Quotes about number
page 26

“Crime is a form of "unorganized" class struggle, and the lowest groups in the society have always committed a disproportionate number of crimes.”

Daniel Bell book The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

Source: The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976), Chapter 5, Unstable America, p. 189

“For a time our efforts seem to create, and to adorn, and to perfect, until we forget our origin and destination, substituting self for that divine hand which alone can unite the elements of worlds as they float in gasses, equally from His mysterious laboratory, and scatter them again into thin air when the works of His hand cease to find favour in His view.
Let those who would substitute the voice of the created for that of the Creator, who shout "the people, the people," instead of hymning the praises of their God, who vainly imagine that the masses are sufficient for all things, remember their insignificance and tremble. They are but mites amid millions of other mites, that the goodness of providence has produced for its own wise ends; their boasted countries, with their vaunted climates and productions, have temporary possessions of but small portions of a globe that floats, a point, in space, following the course pointed out by an invisible finger, and which will one day be suddenly struck out of its orbit, as it was originally put there, by the hand that made it. Let that dread Being, then, be never made to act a second part in human affairs, or the rebellious vanity of our race imagine that either numbers, or capacity, or success, or power in arms, is aught more than a short-lived gift of His beneficence, to be resumed when His purposes are accomplished.”

James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) American author

The Crater; or, Vulcan's Peak: A Tale of the Pacific http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11573/11573-h/11573-h.htm (1847), Ch. XXX

God, People, World, Imagination

“The last two thousand years have seen the development of elaborate monotheistic theologies; but in the process their single God has broken into many, or at least has assumed a number of distinct and indeed sometimes actively hostile forms; and their nominal universalism has degenerated into competition for the possession of absolute truth.”

Julian Huxley (1887–1975) English biologist, philosopher, author

The New Divinity (1964)

God, Hostility, Truth, Universe

“ANARCHISM (from the Gr. ἅν, and άρχη, contrary to authority), the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government — harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being. In a society developed on these lines, the voluntary associations which already now begin to cover all the fields of human activity would take a still greater extension so as to substitute themselves for the state in all its functions. They would represent an interwoven network, composed of an infinite variety of groups and federations of all sizes and degrees, local, regional, national and international temporary or more or less permanent — for all possible purposes: production, consumption and exchange, communications, sanitary arrangements, education, mutual protection, defence of the territory, and so on; and, on the other side, for the satisfaction of an ever-increasing number of scientific, artistic, literary and sociable needs. Moreover, such a society would represent nothing immutable. On the contrary — as is seen in organic life at large — harmony would (it is contended) result from an ever-changing adjustment and readjustment of equilibrium between the multitudes of forces and influences, and this adjustment would be the easier to obtain as none of the forces would enjoy a special protection from the state.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Kropotkin's entry on "Anarchism" in the Encyclopædia Britannica (1910) http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/britanniaanarchy.html

Life, Education, Law, Communication

“Faith (belief) consists of more than sixty branches (i. e. parts). And Haya (This term "Haya" covers a large number of concepts which are to be taken together; amongst them are self respect, modesty, bashfulness, and scruple, etc.) is a part of faith.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Bukhari 1:8 http://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/bukhari/bh1/bh1_07.htm Sunni Hadith

Faith, Parting

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

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

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

Men, Study, Time, Dependency

“India cricket team realised its number one status, we won the Twenty20 World Cup, The 50-over World Cup and the Champions Trophy. I am proud to be a part of the core group that laid the foundation.”

Anil Kumble (1970) Former Indian cricketer

India became a sporting nation in the last decade: Kumble

World, Parting

“I know that the Crusaders of Majorca put to death, in a single night, all the prisoners who were huddled in the Catalonian trenches. They took the whole herd down to the shore and shot them, one beast at a time - they were quite leisurely about it. The Lord High Archbishop of Palma arranged to be represented at the ceremony, by a certain number of his priests. You can picture the scene can't you? 'Come on, father, isn't that one ready?' - 'Just a moment captain, I'm handing him over to you at once.' When the job was finished, the Crusaders piled their cattle in two heaps - those who'd been given absolution and those who hadn't- then sprinkled petrol over them. It is quite likely that this purification by fire may then have taken on, by reason of the presence of priests officiating a liturgical significance. Unfortunately I only saw these blackened, shiny creatures two days after that, contorted by the flames, some of them counterfeiting obscene poses in death, which must have been very distressing for the ladies of Palma and for their eminent confessors. A reeking tar oozed out of them…”

Georges Bernanos book Les grands cimetières sous la lune

Source: Les grands cimetieres sous la lune (A Diary of My Times) 1938, p.153-154

Death, Time, Night

“Indeed, if we set our hearts to answer but one very famous question, I am certain that all these questions and doubts will vanish from the horizon, and you will look unto their place to find them gone. This indignant question is a question that the whole world asks, namely, “What is the meaning of my life?” In other words, these numbered years of our life that cost us so heavily and the numerous pains and torments that we suffer for them, to complete them to the fullest, who is it that enjoys them?”

Yehuda Ashlag (1886–1954) Orthodox Jewish Rabbi and Kabbalist

Assorted Themes, On the Meaning of Life

Life, Pain, World, Question

“A woman saying yes to a date with a man is literally insane and ill-advised, and the whole species' existence counts on them doing it. I don't know how they…how do women still go out with guys, when you consider the fact that there is no greater threat to women than men? We're the number one threat to women. Globally and historically, we're the number one cause of injury and mayhem to women. We're the worst thing that ever happens to them. That's true! You know what our number one threat is? Heart disease.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

Oh My God

Women, Men, Disease, Guy

“The creation of Pakistan is not the end of this problem. H. S. Suhrawardy said in 1946 that Pakistan was 'not the last but only the latest demand' of Indian Muslims…. He recommended the creation of a number of 'Muslim-majority pockets' in India. The birth of the Mallapuram district is therefore only a sign of further demands to come. …. The relaxation, on the eve of a mid-term poll, of the service rules enjoining monogamy on Central Government servants whose religion permitted polygamy was effected by the Government of India under the pressure of these organizations.”

Hamid Dalwai (1932–1977) Indian social reformer, thinker and writer

Quoted in B. Madhok: Indianisation, and quoted from Elst, Koenraad (2014). Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi: Rupa.p. 364-6

Religion, Birth, Problem

“I would estimate that the number of programs it breaks in the world will be less than 10. As long as one of those 10 isn't CGI. pm, we're probably okay.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199804161805.LAA18882@wall.org, 1998]
Usenet postings, 1998

World

“The unions might be good for the people who are in the unions but it doesn't do a thing for the people who are unemployed. Because the union keeps down the number of jobs, it doesn't do a thing for them.”

