Quotes about number
page 27

“There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest numbers of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest, who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others.”

John Ruskin book Unto This Last

Essay IV: "Ad Valorem," section 77.
Unto This Last (1860)

Love, Life, Happiness, Help

“Not the number of noses, but the magnitude of interests, should furnish the elements by which the proportion of representation should be computed…The classes that represent civilisation, the holders of accumulated capital and accumulated thought have a right to require securities to protect them from being overwhelmed by hordes who have neither knowledge to guide them nor stake in the Commonwealth to control them.”

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

Source: 'English Politics and Parties', Bentley's Quarterly Review, 1, (1859), pp. 28-29

Knowledge

“The surrender and succeeding jubilation was rightly American but, as Admiral Fraser appreciated, Britain and the Commonwealth had now been at war for six long years less a day. If the forenoon had been American, then the evening would be British. The last sunset ceremony had been carried out on the evening of September 2,1939. Since then the White Ensign had flown in every ship by day and night. Admiral Fraser ordered the resumption of sunset routine as from September 2, 1945 and invited all the senior officers of British ships in Tokyo, and a token number of sailors from each, to witness the ceremony in his flagship. He was dissuaded from firing a sunset gun in case some trigger-happy American or Japanese thought the war had re-started.”

Louis Le Bailly (1915–2010) Royal Navy admiral

War, Happiness, Night

“Numbers instill a feeling for the lie of the land, and furnish grist for the mathematical mill that is the physicist's principal tool.”

Hans Christian von Baeyer (1938) American physicist

Source: Information, The New Language of Science (2003), Chapter 6, The Book of Life, Genetic information, p. 48

Lie, Feeling, Mathematics

“If numbers aren't beautiful, I don't know what is.”

Paul Erdős (1913–1996) Hungarian mathematician and freelancer

Frequent remark, as quoted in My Brain Is Open : The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdos (1998) by Bruce Schechter, p. 14

Beauty

“We shall here define the market as a set of social institutions in which a large number of commodity exchanges of a specific type regularly take place, and to some extent are facilitated and structured by those institutions. Exchange as defined above, involves contractual agreement and the exchange of property rights, and the market consists in part of mechanisms to structure, organize and legitimate these activities. Markets, in short, are organized and institutionalized exchange. Stress is placed on those market institutions, which help to both regulate and establish a consensus over prices and, more generally, to communicate information regarding products, prices, quantities, potential buyers and potential sellers.”

Geoffrey Hodgson (1946) British economist

Source: Economics and Institutions, 1988, p. 174

Communication, Help, Parting

“I realize that in this undertaking I place myself in a certain opposition to views widely held concerning the mathematical infinite and to opinions frequently defended on the nature of numbers.”

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

Grundlagen einer allgemeinen Mannigfaltigkeitslehre [Foundations of a General Theory of Aggregates] (1883)

Mathematics, Nature

“[In air power] so far from being half as strong again as Germany, so far from making up lee-way, we are already greatly inferior in numbers and falling further and further behind every month. … No doubt it is not popular to say these things, but I am accustomed to abuse and I expect to have a great deal more of it before I have finished. Somebody has to state the truth. There ought to be a few members of the House of Commons who are in a sufficiently independent position to confront both Ministers and electors with unpalatable truths. We do not wish our ancient freedom and the decent tolerant civilisation we have preserved in this island to hang upon a rotten thread.”

