Quotes about number
page 18

“The Gods most pleasure in od numbers take.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Bucolicks

“I should be inexcusable, considering the share I have formerly had in that unhappy business, if, upon this occasion, I should omit to mention the African slave-trade. I do not rank this amongst our national sins, because I hope, and believe, a very great majority of the nation earnestly long for its suppression. But, hitherto, petty and partial interest prevail against the voice of justice, humanity and truth. This enormity, however, is not sufficiently laid to heart. If you are justly shocked by what you hear of the cruelties practised in France, you would, perhaps, be shocked much more, if you could fully conceive of the evils and miseries inseparable from this traffic, which I apprehend, not from hearsay, but from my own observation, are equal in atrocity, and, perhaps superior in number, in the course of a single year, to any or all the worst actions which have been known in France since the commencement of their revolution. There is a cry of blood against us; a cry accumulated by the accession of fresh victims, of thousands, of scores of thousands, I had almost said of hundreds of thousands, from year to year.”

John Newton (1725–1807) Anglican clergyman and hymn-writer

As quoted in The Works of the Rev. John Newton... to which are Prefixed Memoirs of His Life (1839), Vol. 2, U. Hunt, pages 429-230.

Truth, Justice, Hope, Business

“Without the aid of these, then, it is not possible to deal accurately with the forms of being nor to discover the truth in things, knowledge of which is wisdom, and evidently not even to philosophize properly, for "just as painting contributes to the menial arts toward correctness of theory, so in truth lines, numbers, harmonic intervals, and the revolutions of circles bear aid to the learning of the doctrines of wisdom," says the Pythagorean Androcydes. Likewise Archytas of Tarentum, at the beginning of… On Harmony, says… in about these words: "It seems to me that they do well to study mathematics, and it is not at all strange that they have correct knowledge about each thing, what it is. For if they knew rightly the nature of the whole, they were also likely to see well what is the nature of the parts. About geometry, indeed, and arithmetic and astronomy, they have handed down to us a clear understanding, and not least also about music. For these seem to be sister sciences; for they deal with sister subjects, the first two forms of being."”

Nicomachus (60–120) Ancient Greek mathematician

Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic (1926)

Wisdom, Truth, Art, Music

“Again I only gave numbers [of her art-works, she sent for the next Sturm-exhibition]. I stick to my idea of not giving titles... Titles are really disgusting romantic, and now in a while people will have hundreds of Spring's, Summers, Trees [paintings], to Liebknecht, Eberts, etc.. Above everything color and line have their own specific language, which doesn't want to be captured in a title.”

Jacoba van Heemskerck (1876–1923) Dutch painter

translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(original version, written by Jacoba in German:) Ich habe wieder nur Nummern gegeben. Ich bleibe bei meiner Idee, keine Titel zu geben. .. ..Titel sinds o widerlich romantisch, und jetz wird man in einiger Zeit hunderte Frühlings, Sommer, Bäume, an Liebknechts, Eberts und so weiter haben. Farbe und Linien haben für alle eine verschiedene eigene Sprache, die nicht im Titel festgelegt werden woll.
in a letter to Herwarth Walden, 14 Jan. 1920; as cited in the catalogue Der Sturm, Herwarth Walden und die Europäische Avantgarde, Berlin 1912-1932 Taschenbuch – 1961
Already in 1914 Jacoba started to number her paintings and drawings
1920's

People, Art, Color, Spring

“Encapsulation is the key to increasing the value of such software metrics as reusability, refinability, testability, maintainability, and extensibility. Object-oriented languages provide a number of mechanisms for improving encapsulation, but it is during the design phase that the greatest leverage can be realized.
The data-driven approach to object-oriented design focuses on the structure of the data in a system. This results in the incorporation of structural information in the definitions of classes. Doing so violates encapsulation.
The responsibility-driven approach emphasizes the encapsulation of both the structure and behavior of objects. By focusing on the contractual responsibilities of a class, the designer is able to postpone implementation considerations until the implementation phase.
While responsibility-driven design is not the only technique addressing this problem, most other techniques attempt to enforce encapsulation during the implementation phase. This is too late in the software life-cycle to achieve maximum benefits.”

Rebecca Wirfs-Brock (1953) American software engineer

Source: Object-oriented design: a responsibility-driven approach (1989), p. 75: Conclusion

Life, Behavior, Problem

“I felt that on a basis of a "search for the miraculous" it would be possible to unite together a very large number of people who were no longer able to swallow the customary forms of lying and living in lying.”

P. D. Ouspensky book In Search of the Miraculous

In Search of the Miraculous (1949)

People, Search, Lying

“Physics has entered a remarkable era. Ideas that were once the realm of science fiction are now entering our theoretical — and maybe even experimental — grasp. Brand-new theoretical discoveries about extra dimensions have irreversibly changed how particle physicists, astrophysicists, and cosmologists now think about the world. The sheer number and pace of discoveries tells us that we've most likely only scratched the surface of the wondrous possibilities that lie in store. Ideas have taken on a life of their own.”

Lisa Randall (1962) American theoretical physicist and an expert on particle physics and cosmology

Source: Warped Passages: Unraveling the Universe's Hidden Dimensions (2005), Ch. 24.

Life, Lie, World, Idea

“Well, you’re going to find a disproportionate number of Jews in any sort of intellectual undertaking.”

Richard Perle (1941) American government official

PBS Think Tank interview by Ben Wattenberg, November 14, 2002
Source: http://www.pbs.org/thinktank/transcript1017.html

“In Nuoro Province of Sardinia Italy and Okinawa Japan there are zones called “blue zones” that are known for having the highest number of centenarians - which are people over age 100. When scientists researched these zones to find out how these people were living so long, they found the least common denominator: These people all had emphasized Ikigai in their cultures. They knew what their reason for being alive was. I have never believed that one man should remain a lifelong politician, therefore, I am imposing my own term limit on this office. Ideas get used up and then the man who had them needs to step aside to make way for the new ones. And so, I strive to become like he whom Plato once apotheosized - the statesman. This means that I know my place, and that is why as a builder and starter, it is now my time to pass the torch of good government on to whomever the public’s wisdom declares a new leader in the upcoming November election.”