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

Interview with Brian Lamb, In Depth Book TV (2000)

People

“As author in control of the plot I can choose and dictate the fall-out of events from any number of infinite possibilities -- which is a very volatile state of affairs, suggesting the ephemerality of fictional narrative. I can choose to have seven characters and kill six of them off in the first five minutes. I can have seventy characters and squash them under a fallen rock, make them copulate with beasts, sit them on the moon or turn their hair white. This casual condition of authorship is irresponsible.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Watching Water

“$400 million in all cash, anybody know what that looks like? That's a lot of cash. That's a lot of case. And honestly, it's so sad. Think of it, going to Iran, a terrorist state. Now I happen to think they have plenty of money, we've given then $150 billion, so the $400 million is just, you know – I happen to think it goes into their accounts in Switzerland personally. Now, a lot of people say, "no, no, it's used for terror," and they use it for terror because it's the number one terror funder – not even close. But I also think that when you have $400 million in cash, different denominations, do you see the size of this? I guess they did release the pictures after all. They released pictures. … Obama said that he did it because we don't have a working account with Iran. Do you believe that? How long does it take to set up an account? Right? You don't have a working account, you set up an account, right?”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, August, Speech at rally in Wilmington, North Carolina (August 9, 2016)

Money, People, Sadness, Thinking

“There are, of course, a number of epistemological questions, some of which lie more in the province of the philosopher than they do the economist or the social scientist. The one with which I am particularly concerned here is that of the role of knowledge in social systems, both as a product of the past and as a determinant of the future.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1960s, The economics of knowledge and the knowledge of economics, 1966, p. 1

Lie, Question, Knowledge, Past

“We’re going to refinance everyone’s existing student debt, 40 million Americans have student debt. … Under my plan, you will be able to also lower your debt, move into a program to pay it back as a percentage of your income and more than that, my plan for debt-free tuition at public colleges and universities will eventually eliminate any student debt. But for people who have it, I’m going to put a date certain that after a certain number of years, you no longer have to pay anything. The government has to quit making money off of lending money to young people to get their education.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Democratic Presidential Debate in Miami (March 9, 2016)

Money, People, Education, Universe

“What right had I to value her less than the bodies in the square? Suffering is not increased by numbers; one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel. I had judged like a journalist, in terms of quantity, and I had betrayed my own principles; I had become as engage as Pyle, and it seemed to me that no decision would ever be simple again.”

Graham Greene book The Quiet American

Pt. IV, ch. 2, pg 242
The Quiet American (1955)

World, Feeling, Decision, Suffering

“An individual is generally ready to admit that he is ignorant of periods in the past or places on the other side of the globe. But he is much less likely to admit ignorance of his own period and his own place, especially if he is an intellectual. Everyone, of course, knows about his own society. Most of what he knows, however, is what Alfred Schultz has aptly called “recipe knowledge”—just enough to get him through his essential transactions in social life. Intellectuals have a particular variety of “recipe knowledge”; they know just enough to be able to get through their dealings with other intellectuals. There is a “recipe knowledge” for dealing with modernity in intellectual circles; the individual must be able to reproduce a small number of stock phrases and interpretive schemes, to apply them in “analysis” or “criticism” of new things that come up in discussion, and thereby to authenticate his participation in what has been collectively been defined as reality in these circles. Statistically speaking, the scientific validity of this intellectuals’ “recipe knowledge” is roughly random.”

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

Source: The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness (1973), pp. 4-5

Life, Knowledge, Reality, Past

“It seems to me that an understanding of the natural world is crucial for all of us – after all we depend upon it for our food, for the air we breath and, some would say, for our very sanity. Its a relationship that we're stretching to breaking point as we continue to grow in numbers. m44s31-m44s57”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth? (BBC Horizon, 2009)

World, Food, Understanding, Nature

“Euclid … manages to obtain a rigorous proof without ever dealing with infinity, by reducing the problem [of the infinitude of primes] to the study of finite numbers. This is exactly what contemporary mathematical analysis does.”

Lucio Russo (1944) Italian historian and scientist

2.4, "Discrete Mathematics and the Notion of Infinity", p. 45
The Forgotten Revolution: How Science Was Born in 300 BC and Why It Had to Be Reborn (2004)

Mathematics, Problem, Study

“The state of emergency had negative effects on our democracy and economy, because of the state of emergency, the number of foreign investments to our country has been reduced and inflation, interest rates and the current deficit are higher now. The main reason is because Turkey is getting far away from democracy.”

Akif Hamzaçebi

As quoted in Turkey approves controversial security law http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/turkey-approves-controversial-security-law-1364915043 (24 July 2018), Middle East Eye.

Democracy, Country

“We have seven colours — violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red (Roy G. Biv). Our atmosphere has a number of particles and when light falls on them, it gets scattered. With blue colour having less wavelength and more scattering qualities, it scatters and makes the sky blue. While red colour has opposite qualities than blue so traffic lights are of this colour.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

His observations on the "strange events in our solar system" and as to why the sky looked blue and red colour was used in traffic lights to signal to vehicles to stop.
When Prof Jayant Narlikar saw the sun rise in the west

Light

“We had a very respectable force, as to numbers; between eight and nine thousand, rank and file, upon the ground; but of these we attempted to select a particular corps to possess ourselves of the enemy's lines, partly by force, and partly by stratagem; but w r e could not make up the necessary number that was thought sufficient to warrant the attempt, which was five thousand, including the Continental and State troops. This body was to consist of men, who had been in actual service before, not less than nine months. However, the men were not to be had, and, if they could have been found, there was more against it than for it. Colonel Laurens was to have opened the passage by landing within the enemy's lines, and getting possession of a redoubt at the head of Easton's beach. If we had failed in the attempt, the whole party must have fallen a sacrifice, for their situation would have been such that there was no possibility of getting off.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (August 1778)

Men

“When we view nature stripped to essentials, so to speak, in this Unification Table, what we see is… a five bit register. …It is in just this form that data is stored and manipulated within a digital computer. …Every particle, then, can be specified by a five-bit word and stored in a five-bit register. It's eerie that even the odd restriction on how many minus signs are allowed is reminiscent of a trick used in computers, to detect errors in transmission. You see, if allowed words must have an odd number of minus signs, any single error in transmission of a word can be detected. …our world might be an intricate program working itself out on a gigantic computing machine.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

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

World, Error, Nature

“A second justification for corporate taxation is that the corporation receives a number of special privileges from society, the most important of which is limited liability of the stockholders. The corporation tax can be viewed as a user fee for this benefit.”

Harvey S. Rosen (1949) American economist

Source: Public Finance - International Edition - Sixth Edition, Chapter 17, The Corporation Tax, p. 399

“Some differences of opinion exist in the Board of Directors, in regard to the discipline that has been pursued in the superintendence of the operations of the road. [It was his understanding that] a respectable number of them entertain views… somewhat at variance with my own.”

Daniel McCallum (1815–1878) Canadian engineer and early organizational theorist

Resignation letter, 1857

Understanding

“Have you ever asked yourselves why Mafias from all over the world are constantly opening restaurants, cafes or shops? Because this type of commercial activity has huge amounts of cash coming in. A Mafioso businessman’s number one priority is not to make money, but to hand out receipts in order to justify money that he already has. In Italy, where tax avoidance is extremely high, we know that when a shopkeeper is reluctant to give you a receipt he or she is almost definitely committing an offence, but almost definitely not a Mafioso. Businesses run by the Mafia will always give you a receipt. And the Russian Mafia, in the years of the wavering ruble, safely stored away its money in London’s luxury homes, fuelling London’s property bubble with dirty money. The fictitious buying and selling of property is one of organised crime’s favourite ways of laundering money. … This is how entire neighbourhoods in London are becoming unoccupied, turning into investments’ empty spaces. Money moves in, and people move out.”