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

Speech to the City Carlton Club (26 September 1935), quoted in Martin Gilbert, The Churchill Documents, Volume 12: The Wilderness Years, 1929–1935 (Michigan: Hillsdale Press, 2012), p. 1268
The 1930s

Truth, Way, Freedom, Strong

“He does love his numbers
And they run, they run, they run him
In a great big circle
In a circle of infinity
3.14159 26535897932 3846 264 338 3279…”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sea of Honey (Disc 1)

Love

“Greenock was one of the great centres of the sugar trade…Then came foreign competition, aided by bounties; and your trade declines so seriously that only the very best, the very richest, the most enterprising, the most inventive can possibly retain their hold upon it. If there had been no bounties and no unfair competition of this kind what would have happened? In the last 20 or 30 years the consumption of sugar throughout the world has increased enormously. The consumption in this country has increased enormously; and you would have had your share…if normal conditions and equal fairness had prevailed; and at this moment in Greenock, quite independently of the other industries you may have found to occupy you, there would have been in sugar alone ten times as many men employed as there were in the most palmy days of the trade. But normal conditions have not obtained. You have been the sufferers; and, as I have said, a great number of your refineries have been closed, have disappeared altogether. The capital invested in them has been lost, and the workmen who work in them—what has become of them?”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Speech in Greenock (7 October 1903), quoted in The Times (8 October 1903), p. 8.
1900s

Men, World, Suffering, Time

“My policy has always been the same. We're fighting ISIS and Assad is fighting ISIS, but we're backing rebels to fight Assad. You can't fight everybody, you have to pick who you want to fight. And now you've got Turkey, who like ISIS more than they like others, no one really knows because we don't have people that know what they're doing. So in my opinion, you go along, and Russia does not like ISIS, and people are starting to find out. I mean in all fairness lost an airplane, got blew out of the air. So Russia is not a fan of ISIS. Russia is bombing the hell out of them, starting to bomb them. I say isis is our number one threat. We can't be fighting everybody at the same time. ISIS is our number one threat. I would bomb the hell out of them -- I like to do one thing at a time. I would knock the hell out of ISIS. I would hit them … so hard like they've never been hit before.”

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

In an interview with Fox & Friends. http://www.politico.com/story/2015/12/trump-kill-isil-families-216343 (December 2, 2015) 2010s, 2015

People, Hell, Time, Fight

“As a rabbi I am often called upon to determine the kashrut of various food products and institutions. I am appalled by the number of chemicals that are added to our food, and long for the days when one did not need a degree in chemistry in order to understand what one was eating. From my perspective, I'm tempted to brand all food additives as treif, and hail as glatt kosher only those fruits and vegetables that are organically grown.”

Bonnie Koppell American rabbi

Source: Vegetarianism, p. 38

Food, Understanding

“I think my position on the same-sex marriage thing probably sums up the kind of conservative that I am. I’m a small c conservative as well as a big C Conservative, and that means that I prefer my change to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and you know I got myself quite comfortable with the institution of civil partnership, but I was then quite shocked by the urge to move on so quickly to the next stage, but I dare say in time I will become quite comfortable with the institution of same-sex marriage, and I suspect I speak for a large number of Conservatives when I say it isn’t so much the substance of the change as the process and things being evolutionary and gradually taking root rather than through tumultuous change which is disturbing to the settled instinct.”

Philip Hammond (1955) British Conservative politician

Conservative Home interview (2013)

Marriage, Sex, Thinking, Change

“Simon, a man of the sect of the Essens, desired leave to speak his mind freely, and said that the vision denoted a change in the affairs of Archelaus, and that not for the better; that oxen, because that animal takes uneasy pains in his labors, denoted afflictions, and indeed denoted, further, a change of affairs, because that land which is ploughed by oxen cannot remain in its former state; and that the ears of corn being ten, determined the like number of years, because an ear of corn grows in one year; and that the time of Archelaus's government was over. And thus did this man expound the dream. Now on the fifth day after this dream came first to Archelaus, the other Archelaus, that was sent to Judea by Caesar to call him away, came hither also.”