Robert Agresta (1983)

Public Release May, 2011, Politicker NJ

Wisdom, People, Age, Way

“A man can stand being told that he must submit to a severe surgical operation, or that he has some disease which will shortly kill him, or that he will be a cripple or blind for the rest of his life; dreadful as such tidings must be, we do not find that they unnerve the greatest number of mankind; most men, indeed, go coolly enough even to be hanged, but the strongest quail before financial ruin, and the better men they are, the more complete, as a general rule, is their prostration.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 66

Life, Men, Disease

“Must I not here express my wonder that any one should exist who persuades himself that there are certain solid and indivisible particles carried along by their own impulse and weight, and that a universe so beautiful and so admirably arrayed is formed from the accidental concourse of those particles? I do not understand why the man who supposes that to have been possible should not also think that if a countless number of the forms of the one and twenty letters, whether in gold or any other material, were to be thrown somewhere, it would be possible, when they had been shaken out upon the ground, for the annals of Ennius to result from them so as to be able to be read consecutively,—a miracle of chance which I incline to think would be impossible even in the case of a single verse.”
Hic ego non mirer esse quemquam, qui sibi persuadeat corpora quaedam solida atque individua vi et gravitate ferri mundumque effici ornatissimum et pulcherrimum ex eorum corporum concursione fortuita? Hoc qui existimat fieri potuisse, non intellego, cur non idem putet, si innumerabiles unius et viginti formae litterarum vel aureae vel qualeslibet aliquo coiciantur, posse ex is in terram excussis annales Enni, ut deinceps legi possint, effici; quod nescio an ne in uno quidem versu possit tantum valere fortuna.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Book II, section 37
De Natura Deorum – On the Nature of the Gods (45 BC)

Beauty, Understanding, Thinking, Universe

“In a world where numbers inexorably take over as our means of identification, like flowing lava threatening to suffocate and fosilize all breathing life in its path; in a world where "normality" is defined as keeping your cool; where sex is so available that the only way to preserve any inner center is to have intercourse without committing yourself — in such a schizoid world, which young people experience more directly since they have not had time to build up the defenses which dull the senses of their elders, it is not surprising that will and love have become increasingly problematic and even, as some people believe, impossible of achievement.”

Rollo May book Love and Will

Source: Love and Will (1969), Ch. 1 : Introduction : Our Schizoid World, p. 32

Love, Life, People, World

“Read one page of Stephen Hawking about the event horizon, about the possibility that we will soon know, not where the universe originated, but where it is tended, and the event horizon to which we may all be headed. There is more to inspire awe in one page of Stephen Hawking, than in any of the fantasies of Tertullian, imagining that he could go to the window of heaven, when he was promoted there, and look down, for his consolation, on the torments of the damned. There is much more to be awe-inspired by, in a page of Hawking, than in any number of burning bushes, or other such myths.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2000s, 2000, "Hostility Of America to Religion" (2000)

Imagination, Universe, Reading

“To the modern Western mind, it is not conceivable that men would fight and die in such numbers over mere differences of religion; there have to be some other “genuine” reasons underneath the religious veil. We are prepared to allow religiously defined conflicts to accredited eccentrics like the Northern Irish, but to admit that an entire civilization can have religion as its primary loyalty is too much. Even to suggest such a thing is regarded as offensive by liberal opinion, always ready to take protective umbrage on behalf of those whom it regards as its wards. This is reflected in the present inability, political, journalistic, and scholarly alike, to recognize the importance of the factor of religion in the current affairs of the Muslim world and in the consequent recourse to the language of left-wing and right-wing, progressive and conservative, and the rest of the Western terminology, the use of which in explaining Muslim political phenomena is about as accurate and as enlightening as an account of a cricket match by a baseball correspondent.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, The Return of Islam (1976)

Men, World, Religion, Fight

“Net neutrality would require that every search engine produce an equal number of results that satisfy every disagreement about [every] issue… Just think of it as Fairness Doctrine for the Internet. I'm not making this up.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

On net neutrality, The Rush Limbaugh Show, March 16, 2010 http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_031610/content/01125111.guest.html

Search, Thinking

“The actual effect of Rawls’s theory is to undercut theoretically any straightforward appeal to egalitarianism. Egalitarianism has the advantage that gross failure to comply with its basic principles is not difficult to monitor, There are, to be sure, well-known and unsettled issues about comparability of resources and about whether resources are really the proper objects for egalitarians to be concerned with, but there can be little doubt that if person A in a fully monetarized society has ten thousand times the monetary resources of person B, then under normal circumstances the two are not for most politically relevant purposes “equal.” Rawls’s theory effectively shifts discussion away from the utilitarian discussion of the consequences of a certain distribution of resources, and also away from an evaluation of distributions from the point of view of strict equality; instead, he focuses attention on a complex counterfactual judgment. The question is not “Does A have grossly more than B?”—a judgment to which within limits it might not be impossible to get a straightforward answer—but rather the virtually unanswerable “Would B have even less if A had less?” One cannot even begin to think about assessing any such claim without making an enormous number of assumptions about scarcity of various resources, the form the particular economy in question had, the preferences, and in particular the incentive structure, of the people who lived in it and unless one had a rather robust and detailed economic theory of a kind that few people will believe any economist today has. In a situation of uncertainty like this, the actual political onus probandi in fact tacitly shifts to the have-nots; the “haves” lack an obvious systematic motivation to argue for redistribution of the excess wealth they own, or indeed to find arguments to that conclusion plausible. They don't in the same way need to prove anything; they, ex hypothesi, “have” the resources in question: “Beati possidentes.””

Raymond Geuss (1946) British philosopher

“Liberalism and its Discontents,” pp. 22-23.
Outside Ethics (2005)

People, Way, Motivation, Failure

“Whenever I put the headsets on now," he'd continued, "I really do understand what I find there. When those kids sing about 'She loves you,' yeah, well, you know, she does, she's any number of people, all over the world, back through time, different colors, shapes, sizes, distances from death, but she loves. And the 'you' is everybody. And herself.”

Thomas Pynchon book The Crying of Lot 49

The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)

Love, Death, People, World

“… at this point the Catholic church and the various other churches, and there are a number of them, that take the stand of no divorce are definitely not in terms of scripture, at this point they are trying to be holier than God, which I believe is a fearful offense. Now their point is that for these grounds separation is permissible, but this is not in terms of scripture, because scripture clearly permits remarriage.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, The Law of Divorce (n.d.)

God, Fear

“Thou shalt bid thy fair hands rove
O'er thy soft lute's silver slumbers,
Waking sounds; of song and love
In their sweet Italian numbers.”

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

(29th March 1823) Song - I'll meet thee at the midnight hour
The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Love

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Shams Siraj Afif quoted in Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 5

Age

“You meaner beauties of the night,
That poorly satisfy our eyes
More by your number than your light;
You common people of the skies,
What are you when the sun shall rise?”

Henry Wotton (1568–1639) English ambassador

On His Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia, stanza 1 (1624). In some versions "moon" replaces "sun". This was printed with music as early as 1624, in Est's "Sixth Set of Books", for example.

People, Beauty, Light, Sun

“There cannot be a greater error than to suppose that the poet does not feel what he writes. What an extraordinary, I might say, impossible view, is this to take of an art more connected with emotion than any of its sister sciences. What — the depths of the heart are to be sounded, its mysteries unveiled, and its beatings numbered by those whose own heart is made by this strange doctrine — a mere machine wound up by the clock-work of rhythm! No; poetry is even more a passion than a power, and nothing is so strongly impressed on composition as the character of the writer. I should almost define poetry to be the necessity of feeling strongly in the first instance, and the as strong necessity of confiding in the second.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Art, Error, Feeling, Confidence

“We are in an emergency situation in the Anthropocene epoch in which the disruption of the Earth system, particularly the climate, is threatening the planet as a place of human habitation. However, our political-economic system, capitalism, is geared primarily to the accumulation of capital, which prevents us from addressing this enormous challenge and accelerates the destruction. answer to the dire ecological problems we face, because when looking at the human effect on the planet there is nothing gradual about it; it is a Great Acceleration and a rift in the Earth system. The problem is rising exponentially, while worsening even faster than that would suggest, because we are in the process of crossing all sorts critical thresholds and facing a bewildering number of tipping points.”

