Rasti.96 In Sind itself female slaves captured after every campaign of the marching army, were married to Arab soldiers who settled down in colonies established in places like Mansura, Kuzdar, Mahfuza and Multan. The standing instructions of Hajjaj to Muhammad bin Qasim were to “give no quarter to infidels, but to cut their throats”, and take the women and children as captives. In the final stages of the conquest of Sind, “when the plunder and the prisoners of war were brought before Qasim… one-fifth of all the prisoners were chosen and set aside; they were counted as amounting to twenty thousand in number… (they belonged to high families) and veils were put on their faces, and the rest were given to the soldiers”.97 Obviously, a few lakhs of women were enslaved and distributed among the elite and the soldiers.”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

Chachnama, in Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7

Women , Men , War , Children

“As long as there is a possibility of working I'm not going to retire because if I retire nothing will work any more, and it's hard enough as it is. I'm very conscious that I'm in the minority in that I love what I do. How big is the number of people who are running to work to do a job that they like? And how lucky to be employed at it – how incredibly lucky.”

Judi Dench (1934) English film, stage and television actress

Judi Dench unable to read scripts due to degenerative eye condition https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2012/feb/18/judi-dench-scripts-eye-condition (February 18, 2012)

Love , People

“The complete and definitive work of art is created beyond one's individuality... The universal transcends such a level. Mere spontaneity has never created a work of art which possesses a lasting cultural value. The method leading to universal form is based upon calculations of measure and number.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote in his article 'Elementarism', as cited in De Stijl – Van Doesburg Issue, January 1932, pp. 17–19
1926 – 1931

Art , Universe

“In practice, the writer or scholar who aspires to that public position which defines intellectuals and distinguishes them from mere scribblers has always had to choose between being the apologist for rulers or an advisor to the people; the tragedy of the twentieth century is that these two functions have ceased to exist independently of one another, and intellectuals like Sartre who thought they were fulfilling one role were inevitably drawn to play both. If their successors, in France or elsewhere, are truly to put this past behind them, it will not be enough to recognize past mistakes. It will also be necessary to accept that entailed in the very meaning for modern society of the term intellectual are a number of roles that writers and scholars today may no longer wish to fulfill; indeed, a refusal to occupy the post of the (engaged) intellectual may be the most positive of the steps modern thinkers can take in any serious effort to come to terms with their own responsibility for our common recent past.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Source: Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944-1956 (1992), p. 319

People , Effort , Past

“Twas now the month in which the world began
(If March beheld the first created man):
And since the vernal equinox, the Sun,
In Aries, twelve degrees, or more, had run;
When casting up his eyes against the light,
Both month, and day, and hour, he measur'd right;
And told more truly than th' Ephemeris:
For Art may err, but Nature cannot miss.
Thus numbering times and seasons in his breast,
His second crowing the third hour confess'd.”

John Dryden book Fables, Ancient and Modern

The Cock and the Fox line 445 - 457.
Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700)

World , Art , Nature , Light

“One voice in the Great Conversation itself announces this modern point of view. In the closing paragraph of his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume writes: "When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume… let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."… the positivists of our own day, would commit to burning or, what is the same, to dismissal from serious consideration… Those books… argue the case against the kind of positivism that asserts that everything except mathematics and experimental science is sophistry and illusion…. The Great Conversation… contains both sides of the issue.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Books , Mathematics , Understanding , Science

“It is very difficult to phone people in China, Mr. President," said the Postmaster General, "The country is so full of Wings and Wongs, every time you wing you get the wong number.”

Roald Dahl book Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

Source: Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972), Ch. 4, "The President" (p. 34 in the 1984 Bantam edition)

People , Time , Country

“Laplace created a number of new mathematical methods that were subsequently expanded into branches of mathematics, but he never cared for mathematics except as it helped him to study nature.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 495

Mathematics , Nature , Study , Help

“Seven scores, seven scores, seven hundreds of saints,
And seven thousands and seven ten scores,
November a number implored,
Though martyrs good they came.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Elegy of the Thousand Sons

“…our geographical position put us in the centre of markets. That was one of the great strengths of our position. We did not have to look merely into Europe; we could look outside. We had our relationships with the Colonies overseas, later the Dominions; with the United States; with all continents, just because we were not tied up with the Continent of Europe. Now we are to be tied. It might be right, it may be wrong; but do not make any mistake: it is entirely different from anything we have had before. We are to become part of a larger whole, an appendage to Europe. It may be right now, but, historically, that has not been our position. We may have been at the centre of markets, but we have not been in one market and out of the others. We have had to fight against hostile tariffs; we have had to keep our end up. We have never put ourselves into a position in which we were inside a ring-fence with a number of Continental Powers. Make no mistake: it is an entire change.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1962/aug/02/britain-and-the-common-market in the House of Lords on the British application to join the Common Market (2 August 1962).
Later life

Hostility , Change , Fight , Parting