Roberto Saviano (1979) Italian journalist, writer and essayist

Dirty Money in London event (2016)

Money, People, World, Way

“Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities — his preeminence over them simply and solely in the number and in the fantastic and unnecessary character of his wants, physical, moral, aesthetic, and intellectual. Had his whole life not been a quest for the superfluous, he would never have established himself as inexpugnably as he has done in the necessary.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

"Reflex Action and Theism"
1890s, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Life

“I never trusted you one minute
Tellin' people that I'm finished
Number one in twenty countries
But to you I'm still nobody
When I'm around you, life gets harder
But when you're sleepin', E gets smarter”

Eamon (singer) (1984) American singer

Uh, yeah
Lyrics, Love & Pain (2006)

Life, People, Country

“War is possible only if you have a lot of enemies. If all the enemies get together and form one front - if you cut down the number of enemies - there would be no war.”

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

To Leon Goldensohn, February 4, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.

War

“I remember an old proverb. It says that youth thinks itself wise just as drunk men think themselves sober. Youth is not wise! Youth knows nothing about life! Youth knows nothing about anything except for massive cliches which for the most part through the media of pop songs are just foisted on them by middle-age entrepreneurs and exploiters who should know better. When we start thinking that pop music is close to God, then we'll think pop music is aesthetically better than it is. And it's only the aesthetic value of pop music that we're really concerned. I mean the only way we can judge Wagner or Beethoven or any other composer is aesthetically. We don't regard Wagner or Beethoven nor Shakespeare or Milton as great teachers. When we start claiming for Lennon or McCartney or Maharishi or any other of these pop prophets the ability to transport us to a region where God becomes manifest then I see red. We're satisfied with our little long playing record, ten pop numbers or thereabouts a side. This is great art, we've been told this by the great pundits of our age. And in consequence why should we bother to learn? There's nothing more delightful than to be told: "You don't have to learn, my boy. There's nothing in it. Modern art? There's nothing in it." When you're told these things you sit down with a sigh of relief: "Thank God I don't have to learn, I don't have to travel, I don't have to exert myself in the slightest. I am what I am. Youth is youth. Pop is pop. There's no need to progress. There's no need to do anything. Let us sit down, smoke our marijuana (an admirable thing in itself but not the end of anything), let us listen to our records and life has become a single moment. And the single moment is eternity. We're with God. Finis!”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Pop Music

Life, Men, God, Youth

“It need hardly be said that the social philosophy of the time did not remain unaffected by the political evolution and the industrial development. Slowly sinking into men's minds all this while was the conception of a new social nexus, and a new end of social life. It was discovered (or rediscovered) that a society is something more than an aggregate of so many individual units—that it possesses existence distinguishable from those of any of its components. A perfect city became recognized as something more than any number of good citizens—something to be tried by other tests, and weighed in other balances than the individual man. The community must necessarily aim, consciously or not, at its continuance as a community: its life transcends that of any of its members; and the interests of the individual unit must often clash with those of the whole.”

Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield (1859–1947) British Baron and politician

Fabian Essays in Socialism &ndash; The Basis of Socialism &ndash; Historic http://www.econlib.org/library/YPDBooks/Shaw/shwFS1.html#The%20Basis%20of%20Socialism,%20Historic,%20by%20Sidney%20Webb, The New Synthesis, I.1.47. Edited by George Bernard Shaw (1889)

Life, Men, Communication, Time

“We begin with the number one in counting all things. It is impossible that this one can ever be reduced to zero. Because just as something cannot be made of nothing, one cannot be made from zero. Ki is like the number one. Ki is formed from infinitely small particles, smaller than an atom. The universal ki condensed becomes an individual, which further condensed becomes the one point in the lower abdomen, which in turn infinitely condensed never becomes zero, but becomes one with the universe. Thus we understand the essence of ki.”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

11 : The definition of ki
Ki Sayings (2003)

Understanding, Universe

“There are a large number of claims circulating about rampant anti-Semitism on college campuses. When you go actually go through the records, talk to the schools, speak to the deans and so forth, all of these claims turn out to be fraudulent. There’s just no record of this so-called rampant anti-Semitism on college campuses. The most striking example is Columbia University where […] pro-Israel outsiders were disrupting the classrooms of these professors [falsely accued of anti-Semitism], secretly video-taping their lectures and being turned, as the Columbia Report put it, into informers for the pro-Israel lobby. The real story was the harassment of professors who were critical of Israeli policy.”

Norman G. Finkelstein (1953) American political scientist and author

http://www.peuplesmonde.com/article.php3?id_article=381 Interview with Norman Finkelstein]
Other sourced statements

School, Universe, Falseness

“Protocols
Number 20, paras. 26-32
The budgets of income and expenditure will be carried out side by side that they may not be obscured by distance one to another.
…The first irregularity, as we shall point out, consists in their beginning with drawing up a single budget which year after year grows owing to the following cause: this budget is dragged out to half the year, ten they demand a
Graves: Clearly, the “Protocols” author adapts the text of “Dialogues” so carelessly in his hasty attempt to Prove a Jewish conspiracy!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), p.83

Drawing

“Cage took it to work in his way of making compositions then; and he used the idea of 64—the number of the hexagrams —to say that you had 64, for example, sounds; then you could cast, by chance, to find which sound first appeared, cast again, to say which sound came second, cast again, so that it's done by, in that sense, chance operations. Instead of finding out what you think should follow—say a particular sound—what did the I Ching suggest? Well, I took this also for dance.”

Merce Cunningham (1919–2009) American dancer

Merce Cunningham, A Lifetime of Dance, 2000

Way, Idea, Thinking, Sense

“A later generation could have explained the miracle to Sir Frank — though explaining in terms he would not have understood. Though he knew well enough the theory of family traits and likenesses, it would have been impossible then to make him comprehend the intricacy of a chromosome which carries inside it — not merely the stereotypes of parental hair or temperament — but the secret knowledge of how to breathe, how to work the muscles to move the bones, how to grow, how to remember, how to commence the processes of thought … all the infinite number of secret "how to's" that have to be passed on for life to stay above jelly level.
A freak chromosome in Sir Frank ensured he passed on, together with these usual secrets, the secret of his individual consciousness.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

Let's Be Frank (1957)

Life, Secret, Family, Knowledge

“Chroniclers habitually matched numbers to the awesomeness of the event.”

Barbara W. Tuchman book A Distant Mirror

Source: A Distant Mirror (1978), p. 554

“To every trend there is a counter-trend. There are a number of pendulums operating and each creates new business opportunities.”

Patrick Dixon book Futurewise

Futurewise (1998)

Business

“Because these two judges showed to their generation of justices, and the generation after that, as to how to approach cases that came before the highest court. It is because judges with a political or social agenda are so few in number that they are long remembered. I have always considered it significant and beneficial for the development of the law in India that judges-without-an-agenda have been the more numerous.”

Fali Sam Nariman (1929) Indian politician

On the role of judges
Fali Sam Nariman: An Interview

Justice, Law

“About the percentage of Muslims in the total population no precise information can be obtained from the contemporary records. Babur’s statement that most of the inhabitants were Hindus, conveys only a general impression. Two facts are, however, certain. First, it is widely recognised that the majority of Muslims were converts from Hinduism. Secondly, the largest number of conversions took place under the Turks and Afghans who ruled between C. 1300 and 1556.”