John Bellamy Foster (1953) Sociology professor and Marxist writer

Interview with Left Voice (2017)

Problem

“The term ‘kinship’ correctly suggests the existence not only of contemporary relatives but also of ancestors. Indeed, the recent discussion of dynamic capability was prefigured historically, with a variety of terminology, in a number of sources. Perhaps the most directly relevant example among these earlier contributions is Schumpeter’s discussion of the ‘routinization of innovation’ (Schumpeter 1950). Schumpeter’s argument presented, however, an issue that remains central in contemporary discussion of dynamic capability—the possibly problematic character of the claim that there is such a thing as ‘learned competence’ for doingnew things.”

Sidney G. Winter (1935) American economist

Dynamic Capability as a Source of Change, 2008

Learning

“The fundamental objective of the science of administration is the accomplishment of the work in hand with the least expenditure of man-power and materials. Efficiency is thus axiom number one in the value scale of administration. This brings administration into apparent conflict with certain elements of the value scale of politics, whether we use that term in its scientific or in its popular sense. But both public administration and politics are branches of political science, so that we are in the end compelled to mitigate the pure concept of efficiency in the light of the value scale of politics and the social order. There are, for example, highly inefficient arrangements like citizen boards and small local governments which may be necessary in a democracy as educational devices. It has been argued also that the spoils system, which destroys efficiency in administration, is needed to maintain the political party, that the political party is needed to maintain the structure of government, and that without the structure of government, administration itself will disappear. While this chain of causation has been disproved under certain conditions, it none the less illustrates the point that the principles of politics may seriously affect efficiency. Similarly in private business it is often true that the necessity for immediate profits growing from the system of private ownership may seriously interfere with the achievement of efficiency in practice.”

Luther H. Gulick (1892–1993) American academic

Source: "Science, values and public administration," 1937, p. 192-193

Education, Democracy, Business, Sense

“We live so much of our lives in chaos. Human history can be viewed as an endless search for greater order: everything from language to religion to law to science tries to impose a framework on chaotic existence. The existentialists, sometimes wrongly described as disbelieving in an underlying order, saw the risks and the foolishness of the obsession with creating one. Hitler showed the risk, as did any number of populist tyrants before him. I teach my students that law, too, shows the risk, when we try to regulate a phenomenon—human behavior—that we do not even understand. I am not arguing against law…but against the Panglossian assumption that we can ever do law particularly well. The darkness in which we live dooms us to do it badly.”

Stephen L. Carter book The Emperor of Ocean Park

Source: The Emperor of Ocean Park (2002), Ch. 18, More News by Phone, III

Religion, Law, Behavior, History

“The Armenians had a fair warning of what would happen to them in case they joined our enemies. Three months ago I sent for the Armenian Patriarch and I told him that if the Armenians attempted to start a revolution or to assist the Russians, I would be unable to prevent mischief from happening to them. My warning produced no effect and the Armenians started a revolution and helped the Russians. You know what happened at Van. They obtained control of the city, used bombs against government buildings, and killed a large number of Moslems. We knew that they were planning uprisings in other places. You must understand that we are now fighting for our lives at the Dardanelles and that we are sacrificing thousands of men. While we are engaged in such a struggle as this, we cannot permit people in our own country to attack us in the back. We have got to prevent this no matter what means we have to resort to. It is absolutely true that I am not opposed to the Armenians as a people. I have the greatest admiration for their intelligence and industry, and I should like nothing better than to see them become a real part of our nation. But if they ally themselves with our enemies, as they did in the Van district, they will have to be destroyed. I have taken pains to see that no injustice is done; only recently I gave orders to have three Armenians who had been deported returned to their homes, when I found that they were innocent. Russia, France, Great Britain, and America are doing the Armenians no kindness by sympathizing with and encouraging them. I know what such encouragement means to a people who are inclined to revolution. When our Union and Progress Party attacked Abdul Hamid, we received all our moral encouragement from the outside world. This encouragement was of great help to us and had much to do with our success. It might similarly now help the Armenians and their revolutionary programme. I am sure that if these outside countries did not encourage them, they would give up all their efforts to oppose the present government and become law-abiding citizens. We now have this country in our absolute control and we can easily revenge ourselves on any revolutionists.”

İsmail Enver (1881–1922) Turkish military officer and a leader of the Young Turk revolution

Quoted in "Immigration and Asylum: From 1900 to the Present" - Page 188 - by Matthew J. Gibney, Randall Hansen - Social Science - 2005.

Men, Pain, People, World

“Just buying up modern-day slaves and giving them their freedom hasn't worked. The Islamic slavers simply go and kidnap more of them. The only way to effectively stop armed slaver kidnappers is to train and equip large numbers of armed free men in the border villages. In the modern context, you can "Just Say No" to slavery only with a battle rifle.”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

Modern Slavery Must End! https://survivalblog.com/modern_slavery_must_end/ Survivalblog, 6 May 2013

Men, Way, Freedom, Training

“The realities of globalization can be seen in something as simple as the investigation of a car crash. If a patrolman investigated a fatal accident in the 1970s, the victims and the witnesses were both likely from the local community; and if the officer climbed into the wreckage, to look for some malfunction in the vehicle, he would probably see from the serial numbers that the car was made in the U. S. He could put all that together, and make his case. But Consider the death of Princess Diana. This accident involved an English citizen, with an Egyptian boyfriend, crashed in a French tunnel, driving a German car with a Dutch engine, driven by a Belgian, who was drunk on Scotch whiskey, followed closely by Italian paparazzi, on Japanese motorcycles, and finally treated with Brazilian medicines by an American doctor. In this case, even leaving aside the fame of the victims, a mere neighborhood canvass would hardly have completed the forensic picture, as it might have a generation before.”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

The New Paradigm: Merging Law Enforcement and Intelligence Strategies (2006)

Death, Cars, Communication, Reality

“Women will never succeed at the level or in the numbers they deserve until they get over their genteel reluctance to take abuse in the attack and counterattack of territorial warfare. The recent trend in feminism, notably in sexual harassment policy, has been to overrely on regulation and legislation rather than to promote personal responsibility. Women must not become wards and supplicants of authority figures. Freedom means rejecting dependency.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), p. x

Women, Freedom, Dependency, Personality

“When cowardice becomes a fashion its adherents are without number, and it masquerades as forbearance, reasonableness and whatnot.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Source: First Things, Last Things (1971), Ch. 8 "Thoughts on the Present"

Fashion

“The number of difficulties makes the Christian's conquest the more illustrious. A gracious man should be made up all of fire, overcoming and consuming all opposition, as fire does the stubble. All difficulties should be but whetstones to his fortitude.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

pg.50, 1860 edition
Quotes from secondary sources, Smooth Stones Taken From Ancient Brooks, 1860