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

Indian Muslims: Who Are They (1990)

“Faraday, Maxwell, Larmor and a great number of others tried to explain electromagnetic action on these lines, but all attempts failed, and it began to seem impossible that any properties of ether could explain the observed pattern of events.”

James Jeans (1877–1946) British mathematician and astronomer

Physics and Philosophy (1942)

“Once again, I challenge the Prime Minister to have an open debate with me on why he believes we must stay part of this failing, corrupt EU. The future of our nation is at stake. Mr Cameron, you have my phone number.”

Nigel Farage (1964) British politician and former commodity broker

Quote by Nigel Farage on an article written by himself in the Telegraph, 6 July 2012. The time will never be right for David Cameron to hold a referendum on the EU. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/9378567/The-time-will-never-be-right-for-David-Cameron-to-hold-a-referendum-on-the-EU.html 2012

Future, Parting

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

Richard Dedekind (1831–1916) German mathematician

p, 125
Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen (1872)

Pleasure

“Of the contemporaries of Newton one of the most prominent was John Wallis. …Wallis was a voluminous writer, and not only are his writings erudite, but they show a genius in mathematics… He was one of the first to recognize the significance of the generalization of exponents to include negative and fractional as well as positive and integral numbers. He recognized also the importance of Cavalieri's method of indivisibles, and employed it in the quadrature of such curves as y=xn, y=x1/n, and y=x0 + x1 + x2 +… He failed in his attempts at the approximate quadrature of the circle by means of series because he was not in possession of the general form of the binomial theorem. He reached the result, however, by another method. He also obtained the equivalent of ds = \! dx \sqrt{1+(\frac{dy}{dx})^2} for the length of an element of a curve, thus connecting the problem of rectification with that of quadrature.”

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944) American mathematician

History of Mathematics (1923) Vol.1

Mathematics, Problem

“I had letters, last night, from South Carolina, which indicate a great disgust between the State and the Congress. They think themselves neglected. There is a large number of public vessels now on pay in the harbour, loaded with rice, which want to sail; but the State is so much soured, that they will not grant exclusive privileges to the Continental vessels from the embargo. The express is waiting.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (26 April 1779)

Thinking, Waiting, Night

“Diophantos lived in a period when the Greek mathematicians of great original power had been succeeded by a number of learned commentators, who confined their investigations within the limits already reached, without attempting to further the development of the science. To this general rule there are two most striking exceptions, in different branches of mathematics, Diophantos and Pappos. These two mathematicians, who would have been an ornament to any age, were destined by fate to live and labour at a time when their work could not check the decay of mathematical learning. There is scarcely a passage in any Greek writer where either of the two is so much as mentioned. The neglect of their works by their countrymen and contemporaries can be explained only by the fact that they were not appreciated or understood. The reason why Diophantos was the earliest of the Greek mathematicians to be forgotten is also probably the reason why he was the last to be re-discovered after the Revival of Learning. The oblivion, in fact, into which his writings and methods fell is due to the circumstance that they were not understood. That being so, we are able to understand why there is so much obscurity concerning his personality and the time at which he lived. Indeed, when we consider how little he was understood, and in consequence how little esteemed, we can only congratulate ourselves that so much of his work has survived to the present day.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

Historical Introduction, p.17
Diophantos of Alexandria: A Study in the History of Greek Algebra (1885)

Fate, Age, Mathematics, Understanding

“Random numbers are to a computer what free will is to a human being.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Number of the Beast

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter XXI : —three seconds is a long time—, p. 180

“Although I firmly believe that there is no such thing as a stupid question, there can indeed be stupid answers. 42 is an example. Not only is this a poor ripoff of Doug Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide, but it isn't even a prime number. Everyone surely knows that numerical answers to profound questions are always prime.”

Donald A. Norman (1935) American academic

The correct answer is 37. "The Don" Reveals All: Part 1 http://www.ok-cancel.com/archives/post/2004/10/the_don_reveals_all_part_1.html

Stupidity, Question

“Because of the nature of Moore's law, anything that an extremely clever graphics programmer can do at one point can be replicated by a merely competent programmer some number of years later.”

John D. Carmack (1970) American computer programmer, engineer, and businessman

Quoted in Tom Ham, "Interview: John Carmack" http://archive.gamespy.com/interviews/april01/carmack/ gamespy.com (2004-01)

Law, Nature

“I am now further convinced that there is something to be said in general for studying the history of a lost cause. Perhaps our education would be more humane in result if everyone were required to gain an intimate acquaintance with some coherent ideal that failed in the effort to maintain itself. It need not be a cause which was settled by war; there are causes in the social, political, and ecclesiastical worlds which would serve very well. But it is good for everyone to ally himself at one time with the defeated and to look at the “progress” of history through the eyes of those who were left behind. I cannot think of a better way to counteract the stultifying “Whig” theory of history, with its bland assumption that every cause which has won has deserved to win, a kind of pragmatic debasement of the older providential theory. The study and appreciation of a lost cause have some effect of turning history into philosophy. In sufficient number of cases to make us humble, we discover good points in the cause which time has erased, just as one often learns more from the slain hero of a tragedy than from some brassy Fortinbras who comes in at the end to announce the victory and proclaim the future disposition of affairs. It would be perverse to say that this is so of every historical defeat, but there is enough analogy to make it a sober consideration. Not only Oxford, therefore, but every university ought to be to some extent“the home of lost causes and impossible loyalties.””

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

It ought to preserve the memory of these with a certain discriminating measure of honor, trying to keep alive what was good in them and opposing the pragmatic verdict of the world.
"Up from Liberalism” Modern Age Vol. 3, No. 1 (Winter 1958-1959), p. 25, cols. 1-2.

War, World, Education, Way

“In astronomy two characteristics are common to all data on which the solution of the great problems depends. The first is the extreme minuteness of the quantities to be measured. …New epochs were inaugurated in the beginning of the seventeenth century by the invention of the telescope, and in the last third of the nineteenth by the discovery of photography and spectroscopy…. The other characteristic is that astronomy always requires a very large number of data. …These two characteristics of the data that the astronomer requires to build his science on make two things more necessary in astronomy than in any other science: patience and organised coöperation. …The astronomer—each working at his own task…—is always conscious of belonging to a community, whose members, separated in space and time, nevertheless feel joined by a very real tie, almost of kinship. …whatever his special work may be it is always a link in a chain, which derives its value from the fact that there is another link to the left and one to the right of it. It is the chain that is important, not the separate links.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932)

Feeling, Communication, Problem, Science

“It is far from the truth to say that the rebellion was a communal riot, that the objective of the rebels was the destruction of Hindu religion and that the six months of rebellion were six months of anti-Hindu atrocities… All this, however, does not mean that religious fanaticism was totally absent in the rebellion. The numbers of forced conversions which did take place cannot by any stretch of imagination be explained by any other motive than religious fanaticism… One can and should, however, state explicitly that the main force behind the rebellion was not fanaticism which was simply a by-product…”

E. M. S. Namboodiripad (1909–1998) Indian politician

On the issue of the Malabar rebellion
EMS as a historian

Truth, Religion, Imagination, Communication

“Bear with me, fellow-citizens, while I urge still another consideration. By the Constitution, only three fifths of the slaves were counted in forming the basis of Congressional representation. The Proclamation of Emancipation adds the other two fifths, which at the next census will be more than two millions. If the negro be denied the franchise, and the size of the House of Representatives remain as now, we shall have fifteen additional members of Congress from the States lately in rebellion, without the addition of a single citizen to their population, and we shall have fifteen less in the loyal States. This will not only give six members of Congress to South Carolina, four sevenths of whose people are negroes, but it will place the power of the State, as well as the destiny of 412,000 black men, in the hands of the 20,000 white men, less than the number of voters in our own Congressional district, who, under the restricted suffrage of that undemocratic State, exercise the franchise. Such an unjust and unequal distribution of power would breed perpetual mischief. The evils of the rotten borough system of England would be upon us.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)

Men, People, Exercises, Evil

“Life is more important than art — quantity is only important in that the amount of activity is greater not the number of works.”

Patrick Swift (1927–1983) British artist

Notebooks

Life, Art

“Islam and infidelity (kufr) contradict one another. To establish the one means eradicating the other, the coming together of these contradictories being impossible. Therefore, Allah has commanded his Prophet to wage war (jihad) against the infidels, and be harsh with them. The glory is Islam consists in the humiliation and degradation of infidels and infidelity. He who honours the infidels, insults Islam. Honouring (the infidels) does not mean that they are accorded dignity, and made to sit in high places. It means allowing them to be in our company, to sit with them, and talk to them. They should be kept away like dogs. If there is some worldly purpose or work which depends upon them, and cannot be served without their help, they may be contacted while keeping in mind all the time that they are not worthy of respect. The best course according to Islam is that they should not be contacted even for worldly purposes. Allah has proclaimed in his Holy Word (Quran) that they are his and his Prophet’s enemies. And mixing with these enemies of Allah and his Prophet or showing affection for them, is one of the greatest crimes…
…The abolition of jizyah in Hindustan is a result of friendship which (Hindus) have acquired with the rulers of this land… What right have the rulers to stop exacting jizyah? Allah himself has commanded imposition of jizyah for their (infidels’) humiliation and degradation. What is required is their disgrace, and the prestige and power of Muslims. The slaughter of non-Muslims means gain for Islam… To consult them (the kafirs) and then act according to their advice means honouring the enemies (of Islam), which is strictly forbidden…
The prayer (=goodwill) of these enemies of Islam is false and fruitless. It should never be called for because it can only add to their numbers. If the infidels pray, they will surely seek the intercession of their idols, which is taking things too far… A wise man has said that unless you become a maniac (diwanah) you cannot attain Islam. The state of this mania means going beyond considerations of profit and loss. Whatever one gains in the service of Islam should suffice…”

Ahmad Sirhindi (1564–1624) Indian philosopher

Maktubat-i-Imam Rabbani translated into Urdu by Maulana Muhammad Sa’id Ahmad Naqshbandi, Deoband, 1988, Volume I, p.388 ff.This letter was written to Shaikh Farid alias Nawab Murtaza Khan who was opposed to Akbar’s religious policy, and who supported Jahangir’s accession after taking from the latter a promise that Islam will be upheld in the new reign.
From his letters

Friendship, War, Dogs, Loss

“Langley seemed prepared for anything, even for an indeterminable number of universes interfused — physics stark mad in metaphysics.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Universe, Madness

“Mr. Jacob A. Riis, a few years ago, used some figures which showed that about one-third of the people of New York City were dependent upon charity at some time during the eight years previous to 1890. The report of the United Hebrew Charities for 1901 shows very similar conditions existing among the Jewish population of New York. But even more astonishing than all other facts we have are those furnished by the State Board of Charities... The poverty of New York State is enormous. In actual figures as reduced, the persons in distress in 1897 number… about 19 per cent of the people of New York and in 1899 they number… about 18 per cent. …If the figures are correct as published the persons in New York State in distress in 1897 and in Boston in 1903 would equal proportionately the number of those in poverty in London.”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Poverty (1912), p. 22

People, Time, Dependency, Personality

“Starting with the Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, this flattering of Muslims by praising Islam culminated in Mahatma Gandhi’s sarva-dharma-samabhava - the opiate which lulled the Hindus into a deep slumber such as they had never known vis-à-vis Muslim aggression…. Anyone who questioned the pious proposition that the Quran was as good as the Vedas and the Puranas, ran the risk of being nailed down as an “enemy of communal harmony”….. That part of the “Muslim minority” which had voted for Pakistan but had chosen to stay in India, restarted the old game when India was proclaimed a secular state pledged to freedom of propagation for all religions. It revived its tried and tested trick of masquerading as a “poor and persecuted minority”. It cooked up any number of Pirpur Reports. The wail went up that the “lives, liberties and honour of the Muslims were not safe” in India, in spite of India’s “secular pretensions”. At the same time, street riots were staged on every possible pretext. The “communal situation” started becoming critical once again. …. And once again, the political leadership came out with a make-belief. The big-wigs from all political parties were collected in a “National Integration Council”. It was pointed out by the leftist professors that the major cause of “communal trouble” was the “bad habit” of living in the past on the part of “our people”. Most of the politicians knew no history and no religion for that matter. They all agreed with one voice that Indian history, particularly that of the “medieval Muslim period”, should be re-written. That, they pleaded, was the royal road to “national integration.””

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

People, Religion, History, Game

“The earliest achievement of this (of equality and the restriction on the powers of the constitutionally mandated magistrates), the most ancient opposition in Rome, consisted in the abolition of the life-tenure of the presidency of the community; in other words, in the abolition of the monarchy… Not only in Rome (but all over the Italian peninsula) … we find the rulers for life of an earlier epoch superseded in after times by annual magistrates. In this light the reasons which led to the substitution of the consuls for kings in Rome need no explanation. The organism of the ancient Greek and Italian polity through its own action and by a sort of natural necessity produced the limitation of the life-presidency to a shortened, and for the most part an annual, term… Simple, however, as was the cause of the change, it might be brought about in various ways, resolution (of the community),.. or the rule might voluntarily abdicate; or the people might rise in rebellion against a tyrannical ruler, and expel him. It was in this latter way that the monarchy was terminated in Rome. For however much the history of the expulsion of the last Tarquinius, "the proud", may have been interwoven with anecdotes and spun out into a romance, it is not in its leading outlines to be called in question. Tradition credibly enough indicates as the causes of the revolt, that the king neglected to consult the senate and to complete its numbers; that he pronounced sentences of capital punishment and confiscation without advising with his counsellors(sic); that he accumulated immense stores of grain in his granaries, and exacted from the burgesses military labours and task-work beyond what was due… we are (in light of the ignorance of historical facts around the abolition of the monarchy) fortunately in possession of a clearer light as to the nature of the change which was made in the constitution (after the expulsion of the monarchy). The royal power was by no means abolished, as is shown by the fact that, when a vacancy occurred, a "temporary king" (Interrex) was nominated as before. The one life-king was simply replaced by two [one year] kings, who called themselves generals (praetores), or judges…, or merely colleagues (Consuls) [literally, "Those who leap or dance together"]. The collegiate principle, from which this last - and subsequently most current - name of the annual kings was derived, assumed in their case an altogether peculiar form. The supreme power was not entrusted to the two magistrates conjointly, but each consul possessed and exercised it for himself as fully and wholly as it had been possessed and exercised by the king; and, although a partition of functions doubtless took place from the first - the one consul for instance undertaking the command of the army, and the other the administration of justice - that partition was by no means binding, and each of the colleagues was legally at liberty to interfere at any time in the province of the other.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 1, Book II , Chapter 1. "Change of the Constitution" Translated by W.P. Dickson
The History of Rome - Volume 1

Life, People, Justice, Way

“Recently I was discharged from the German army while in this prison and was informed that I am on the so-called war criminal list number seven. I haven't the faintest idea of what war crime I could have committed. The main thing is that I have a clear conscience.”

Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist (1881–1954) German general during World War II

To Leon Goldensohn (12 June 1946). Quoted in "The Nuremberg Interviews", Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellatel (2004).

War, Idea

“It's said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That's false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken."I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here, to stand here as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.”

Jacob Bronowski The Ascent of Man

Episode 11: "Knowledge or Certainty"
The Ascent of Man (1973)

Men, People, Family, Hope

““…The temple of Nagarkot, which is outside the city, was taken at the very outset… On this occasion many mountaineers became food for the flashing sword. And that golden umbrella, which was erected on the top of the cupola of the temple, they riddled with arrows… And black cows, to the number of 200, to which they pay boundless respect, and actually worship, and present to the temple, which they look upon as an asylum, and let loose there, were killed by the Musulmans. And, while arrows and bullets were continually falling like drops of rain, through their zeal and excessive hatred of idolatry they filled their shoes full of blood and threw it on the doors and walls of the temple… the army of Husain Quli Khan was suffering great hardships. For these reasons he concluded a treaty with them… and having put all things straight he built the cupola of a lofty mosque over the gateway of Rajah Jai Chand.”186”

`Abd al-Qadir Bada'uni book Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh

Jalalu’d-Din Muhammad Akbar Padshah Ghazi (AD 1556-1605) Nagarkot Kangra (Himachal Pradesh)
Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh

Food, Shoe, Mountain, Suffering

“Another incident of intra-Hindu persecution quoted from Kalhana's Rajatarangini, is "an earlier persecution of Buddhists in Kashmir and the wilful destruction of a vihara, again by a Shaivite king". There is an interesting little tailpiece to this incident: "But on this occasion the king repented and built a new monastery for the Buddhist monks". This proves that a substantial number, if not all, of the monks had survived the persecution. But more importantly, it highlights something completely unknown in the long history of Islamic fanaticism: remorse. This Shaivite king knew at heart that intolerance was wrong, and when he had regained his self-control, he made up for his misdeed. Such a thing has never been done by Mohammed, or by Ghaznavi or Aurangzeb. If any proof was neded for the radical difference between the systematic persecutions by the Muslims and the rare abberation into isolated acts of intolerance by Hindus, Prof. Romila Thapar has just given it.”

Harsha of Kashmir

Elst, Koenraad Negationism in India: concealing the record of Islam. 1992

Quotes, History, Heart

““When your people began to press upon us, long, long ago, we moved into remote enclaves. To us, numbers are not strength; wisdom is strength. What profiteth a race to be numerous and stupid, la? Behold how great we are, saith the lemming!” She laughed.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: Gibbon's Decline & Fall (1996), Chapter 18 (p. 392)

Wisdom, People, Stupidity

“A Latino-American undergraduate who is a student of Shakespeare is not "culturally appropriating" anyone’s white-European legacy, but instead seeking transcendence of ideas and a common humanity. Asian-Americans are not “overrepresented” at premier campuses. Their high-profile presence should be praised as a model, not punished as aberrant by number-crunching bureaucrats. African-Americans who excel in physics and engineering are not “acting white” but finding the proper pathways for their natural talents. Being one-half Southeast Asian or three-quarters white is not the touchstone to one’s essence and is irrelevant to one’s character and conduct. No one is impinging on anyone’s culture when blacks dye their hair blond, or when blondes prefer to wear cornrow braids. Campuses desperately need unity czars, not diversity czars. Otherwise, we will end up as 50 separate and rival nations — just like other failed states in history whose diverse tribes and races destroyed themselves in a Hobbesian dog-eat-dog war with one another.”

Victor Davis Hanson (1953) American military historian, essayist, university professor

2010s, Diversity: History's Pathway to Chaos (2016)

War, Dogs, History, Idea

“For a number of years I have been familiar with the observation that the quality of programmers is a decreasing function of the density of go to statements in the programs they produce. More recently I discovered why the use of the go to statement has such disastrous effects, and I became convinced that the go to statement should be abolished from all "higher level" programming languages.”

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

1960s

“For though the sweet manhood of Christ might suffer but once, the goodness in Him may never cease of proffer: every day He is ready to the same, if it might be. For if He said He would for my love make new Heavens and new Earth, it were but little in comparison; for this might be done every day if He would, without any travail. But to die for my love so often that the number passeth creature’s reason, it is the highest proffer that our Lord God might make to man’s soul, as to my sight. Then meaneth He thus: How should it not be that I should not do for thy love all that I might of deeds which grieve me not, sith I would, for thy love, die so often, having no regard to my hard pains?”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Ninth Revelation, Chapter 22

Love, God, Pain, Soul

“The total number of multiplications involved in the practical solution of our problem exceeds 450,000. This task alone would mean a two-year job, at 120 multiplications per hour. Fortunately, the recent invention of the Simultaneous Calculator by Professor Wilbur of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has made it possible to perform all the necessary computations in a small fraction of the time they otherwise would have required. This apparatus solves nearly automatically a system of nine simultaneous linear equations.”

Wassily Leontief (1906–1999) Russian economist

Source: Structure of American economy, 1919-1929, 1941, p. 74.

Problem, Time

“Solutions require thinking through a series of interrelated steps or stages, analyzing a number of rules at each point, and always keeping in mind conclusions reached at earlier points.”

Harold Kelley (1921–2003) American psychologist & academic

Harold Kelley and John W. Thibaut. "Group problem solving." The handbook of social psychology 4 (1969): 1-101; p. 69-70

Thinking

“To those privileged ones -- among whom we count ourselves -- the high-resounding "isms" to which their contemporaries ask them to give their allegiance are all equally futile: bound to be betrayed, defeated, and finally rejected by men at large, if containing anything really noble; bound to enjoy, for the time being, some sort of noisy success, if sufficiently vulgar, pretentious, and soul-killing to appeal to the growing number of mechanically conditioned slaves that crawl about our planet, posing as free men; all destined to prove, ultimately, of no avail.”

Savitri Devi book The Lightning and the Sun

The Lightning and the Sun (Calcutta: Temple Press, 1958, p. 3, http://www.vaidilute.com/books/savitri/savitri-01.html)

Men, Soul, Time, Success

“How can anyone think so insanely that the human life has the same value and mankind, the same morality, independent of numbers? It is lucid to me that everytime a new child is born, the value of every human in world decreases slightly. It is obvious to me that the morality of the population explosion is wholly unlike than when man was a sparse, noble species in its beginning.”

Pentti Linkola (1932) Finnish ecologist

The Doctrine Of Survival And Doctor Ethics (1992)

Life, World, Thinking

“Long distance information, give me Memphis Tennessee
Help me find the party trying to get in touch with me
She could not leave her number, but I know who placed the call
'Cause my uncle took the message and he wrote it on the wall”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Memphis, Tennessee" (1959)( aka "Memphis")
Song lyrics

Help

“Money is multiplied in practical value depending on the number of W's you control in your life: what you do, when you do it, where you do it, and with whom you do it.”