“I have already spoken of the effects which the solitary and ascetic life of the early monks produced upon their imagination. The same thing took place amongst the recluses of the convents, but particularly nunneries. “The imaginations of women,” says a celebrated author whom I have already quoted, “as their feelings are more keen and exquisite, are more susceptible and ungovernable than those of men; more obnoxious to the injurious influence of solitude; more easily won upon by the arts of delusion, and inflamed by the contagion of the passions.” Hence we may account for the rapidity with which in orphan houses, cloisters, and other institutions, where numbers of the sex are [122] intimately connected with each other, the sickness, humour, habits, of one, if conspicuous and distinguished, become those of all. I remember to have read in a medical writer of considerable merit, that in a French convent of nuns, of more than common magnitude, one of the sisters was seized with a strange impulse to mew like a cat, in which singular propensity she was shortly imitated by several other sisters, and finally, without a solitary exception, by the whole convent, who all joined at regular periods in a general mew that lasted several hours”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Source: A Treatise of Relics (1543), p. 93

Life, Women, Men, Art

Willa Cather (1873–1947) American writer and novelist

"The Novel Démeublé"
Not Under Forty (1936)

Parting

“The spinor genus is due to Eichler. His early results (1952) established the theory over the rational field and also, in certain special cases, over a number field. Kneser (1956) extended this to number fields in general. At about the same time Watson obtained Eichler's results by elementary methods over the rational field.”

O. Timothy O'Meara (1928–2018) American mathematician

[Review: Integral quadratic forms by G. L. Watson, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc., 67, 1961, 536–538, 10.1090/S0002-9904-1961-10673-3] (quote from p. 537)

Time

“"That 's eight times to-day that you 've kissed me before."
"Then here goes another," says he, "to make sure,
For there 's luck in odd numbers," says Rory O'More.”

Samuel Lover (1797–1868) Irish song-writer, novelist, and painter

Rory O' More, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Kiss, Time

“A number of engineers became so-called disciples of Frederick W. Taylor, even though he had passed on to his reward in 1915. A considerable number of engineers took up the so-called scientific management of Frederick Taylor and further embroidered it and publicized themselves as efficiency engineers and management consultants. Henry L. Gantt had been Taylor's assistant at the Midvale Steel and the Bethlehem Steel Company. Gant, were among the many prominent advocates of Taylor's efficiency system with some variations.
Gant, Barth and others tried to start an organization, ' 'The New Machine." ' 'The New Machine" never got off the ground; all of them wrote articles and delivered papers in the engineering societies and management conferences. But their chief purpose was in creating a national image so they could sell their services to large-scale private enterprise as scientific managers and efficiency engineers who would be able to install the system that could extract more productivity from the American worker.”

Howard Scott (1890–1970) American engineer

Source: History and Purpose of Technocracy, 1965, p. 7

“Laboratory or industrial chemical reactions are carried out with quantities that range from milligrams to tons, so we must be able to relate the relative atomic mass scale to the macroscopic scales used in practice. The link between the two scales is provided by Avogadro’s number”

David W. Oxtoby (1951) President of Pomona college

NA
Principles of Modern Chemistry (7th ed., 2012), Ch. 2 : Chemical Formulas, Equations, and Reaction Yields

“Have you learned the alphabet of heaven and can count three? Do you know the number of God's family? Can you put mysteries into words? Do you presume to fable of the ineffable? Pray, what geographer are you, that speak of heaven's topography? Whose friend are you that speak of God's personality? … Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

God, Secret, Family, History

“The reality of a democracy is that the political party with a majority in Parliament has the mandate to run the country for a selected number of years because of popular choice - that is the nature of good democracy. "The other political parties are left as opposition parties as alternative Government.”

Manasa Tugia Fijian politician

Parliamentary speech, 5 August 2003

Democracy, Nature, Reality, Country

“some evidence is available to indicate that, in India, an increase in the income of the poorer people leads to an increase in the size of the family; and also that this tapers off after a certain critical level of income is attained, and is followed by a reduction in the size of the family at higher levels of living When a sufﬁcient number of people reach the critical income, there would be a gradual decrease in the average birth rate with further increase in income.”

Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1893–1972) Indian scientist

Quote, Professor P.C. Mahalanobis and the Development of Population Statistics in lndia

People, Family, Birth

“There are only four Hindu writers on algebra whose names are particularly noteworthy. These are Āryabhata, whose Āryabhatiyam (c. 510) included problems in series, permutations, and linear and quadratic equations; Brahmagupta, whose Brahmasiddhānta (c. 628) contains a satisfactory rule for solving the quadratic… Mahāvīra, whose Ganita-Sāra Sangraha (c. 850) contains a large number of problems involving series, radicals, and equations; and Bhāskara, whose Bija Ganita (c. 1150)… extends the work through quadratic equations.”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

Source: History of Mathematics (1925) Vol.2, Ch. 6: Algebra

Problem

“I regard the whole of arithmetic as a necessary, or at least natural, consequence of the simplest arithmetic act, that of counting, and counting itself as nothing else than the successive creation of the infinite series of positive integers in which each individual is defined by the one immediately preceding; the simplest act is the passing from an already-formed individual to the consecutive new one to be formed. The chain of these numbers forms in itself an exceedingly useful instrument for the human mind; it presents an inexhaustible wealth of remarkable laws obtained by the introduction of the four fundamental operations of arithmetic.”

Richard Dedekind (1831–1916) German mathematician

p, 125
Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen (1872)

Law, Nature, Success, Wealth

“We now know that linguistic change does not operate in such an across-the-board manner. Some speakers introduce the change into their speech before others; some use it more frequently and consistently than others; and some words are affected before others. A more accurate view is to think of a change gradually spreading through the words of a language – a view that is known as a lexical diffusion. At first just a few people use a change sporadically in a few words (commonly occurring words are influenced very quickly); then a large number of words are affected, with the sound gradually being used more consistently; then the majority of the words take up the change.”

David Crystal (1941) British linguist and writer

Source: How Language Works, 2007, p. 359

People, Thinking, Change

“See, the average number of people that die every year from taking herbs is zero. Every year about three people die from taking vitamins. Every year about 320 people die from taking over-the-counter drugs. About 9,000 people die from food-borne illnesses. And every year, 90,000 to 110,000 people die from taking correctly prescribed drugs. This is not counting the incorrectly prescribed!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Garden of Eden

People, Food

“The circumstance which gives authors an advantage above all these great masters, is this, that they can multiply their originals; or rather, can make copies of their works, to what number they please, which shall be as valuable as the originals themselves.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 166 (10 September 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“Punk:"I should be main eventing this year's WrestleMania. I should be defending my championship in the main event of this year's WM. And I'm noooot. Not because of anything I did or didn't do. I'm not in the main event of WrestleMania because of you…. you screwed me. You did. You did. And in screwing me, you only screwed yourselves. Because if I cannot be in the main event of WrestleMania I see no reason in being at WM. I see no purpose, no point. […]I'm going to beat the Undertaker at WrestleMania. […] You like your streak. You like those numbers 20-0. So bad. Yet you roll your eyes when I mention a 434 day title reign? […] You steal from me, I steal from you. […]I've got a new number for you. 20-1. […]At WrestleMania I beat the streak. Deal with it."”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

March 4, 2013
WWE Raw

“If it's entirely a numbers game – numeric representation – then obviously you'd be talking to half the people in Hong Kong [that] earn less than US$1,800 a month [the median wage in HK]. You would end up with that kind of politics and policies.”