Timothy Ferriss book The 4-Hour Workweek

The 4-Hour Workweek (2007)

Life, Money, Dependency

“The crippling human cover spread over the living layer of the Earth must forcibly be made lighter: breathing holes must be punctured in this blanket and the ecological footprint of man brushed away. Forms of boastful consumption must violently be crushed, the natality of the species violently controlled, and the number of those already born violently reduced — by any means possible.”

Pentti Linkola (1932) Finnish ecologist

Can Life Prevail?: A Revolutionary Approach to the Environmental Crisis. page 170

“The life of any given individual could be legitimately compared to the dream of an entity. While the individual suffers and enjoys his given number of years, these years are but a flash to the entity. The entity is concerned with them in the same way that you are concerned with your dreams, and as you obtain insight and satisfaction from them, though they involve only a portion of your life, so the entity to some extent directs and gives purpose and organization to his personalities. So does the entity obtain insights and satisfactions from its existing personalities, although no one of them takes up all of its attention.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 173, quoting from Seth Session 28

Life, Dreams, Way, Suffering

“Next morning the sun revealed a horrid spectacle on the vast plain south of PAnipat. On the actual field of the combat thirty-one distinct heaps of the slain were counted, the number of bodies in each ranging from 500 upwards to 1000 and in four up to 1500 a rough total of 28,000. In addition to these, the ditch round the Maratha camp was full of dead bodies, partly the victims of disease and famine during the long siege and partly wounded men who had crawled out of the fighting to die there. West and south of PAnipat city, the jungle and the road in the line of MarAtha retreat were littered with the remains of those who had fallen unresisting in the relentless DurrAni pursuit or from hunger and exhaustion. Their number - probably three-fourths non-combatants and one-fourth soldiers - could not have been far short of the vast total of those slain in the battlefield. 'The hundreds who lay down wounded, perished from the severity of the cold.'….
'After the havoc of combat followed massacre in cold blood. Several hundreds of MarAthas had hidden themselves in the hostile city of PAnipat through folly or helplessness; and these were hunted out next day and put to the sword. According to one plausible account, the sons of Abdus Samad Khan and Mian Qutb received the DurrAni king's permission to avenge their father's death by an indiscriminate massacre of the MarAthas for one day, and in this way nearly nine thousand men perished; these were evidently non-combatants. The eyewitness Kashiraj Pandit thus describes the scene: 'Every Durrani soldier brought away a hundred or two of prisoners and slew them in the outskirts of their camp, crying out, When I started from our country, my mother, father, sister and wife told me to slay so may kafirs for their sake after we had gained the victory in this holy war, so that the religious merit of this act [of infidel slaying] might accrue to them. In this way, thousands of soldiers and other persons were massacred. In the Shah's camp, except the quarters of himself and his nobles, every tent had a heap of severed heads before it. One may say that it was verily doomsday for the MarAtha people.'….
The booty captured within the entrenchment was beyond calculation and the regiments of Khans [i. e. 8000 troopers of AbdAli clansmen] did not, as far as possible, allow other troops like the IrAnis and the TurAnis to share in the plunder; they took possession of everything themselves, but sold to the Indian soldiers handsome Brahman women for one tuman and good horses for two tumans each.' The Deccani prisoners, male and female reduced to slavery by the victorious army numbered 22,000, many of them being the sons and other relatives of the sardArs or middle class men. Among them 'rose-limbed slave girls' are mentioned.' Besides these 22,000 unhappy captives, some four hundred officers and 6000 men fled for refuge to ShujA-ud-daulah's camp, and were sent back to the Deccan with monetary help by that nawab, at the request of his Hindu officers. The total loss of the MarAthas after the battle is put at 50,000 horses, captured either by the AfghAn army or the villagers along the route of flight, two hundred thousand draught cattle, some thousands of camels, five hundred elephants, besides cash and jewellery. 'Every trooper of the Shah brought away ten, and sometimes twenty camels laden with money. The captured horses were beyond count but none of them was of value; they came like droves of sheep in their thousands.”

Ahmed Shah Durrani (1722–1772) founder of the Durrani Empire, considered founder of the state of Afghanistan

Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, Volume II, Fourth Edition, New Delhi, 1991, p.210-11

Death, Women, Men, Money

“Facet analysis consists in an analysis of a subject in its entirety into a certain number of facets or categories of things; within each category, the subject headings enumerated all possess the same relationship vis-&-vis the subject in its entirety.”

Douglas John Foskett (1918–2004)

Foskett Classification and indexing in Science, p. 42; As cited in: Eric de Grolier (1962) A study of general categories applicable to classification and coding in documentation http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0002/000250/025055eo.pdf. p. 15

“And sought by lot those who should bear him company to the Scythian town, and from the whole number nine were drawn.”
Et Scythicam qui se comitentur ad urbem sorte petit numeroque novem ducuntur ab omni.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book V, Lines 325–326

“I shall act always so as to increase the total number of choices”

Heinz von Foerster (1911–2002) Austrian American scientist and cybernetician

Heinz von Foerster (1984) " Disorder/Order: Discovery or Invention? http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/cybernetics/heinz/disorder.pdf. p.6 1980s

“Today is indeed a historic day. It is also a special day in the history of a great people, with a history of over thousands of years. Mr Speaker this Constitution is designed to end the ethnic war which totally destroyed the lives of the people of this country…Though anybody may hoot or howl like jackals, we shall go through with this. …Mr. Speaker, we are doing this regardless of the number of votes we will get.”

Chandrika Kumaratunga (1945) President of Sri Lanka

Quoted by Tamil Nation, "Chandrika's 'Devolution Proposal'" http://tamilnation.co/conflictresolution/tamileelam/cbkproposals/00chandrika.htm, August 7, 2000.

War, People, History, Country

“This is where I would like to bring up the subject of equity. Economic statistics show that although there has been GDP growth over the past 23 years, the number of families living in poverty has increased - up to about 5 million families or 27.6 million people. This demonstrates that benefits of that growth have accrued to the wealthy. The rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer. This is clearly unacceptable to all of us.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero

People, Family, Past

“Between sessions at a physics conference, I asked a number of attendees: Who is the smartest physicist of them all? …the name mentioned most often was Witten's. He seemed to evoke a special kind of awe, as though he belonged to a category unto himself. He is often likened to Einstein; one colleague reached even further back for a comparison, suggesting that Witten possessed the greatest mathematical mind since Newton.”