Leung Chun-ying (1954) Hong Kong politician

2014 Source: Hong Kong Leader Reaffirms Unbending Stance on Elections, The New York Times, Keith Bradsher and Chris Buckley, 20 October 2014, October 2014 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/21/world/asia/leung-chun-ying-hong-kong-china-protests.html, Source: Hong Kong 'lucky' China has not stopped protests, says CY Leung, Financial Times, Josh Noble and Julie Zhu, 20 October 2014, October 2014 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3f6f1c74-584b-11e4-a31b-00144feab7de.html, Source: ‘Be more like sheep’: Seven dumb things said by Hong Kong’s leader CY Leung, 18 February 2015, The Daily Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/11420654/Be-more-like-sheep-Seven-dumb-things-said-by-Hong-Kongs-leader-CY-Leung.html,

People, Game

“At the time, I thought of it this way: it was as if bacteria that used to cause deadly plagues, but had long been considered conquered by modem medicine, had reemerged in a form resistant to all the standard antibiotics. Here's what I wrote in the introduction to the first edition: "So far only a limited number of people have actually fallen prey to the newly incurable strains; but even those of us who have so far been lucky would be foolish not to seek new cures, new prophylactic regimens, whatever it takes, lest we tum out to be the next victims."”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Well, we were foolish. And now the plague is upon us.
Introduction
The Return of Depression Economics and The Crisis of 2008 (2009)

People, Way, Time

“If our age is not distinguished for a greatly increased number of happy marriages and a more intelligent approach to the problems of sex, we may surely assert that some forms of misery in the sexual realm are less widespread than they used to be; and of the many people who are unhappy, thousands have some idea of what lies at the root of their unhappiness, and thus far they are better off than their forefathers, who had none, or attributed their distress to sin.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Marriage, Happiness, People, Age

“There has been great difficulty in getting able bodied negroes to fill up the colored regiments in consequence of the rebel cavalry runing off all that class to Georgia and Texas. This is especially the case for a distance of fifteen or twenty miles on each side of the river. I am now however sending two expeditions into Louisiana, one from Natchez to Harrisonburg and one from Goodriche's Landing to Monroe, that I expect will bring back a large number. I have ordered recruiting officers to accompany these expeditions. I am also having a Brigade of Cavalry from Tennessee to Vicksburg which will enable me to move troops to a greater distance into the interior and will facilitate materially the recruiting service.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

1860s, Letter to Abraham Lincoln (1863)

Color

“The people of Sybaris, a city in Calabria, are proverbial on account of their effeminancy; and it is said that they taught their horses to dance to the music of the pipe; for which reason, their enemies the Crotonians, at a time when they were at war with them, brought a great number of pipers into the field, and at the commencement of the battle, they played upon their pipes; the Sybarian horses, hearing the sound of the music, began to dance; and their riders, unable to manage them as they ought to have done, were thrown into confusion, and defeated with prodigious slaughter. This circumstance is mentioned by Aristotle; and, if not strictly true, proves, at least that the teaching of animals to exceed the bounds of action prescribed by nature was not unknown to the ancients.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 242
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Sybaris

War, People, Music, Nature

“All artistic work, like all human activity, involves the joint activity of a number, often a large number of people. Through their cooperation, the art work we eventually see or hear comes to be and continues to be. The work always shows signs of that cooperation.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Art Worlds (1982), p. 1.

People, Art

“He begins to think for himself and meets Nineteenth-century Rationalism Which can explain away religion by any number of methods.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Pilgrim's Regress

Pilgrim’s Regress 19–20
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

Religion, Thinking

“In an essay 10 years ago, I pointed out that it is utterly logical for polygamy rights to follow gay rights. After all, if traditional marriage is defined as the union of (1) two people of (2) opposite gender, and if, as advocates of gay marriage insist, the gender requirement is nothing but prejudice, exclusion and an arbitrary denial of one's autonomous choices in love, then the first requirement — the number restriction (two and only two) — is a similarly arbitrary, discriminatory and indefensible denial of individual choice.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

2000s, 2006, Pandora and Polygamy (2006)

Love, Marriage, People

“From a small community we have risen to a people powerful in numbers and in strength; but with our increase has gone hand in hand the progress of just principles.”

Martin Van Buren (1782–1862) American politician, 8th President of the United States (in office from 1837 to 1841)

Inaugural address (1837)

People, Communication

“Molly Notkin often confides on the phone to Joelle van Dyne about the one tormented love of Notkin's life thus far, an erotically circumscribed G. W. Pabst scholar at New York University tortured by the neurotic conviction that there are only a finite number of erections possible in the world at any one time and that his tumescence means e. g. the detumescence of some perhaps more deserving or tortured Third World sorghum farmer or something, so that whenever he tumifies he'll suffer the same order of guilt that your less eccentrically tortured Ph. D.-type person will suffer at the idea of, say, wearing baby-seal fur. Molly still takes the high-speed rail down to visit him every couple of weeks, to be there for him in case by some selfish mischance he happens to harden, prompting black waves of self-disgust and an extreme neediness for understanding and nonjudgmental love.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Infinite Jest (1996)

Love, Life, World, Confidence

“To make their case more convincing, Armenians hiked the number of deaths. They also altered their story line from having died as belligerents against the Turks to having perished like unarmed helpless lambs.”

Bruce Fein (1947) American lawyer

Lies, Damn Lies, and Armenian Deaths (2009)

Death

“Secularization theory is a term that was used in the fifties and sixties by a number of social scientists and historians. Basically, it had a very simple proposition. It could be stated in one sentence. Modernity inevitably produces a decline of religion.”

Peter L. Berger (1929–2017) Austrian-born American sociologist

Peter L. Berger, Gregor Thuswaldner. " A Conversation with Peter L. Berger "How My Views Have Changed http://thecresset.org/2014/Lent/Thuswaldner_L14.html," at thecresset.org, Lent 2014, Vol LXXVII, No. 3, pp 16-21

Religion

“Circumstantial evidence, Markham, is the utt‘rest tommyrot imag‘nable. Its theory is not unlike that of our present-day democracy. The democratic theory is that if you accumulate enough ignorance at the polls, you produce intelligence; and the theory of circumst‘ntial evidence is that if you accumulate a sufficient number of weak links, you produce a strong chain.”

S. S. Van Dine book The Benson Murder Case

Source: The Benson Murder Case (1926), Ch. 22

Democracy, Intelligence, Strong

“There were entertaining, impassioned, or witty lectures on Goethe, say, in which he would be depicted descending from a post chaise wearing a blue frock-coat to seduce some Strassburg or Wetzlar girl; or on Arabic culture; in all of them a number of fashionable phrases were shaken up like dice in a cup and everyone was delighted if he dimly recognized one or two catchwords.”