John Horgan (journalist) (1953) American science journalist

Source: The End of Science (1996), p. 60

Mathematics

“If books were sold as software and online recordings are, they would have this legalese up front:
The content of this book is distributed on an 'as is' basis, without warranty as to accuracy of content, quality of writing, punctuation, usefulness of the ideas presented, merchantability, correctness or readability of formulae, charts, and figures, or correspondence of (a) the table of contents with the actual contents, (2) page references in the index (if any) with the actual page numbering (if present), and (iii) any illustration with its adjacent caption. Illustrations may have been printed reversed or inverted, the publisher accepts no responsibility for orientation or chirality. Any resemblance of the author or his or her likeness or name to any person, living or dead, or their heirs or assigns, is coincidental; all references to people, places, or events have been or should have been fictionalized and may or may not have any factual basis, even if reported as factual. Similarities to existing works of art, literature, song, or television or movie scripts is pure happenstance. References have been chosen at random from our own catalog. Neither the author(s) nor the publisher shall have any liability whatever to any person, corporation, animal whether feral or domesticated, or other corporeal or incorporeal entity with respect to any loss, damage, misunderstanding, or death from choking with laughter or apoplexy at or due to, respectively, the contents; that is caused or is alleged to be caused by any party, whether directly or indirectly due to the information or lack of information that may or may not be found in this alleged work. No representation is made as to the correctness of the ISBN or date of publication as our typist isn't good with numbers and errors of spelling and usage are attributable solely to bugs in the spelling and grammar checker in Microsoft Word. If sold without a cover, this book will be thinner than those sold with a cover. You do not own this book, but have acquired only a revocable non-exclusive license to read the material contained herein. You may not read it aloud to any third party. This disclaimer is a copyrighted work of Jef Raskin, first published in 2004, and is distributed 'as is', without warranty as to quality of humor, incisiveness of commentary, sharpness of taunt, or aptness of jibe.”

Jef Raskin (1943–2005) American computer scientist

"If Books Were Sold as Software" http://www.newsscan.com/cgi-bin/findit_view?table=newsletter&dateissued=20040818#11200, NewsScan.com (18 August 2004) If Books Were Sold as Software (2004)

Death, People, Books, Art

“They could care less about the public. The public comes in third. Number one is keeping their power. Number two are the special interests, the people footing the bill. Finally, the public good might be third — if they can profit from it. If there's no profit, they could care less.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

On Democrats and Republicans
Harvard interview (February 2004)

People

“The acquisition of a new truth is like the acquisition of a new sense, which renders a man capable and recognizing a large number of phenomena that are hidden from another, as they were from him originally.”

Justus von Liebig (1803–1873) German chemist

Chemische Briefe (1851) Full Text http://www.archive.org/details/chemischebriefe00liebuoft (quote's translation probably by Martin H. Fischer); quoted in Physical Chemistry in the Service of Medicine (1907), Wolfgang Pauli, p. 71, tr. by Martin H. Fischer. Full Text http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924000951792.

Truth, Sense

“But is not an event in fact more significant and noteworthy the greater the number of fortuities necessary to bring it about?”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

pg 46
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Two: Soul and Body

“It is a common fallacy to believe that the law of large numbers acts as a force endowed with memory seeking to return to the original state, and many wrong conclusions have been drawn from this assumption.”

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Source: An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition), Chapter V, Conditional Probability, Stochastic Independence, p. 136.

Law, Memory

“The Mussalman invaders sacked the Buddhist universities of Nalanda, Vikramshila, Jagaddala, Odantapuri to name only a few. They razed to the ground Buddhist monasteries with which the country was studded. The monks fled away in thousands to Nepal, Tibet and other places outside India. A very large number were killed outright by the Muslim commanders. How the Buddhist priesthood perished by the sword of the Muslim invaders has been recorded by the Muslim historians themselves.”

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956) Father of republic India, champion of human rights, father of India's Constitution, polymath, revolutionary…

"The Decline and Fall of Buddhism", in Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar: Writings and Speeches, Vol. III (1987), Government of Maharashtra, p. 238

Universe, Country

“As his blessed nature dictated, he was characterized by perfect devotion to the rites of the Faith; he followed the teaching of the great Imam. Abu Hanifa (God be pleased with him!), and established and enforced to the best of his power the five foundations of Islam'Through the auspices of his hearty endeavour, the Hanafi creed (i. e., the Orthodox Sunni faith) has gained such strength and currency in the great country of Hindustan as was never seen in the times of any of the preceding sovereigns. By one stroke of the pen, the Hindu clerks (writers) were dismissed from the public employment. Large numbers of the places of worship of the infidels and great temples of these wicked people have been thrown down and desolated. Men who can see only the outside of things are filled with wonder at the successful accomplishment of such a seemingly difficult task. And on the sites of the temples lofty mosques have been built.”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Maasir-i-alamgiri, translated into English by Sir Jadu-Nath Sarkar, Calcutta, 1947, pp. 312-15
Quotes from late medieval histories

Men, God, People, Faith

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

Daniel Levitin book The Organized Mind

The Organized Mind (2014)

Personality

“Our intention in this Disme is to worke all by whole numbers: for seing that in any affayres, men reckon not of the thousandth part of a mite, grayne, &c. as the like is also used of the principall Geometricians, and Astronomers, in computacions of great consequence, as Ptolome & Johannes Monta-regio have not described their Tables of Arches, Chords, or Sines, in extreme perfection (as possibly they might have done by Multinomiall numbers,) because that imperfection (considering the scope and end of those Tables) is more convenient then such perfection.”

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

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

Men, Parting, Perfection

“A second principle of Americanization is identity of economic interest. At this time, after all America has united to win the war, one hesitates to turn a page so shameful in American history. And yet, if America reverts to its former industrial brutality and indifference, Americanization will fail. Identity of economic interest, generally speaking, has meant to the American getting the immigrant to work for him at as low a wage as possible, for as long hours as possible, and scrapping him at the end of the game, with as little compunction as he did an old machine. And the immigrant's successful fellow-countryman, elevated to be a private banker, a padrone, or a notary public, has shared the practices of the native American. Always the immigrant has been in positions of the greatest danger, and with less safeguards for his care. He has been called by number and nicknamed and ridiculed. Frequently trades-unions have excluded him from their benefits, compensation laws have discriminated against him, trades have been closed to him, until he has wondered in the bitterness of his spirit what American opportunity was and how he could pursue life, liberty, and happiness at his work. Whenever he has been discontented, the popular remedy has been higher wages or shorter hours, and rarely the expansion of personal relationships. Very little self-determination has been given to him; on the contrary he has been made a cog in a highly organized industrial machine. His spirit has been imprisoned in the hum of machinery. His special gifts have been lost, even as his lack of skill in mechanical work has injured delicate processes and priceless materials. His pride has been humiliated and his initiative stifled because he has been given little of the artisan's pleasure in seeing his finished product.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Life, War, Happiness, Pleasure

“In order that woman should reach the same standard as man, she ought, when nearly adult, to be trained to energy and perseverance, and to have her reason and imagination exercised to the highest point; and then she would probably transmit these qualities chiefly to her adult daughters. The whole body of women, however, could not be thus raised, unless during many generations the women who excelled in the above robust virtues were married, and produced offspring in larger numbers than other women. As before remarked with respect to bodily strength, although men do not now fight for the sake of obtaining wives, and this form of selection has passed away, yet they generally have to undergo, during manhood, a severe struggle in order to maintain themselves and their families; and this will tend to keep up or even increase their mental powers, and, as a consequence, the present inequality between the sexes.”

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

volume II, chapter XIX: "Secondary Sexual Characters of Man", page 329 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=346&itemID=F937.2&viewtype=image The Descent of Man (1871)

Women, Men, Family, Sex

“Land and water management should be given ‘Number One' priority for achieving evergreen revolution. No less important is to achieve the utmost efficiency in investment as well as in the use of water.”

M. S. Swaminathan (1925) Indian scientist

Quoted in Food as people's right, 4 January 2012, 25 November 2013, The Hindu http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/food-as-peoples-right/article2769348.ece,

Water