Hermann Hesse book The Glass Bead Game

The Glass Bead Game (1943)

Girl, Fashion

“Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A Psalm of Life

St. 1.
A Psalm of Life (1839)

Life, Dreams, Soul, Dead

“The Society of Friends is not a yearly meeting, not a Five Years Meeting, not an occasional conference, not a central office somewhere, not a series of committee meetings; it is primarily and essentially a widely scattered number of local meetings, little cells, where the actual vitality and power and future potency of Quakerism is being settled and determined. We work in vain unless we keep our minds focused on these local units.”

Rufus M. Jones (1863–1948) American writer

What Will Get Us Ready (1944)

Future

“The integers, the rationals, and the irrationals, taken together, make up the continuum of real numbers. It's called a continuum because the numbers are packed together along the real number line with no empty spaces between them.”

Brian Hayes (scientist) (1900) American scientist, columnist and author

Source: Group Theory in the Bedroom (2008), Chapter 11, Identity Crisis, p. 206 (See also: George Cantor)

“We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash.”

Steve Jobs Thoughts on Flash

As he has written in his "Thoughts on Flash" open letter (20 April 2010) http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ 2010s

“When something dies, it is usually disassembled, digested, and decomposed. Only rarely is anything ever fossilized, and even fewer things are very well-preserved. Because the conditions required for that process are so particular, the fossil record can only represent a tiny fraction of everything that has ever lived. Darwin provided many environmental dynamics explaining why no single quarry could ever provide a continuous record of biological events, and why it would be impossible to find all the fossilized ancestors of every lineage. But despite this, he predicted that future generations, -having the benefit of better understanding- would discover a substantial number of fossil species which he called “intermediate” or “transitional” between what we see alive today and their taxonomic ancestors at successive levels in paleontological history. In fact, in the century-and-a-half since then, we’ve found millions of evolutionary intermediaries in the fossil record, much more than Darwin said he could reasonably hope for. There are three different types of transitional forms and we have ample examples of each. But creationists still insist that we’ve never found a single one, because what they usually ask us to present are impossible parodies which evolution would neither produce nor permit.”

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

"9th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfoje7jVJpU, Youtube (May 8, 2008) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Hope, History, Understanding, Success

“With government driving up the cost of labor, it's driving down the number of jobs. You're going to see automation not just in airports and grocery stores, but in restaurants. This is the problem with Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton, and progressives who push very hard to raise the minimum wage. Does it really help if Sally makes $3 more an hour if Suzie has no job? If you're making labor more expensive, and automation less expensive — this is not rocket science. They're always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there's never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case.”

Andrew Puzder (1950) American businessman

Fast-food CEO says he's investing in machines because the government is making it difficult to afford employees http://www.businessinsider.com/carls-jr-wants-open-automated-location-2016-3 (March 16, 2016)

Age, Sex, Problem, Science

“If in any process there are a number of contradictions, one of them must be the principal contradiction playing the leading and decisive role, while the rest occupy a secondary and subordinate position. Therefore, in studying any complex process in which there are two or more contradictions, we must devote every effort to finding its principal contradiction. Once this principal contradiction is grasped, all problems can be readily solved.”

Mao Zedong book On Contradiction

On Contradiction (1937)

Problem, Decision, Effort, Study

“Gravitation is not only similar to inertia in its generality, it is also measured by the same number… the mass. The inertial mass is what Newton calls the "quantity of matter": it is a measure for the resistance offered by a body to a force trying to alter its state of motion. It might be called the "passive mass." The gravitational mass, on the other hand, is a measure of the force exerted by the body in attracting other bodies. We might call it the "active" mass. The equality of active and passive, or gravitational and inertial, mass was in Newton's system a most remarkable accidental co-incidence, something like a miracle. Newton himself decidedly felt it as such, and made experiments to verify it, by swinging a pendulum with a hollow bob which could be filled with different materials. The force acting on the pendulum is proportional to its gravitational mass, the inertia to its inertial mass: the period of its swing thus depends on the ratio between these two masses. The fact that the period is always the same therefore proves that the gravitational and inertial masses are equal.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->

Dependency

“Parliaments that do not genuinely represent, but act as if they had a blank check for x number of years lose their legitimacy.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

“Much more than periodic voting” – UN Independent Expert calls for more direct democracy worldwide http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20482&LangID=E. 2016, “Much more than periodic voting” – UN Independent Expert calls for more direct democracy worldwide

“Today, universities and their researchers are ranked mainly based on the amount of funding they receive, the number of papers they publish and their intellectual caliber. … Along with this, we should take into consideration how much we have been able to use their research to serve the lowest and most vulnerable strata of society.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

From Amritanandamayi's Address at the United Nations Academic Impact Conference on Technology for Sustainable Development (2015)

Universe

“As for the number of people reluctant to me, I guess I fall in the national average. Maybe it's about talking openly what I think? For example, in 1980 an interview with several professors – including myself – was ran by the newspaper Dziennik Polski, very much against the then authorities. We've all been in favor of far-reaching changes, but each of us saw these changes differently. I am a nonbeliever. And there comes the „Solidarity” with holy masses and sprinkling corpses with holy water. I thought that policy of the University, beneficial to the „Solidarity”, was not always beneficial for the University itself. From time to time, friendly people try to affront me, even though I did not belong neither to the youth communist organization neither to the party, neither had I contacts with the communist Security Service. And generally I didn't have herd instincts.”

Włodzimierz Ptak (1928–2019) immunologist

Kobos, Andrzej (2009). Po drogach uczonych (in Polish). 4. Kraków: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, pp. 383–398. ISBN 978-83-7676-021-6.

People, Youth, Thinking, Universe

“Gun ownership is a problem, not because it represents any physical danger to [the IRS]. Americans have proven dismayingly forbearing in that regard. But people who own guns often look at the world differently than those who don't. That's the real danger to social and political parasites. Roughly 25% of Americans own guns. The number increases each time there's widespread discussion of more gun control - call it what it is: 'victim disarmament'. If the figure ever rises to 50%, I suspect the widespread discussion will be about repealing the 16th Amendment.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Vermont Fudge," http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2009/tle511-20090322-04.html originally published in The Sierra Times 18 March 2002.

People, World, Problem, Time

“The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers.”

Bill Gates book The Road Ahead

Source: The Road Ahead (1995), p. 265 in hardcover edition, corrected in paperback

Way, Mathematics

“We have tried over the past several years, in a variety of ways and through a number of channels, to convey to you and your colleagues our desire to achieve a peaceful settlement. For whatever reasons, these efforts have not achieved any results....”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Letter to Ho Chi Minh (1967)

Peace, Way, Effort, Past

“The right to free expression and assembly has been cast aside, and the number of ordinary people incarcerated is growing by the day. The Turkish government led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, known as the A. K. P., has turned its back on universal democratic values and pushed the country to the brink of political and economic crisis.”

Selahattin Demirtaş (1973) Turkish Kurdish politician

I Am Running for President in Turkey. From My Prison Cell. (2018)

People, Justice, Universe, Country

“You will find that the number of Israeli casualties among civilians exceeds the number of Palestinian casualties among (pause) innocent civilians who were noncombatants and not involved in any way in terrorism, and were killed by the Israelis, as distinguished from being killed by Palestinian (pause) terrorists as collaborators! That is simply a fact-I know of no source that disputes that!”

Alan M. Dershowitz (1938) American lawyer, author

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZzIJDiedrQ

Way

“But I believe this: by and large, the United States ought to be able to choose for its President anybody that it wants, regardless of the number of terms he has served. That is what I believe. Now, some people have said "You let him get enough power and this will lead toward a one-party government." That, I don't believe. I have got the utmost faith in the long-term common sense of the American people. Therefore, I don't think there should be any inhibitions other than those that were in the 35-year age limit and so on. I think that was enough, myself.”

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

Answer to question seeking his views on limiting U.S. presidents to two terms, news conference, Washington, D.C. (October 5, 1956), in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1956, p. 862.
1950s

People, Age, Faith, Thinking

“The basic problem of social organization is how to co-ordinate the economic activities of large numbers of people.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Source: (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, p. 12

People, Problem

“There have been a number of instances in the Bible where the Spirit of God has acted in a birth. For instance, in the story of Abraham and Sarah, Sarah was too old and Abraham was also old. But the Bible says God quickened the womb of Sarah so that she could bear a son. In the same way, the Holy Spirit worked with Mary. It was not done in the sense of producing a child from the union of God with man, but in the sense of God participating in the event. Jesus was born of a father and a mother, just as anyone else is, but in his case the Spirit of God was working also.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Master Speaks (1967) Part 7: Bible Interpretation http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Books/sm-mast/MSTRSP-7.htm, (transcriptions of Q&A sessions in March-April 1965)

God, Way, Birth, Sense

“Autism is a neuro-developmental disorder affecting so many around the world. Autism is not mental illness, these children and adults think differently. Albert Einstein they say was autistic. How many in the audience know that there are 38,000 autistic people in Sri Lanka? So we as entertainers, urge you all to ‘speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves.’ Lets spread awareness of autism, particularly when numbers of autistic children are rising and we urge our government to also provide public services – who knows we may even produce Albert Einsteins if we provide education, health, specialist speech therapy for autistic children in our lovely island….”

Desmond de Silva Sri Lankan singer

Clickpress release http://www.clickpress.com/releases/Detailed/3033005cp.shtml (9 August 2009).

Love, Children, People, Health

“When we have a majority we will do it. I think the days of the Lords are quite genuinely numbered.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

On Independent Radio News (12 November 1976), quoted in The Times (13 November 1976), p. 2
1970s

Thinking

“The first Part. Of the Definitions of the Dismes. The first Definition. Disme is a kind of Arithmeticke, invented by the tenth progression, consisting in Characters of Cyphers; whereby a certaine number is described, and by which also all accounts which happen in humane affayres, are dispatched by whole numbers, without fractions or broken numbers.”

Simon Stevin (1548–1620) Flemish scientist, mathematician and military engineer

Disme: the Art of Tenths, Or, Decimall Arithmetike (1608)

Parting

“So Marigold, my love, you've had too much to drink

And I need not remind you, our discount tickets for this sinking ship

Take-backs and sweet regrets, that's all that we have left

No one is looking out for anyone but number one

One to one, two to dance, we all get our sweet romance

Though sour grapes will turn to wine it's all just vinegar with time”

Tomas Kalnoky (1980) American musician

"The Receiving End of it All" from "Somewhere in the Between" (2007) http://risc.perix.co.uk/lyrics/sm/sitb/09/

Love, Drink, Wine, Time

“Thus it must be admitted that in the economic sphere, from the start, in all branches men are not of equal value or of equal importance. And once this is admitted it is madness to say: in the economic sphere there are undoubtedly differences in value, but that is not true in the political sphere. It is absurd to build up economic life on the conceptions of achievement, of the value of personality, and therefore in practice the authority of personality, but in the political sphere to deny the authority of personality and to thrust into this place the law of the greater number — democracy.”

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

Speech to the Industry Club (21 January 1932) as quoted in The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922 – August 1939 (1994) by Norman Hepburn Baynes, Oxford University Press, p.787
1930s

Life, Men, Law, Democracy

“Competition has been curtailed by larger corporations; it has been sabotaged by groups of smaller entrepreneurs acting collectively. Both groups have made clear the locus of liberalism's rhetoric of small business and family farm.The character and ideology of the small entrepreneur and the facts of the market are selling the idea of competition short. These liberal heroes, the small businessmen and the farmer, do not want to develop their characters by free and open competition; they do not believe in competition, and they have been doing their best to get away from it.When the small businessmen are asked whether they think free competition is…a good thing, they answer…, 'Yes, of course—what do you mean?' … Finally: 'How about here in this town in furniture?'—or groceries, or whatever the man's line is. Their answers are of two sorts: 'Yes, if it's fair competition,' which turns out to mean: 'if it doesn't make me compete.' … The small businessman, as well as the farmer, wants to become big, not directly by eating up others like himself in competition, but by the indirect ways means practiced by his own particular heroes—those already big. In the dream life of the small entrepreneur, the sure fix is replacing the open market.But if small men wish to close their ranks, why do they continue to talk…about free competition? The answer is that the political function of free competition is what really matters now…[f]or, if there is free competition and a constant coming and going of enterprises, the one who remains established is 'the better man' and 'deserves to be where he is.' But if instead of such competition, there is a rigid line between successful entrepreneurs and the employee community, the man on top may be 'coasting on what his father did,' and not really be worthy of his hard-won position. Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best man winning than the man who inherited his father's store or farm. …… In Congress small-business committees clamored for legislation to save the weak backbone of the national economy. Their legislative efforts have been directed against their more efficient competitors. First they tried to kill off the low-priced chain stores by taxation; then they tried to eliminate the alleged buying advantages of mass distributor; finally they tried to freeze the profits of all distributors in order to protect their own profits from those who could and were selling goods cheaper to the consumer.The independent retailer…has been pushing to maintain a given margin under the guise of 'fair competition' and 'fair-trade' laws. He now regularly demands that the number of outlets controlled by chain stores be drastically limited and that production be divorced from distribution. This would, of course, kill the low prices charged consumers by the A&P;, which makes very small retail profits, selling almost at cost, and whose real profits come from the manufacturing and packaging.…Under the threat of 'ruinous competition,' laws are on the books of many states and cities legalizing the ruin of competition.”

C. Wright Mills book White Collar: The American Middle Classes

Section One: The Competitive Way of Life.
White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951)

Life, Men, Books, Family

“The present serves to enclose you the letter of the father in favor of his son from Mr. Charles Boarman, [Sr. ], addressed to me, and a letter from the son himself stating his wish to procure the place of midshipman in the navy. The son is not personally known to me. The father has been for a great number of years a preceptor of youth in Maryland and in this district and has sustained the best possible character. He would not, I persuade myself from his character, recommend even a son u[pon? ] the terms that he has, unless he Places Much had merit to authorize such recommendation. The son, you will observe by his Sought letter which is somewhat singular, has promised much should he be honored with the situation which he solicits at your hand.”

Charles Boarman (1795–1879) US Navy Rear Admiral

Robert Brent writing to then United States Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton endorsing Charles Boarman's application (August 1811)
A Gentlemanly and Honorable Profession: The Creation of the U.S. Naval Officer Corps, 1794-1815 (1991)

Youth, Personality

“We aim at a target—an end—marked by a point. The arrows go to right and left, high or low, according to the address of the shooters. In the mean time, after a considerable number of trials, the butt, which has not yet been touched, perhaps, a single time, becomes so well pointed out by the marks around it, that they would aid at once in rediscovering it, if it should chance to be lost sight of. Nay, more than this; even aims the most unfortunate may be made to conduce to this end; commencing with those marks which are farthest away, if they be sufficiently numerous, one may learn from them the real position of the point they surround.”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

Preface of M. Quetelet
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

Learning, Chance, Time

“The idea of the unconscious mental processes was, in many of its aspects, conceivable around 1700, topical around 1800, and became effective around 1900, thanks to the imaginative efforts of a large number of individuals of varied interests in many lands.”

Lancelot Law Whyte book The Unconscious Before Freud

The Unconscious Before Freud (1967)

Imagination, Idea, Effort

“I wear a pedometer, a little device that counts every step. It works as a goad, because you walk additional distances to pile up the numbers. The average person walks 2,000 to 3,000 steps a day. I walk 10,000 steps a day. I have lost a lot of weight as a result.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

"A Film Critic's Windy City Home' in The New York Times (13 February 2005) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/magazine/13DOMAINS.html?ex=1266987600&en=ee5831db9aa9dafb&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt

Personality

“How about Prozac? … The U. S. number one cause of [unnatural] death is suicide now because they give people suicide mass murder pills. … I want to get people off pills that the insert says will make you commit suicide and kill people! I want to blame the real culprit—suicide pills! Mass murder pills!”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

Alex Jones on Piers Morgan Tonight, CNN, 7 January 2013.
2013

Death, People, Suicide

“[The Kellog Pact is] a mighty moral bulwark against war - and we must never underestimate the effectiveness of moral bulwarks with no bayonet nor bludgeon behind them. The entry of the United States into the Permanent Court of International Justice, the growing confidence in the court, and the increase in the number of nations who have signed the Optional Clause mark definite and, I believe, irrevocable steps in the displacement of military power by judicial process in the settlement of international disputes. Public servants like us will fail in our duty if we do not diminish military power in proportion to the increase of political security…I dare affirm that, in the naval programme of the leading naval powers, there is a margin between real security needs and actual or projected strength, and the world expects this Conference to eliminate that margin.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech as chairman of the London Naval Conference (January 1930), quoted in David Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald (Metro, 1997), p. 510
1930s

War, World, Justice, Confidence

“Two greyhounds were called a brace, three a leash, but two spaniels or harriers were called a couple. We have also a mute of hounds for a number, a kenel of raches, a litter of whelps, and a cowardice of curs.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 22
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Collective nouns

“Indigenous converts added to the numerical strength of foreign Muslims. How quickly their numbers swelled may be inferred from the fact that when, early in the fourteenth century, Malik Kafur marched into Maabar (Malabar), about 20,000 Musalmans who had settled in South India for long and were fighting on the side of the Hindus, deserted to the imperialists and were spared.”

K. S. Lal book Indian Muslims: Who Are They

Indian Muslims: Who Are They (1990)

Fight

“Of the many references to Newton in 18th-century electrical writings only a small number were to the Principia, the greater part by far were to the Opticks. This was true not alone of the electrical writings but also in other fields of experimental enquiry…. [The Opticks] would allow the reader to roam, with great Newton as his guide, through the major unresolved problems of science and even the relation of the whole world of nature to Him who had created it…. in the Opticks Newton did not adopt the motto… —Hypotheses non fingo; I frame no hypotheses—but, so to speak, let himself go, allowing his imagination full reign and by far exceeding the bounds of experimental evidence.”

I. Bernard Cohen (1914–2003) American historian of science

I. Bernard Cohen, Preface to Opticks by Sir Isaac Newton (1952)

World, Imagination, Nature, Problem

“Islamic doctrine goes further than the other great religions, for it proclaims the presence of the soul, perhaps minute but nevertheless existing in an embryonic state, in all existence — in matter, in animals, trees, and space itself. Every individual, every molecule, every atom has its own spiritual relationship with the All-Powerful Soul of God. But men and women, being more highly developed, are immensely more advanced than the infinite number of other beings known to us.”

Aga Khan III (1877–1957) 48th Imam of the Nizari Ismaili community

Memoirs of Aga Khan: World Enough & Time (1954)

Women, Men, God, Religion

“Plato, despair!
We prove by norms
How numbers bear
Empiric forms,

How random wrong
Will average right
If time be long
And error slight,

But in our hearts
Hyperbole
Curves and departs
To infinity.

Error is boundless.
Nor hope nor doubt,
Though both be groundless,
Will average out.”

J. V. Cunningham (1911–1985) American writer

“Meditation on Statistical Method”, 1960
The Exclusions of a Rhyme: Poems and Epigrams, Ohio University Press, 1960.
Other poetry

Hope, Error, Time, Heart

“Industrial age companies created sharp distinctions between two groups of employees. The intellectual elite—managers and engineers—used their analytical skills to design products and processes, select and manage customers, and supervise day-to-day operations. The second group was composed of the people who actually produced the products and delivered the services. This direct labor work force was a principal factor of production for industrial age companies, but used only their physical capabilities, not their minds. They performed tasks and processes under direct supervision of white-collar engineers and managers. At the end of the twentieth century, automation and productivity have reduced the percentage of people in the organization who perform traditional work functions, while competitive demands have increased the number of people performing analytic functions: engineering, marketing, management, and administration. Even individuals still involved in direct production and service delivery are valued for their suggestions on how to improve quality, reduce costs, and decrease cycle times…
Now all employees must contribute value by what they know and by the information they can provide. Investing in, managing, and exploiting the knowledge of every employee have become critical to the success of information age companies”

Robert S. Kaplan (1940) American accounting academic

Source: The Balanced Scorecard, 1996, p. 5-6

People, Age, Knowledge, Time

“A certain ounce of arrogance is not essential in carrying forward an idea. In talking about the device with others, surprising now number of people who either were quite negative and had reasons to suggest it would not function as described or claimed that it would be of little interest and no better than some already existing device.”

Willard Boyle (1924–2011) Canadian physicist and inventor

Willard S. Boyle and George Elwood Smith describing The Inception of Charge-Coupled Devices, edited by [Frederick Su, Technology of our times: people and innovation in optics and optoelectronics, SPIE Press, 1990, 0819404721, 91]

People, Idea

“Whenever a single definite object is made the supreme end of the State, be it the advantage of a class, the safety of the power of the country, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, or the support of any speculative idea, the State becomes for the time inevitably absolute. Liberty alone demands for its realisation the limitation of the public authority, for liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition.”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

"Nationality" (1862)

Happiness, Idea, Support, Time

Quotes about number page 18

Quotes about number
page 18