Josephus on the Essenes

AJ 17.13.3
Antiquities of the Jews

Pain, Dreams, Affliction, Change

“The days of Black Power are numbered. Its course, indeed is onward. But with the swiftness of an arrow, it rushes to the tomb. While crushing its millions, it is also crushing itself. The sword of Retribution, suspended by a single hair, hangs over it. That sword must fall. Liberty must triumph.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

As quoted in "Sustaining Black Studies", by Winston A. Van Horne, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 37, No. 3, (January 2007)
1850s

“Today the percentage of female judges, college professors and detectives seen on television is a pretty good reflection of the actual world. (In the case of judges, I wouldn't be shocked to find out the number on television exceeds the number in real life — what is it about those black robes that makes us think ovaries?)
But merely thrusting more women into more prestigious on-screen jobs doesn't necessarily make the working world a better place for women. If you were to show people images of two real-life professionals, one a man, one a woman, and ask them to rate their competence knowing nothing but job and gender — I bet people still give the guys the edge.
It's not television's fault, exactly. But television can help fix the problem. Not by writing women into better professions, but by more accurately showing them as complex people contending with the sort of snide, generous, ambitious, incompetent, sad and hilarious co-workers who populate real workplaces.”

Jane Espenson (1964) American television writer and producer

How to Succeed at Vampire Slaying and Keep Your Soul (2005)

Life, Women, People, World

“I'm only warming up. I had a fantastic season, I proved age is just a number, Everything is in your head. Whatever you want to do you will do it. It's a master mind game. If I want to make it I'll make it. If I want to do it I'll do it.”

Zlatan Ibrahimović (1981) Swedish association football player

Talking about his age doesn't affect his game http://www.espn.in/football/soccer-transfers/story/2880702/zlatan-ibrahimovic-has-made-choice-amid-manchester-united-talk Attributed

Age, Game, Season

“When the army was mustered, it was found to amount to "fifty thousand mounted men clad in armour and coats of mail," with which they advanced to fight against the Rai of Benares… The Rai of Benares, Jai Chand, the chief of idolatry and perdition, advanced to oppose the royal troops with an army… The Rai of Benares, who prided himself on the number of his forces and war elephants," seated on a lofty howdah, received a deadly wound from an arrow, and "fell from his exalted seat to the earth." His head was carried on the point of a spear to the commander, and " his body was thrown to the dust of contempt." "The impurities of idolatry were purged by the water of the sword from that land, and the country of Hind was freed from vice and superstition."… From that place the royal army proceeded towards Benares 'which is the centre of the country of Hind, and here they destroyed nearly one thousand temples, and raised mosques on their foundations; and the knowledge of the law became promulgated, and the foundations of religion were established.”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

About the fight with the Rai of Banares and capture of Asni and of Benares. Hasan Nizami: Taju’l-Ma’sir, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 222-223 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

Men, War, Religion, Law

“Thus Hindu society not only presents itself as a prey to these exclusive, intolerant and imperialist ideologies but also acts as a buffer between them. India is secular because India is Hindu. It can be added as a corollary that India is a democracy also because India is Hindu. If Hindu society permits this free for all any further, the days of Secularism and Democracy in this country are numbered. Let the Hindus unite and save themselves, their democratic polity, their secular state, and their Sanatana Dharma for a new cycle of civilization, not only for themselves but also the world.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Society under Siege (1981, revised 1992)

World, Democracy, Country

“This that I say is so great bliss to Jesus that He setteth at nought all His travail, and His hard Passion, and His cruel and shameful death.
And in these words: If that I might suffer more, I would suffer more, — I saw in truth that as often as He might die, so often He would, and love should never let Him have rest till He had done it. And I beheld with great diligence for to learn how often He would die if He might. And verily the number passed mine understanding and my wits so far that my reason might not, nor could, comprehend it. And when He had thus oft died, or should, yet He would set it at nought, for love: for all seemeth Him but little in regard of His love.”

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

The Ninth Revelation, Chapter 22

Love, Death, Truth, Understanding

“The writer, who as an engineer has spent most of his life in factories, is inclined to look at the basis for investment from a technological point of view… Consider … the class of industrial investments only… The situation is one of entrepreneurs and boards of directors considering, from time to time, various ’possibilities of investment’, such as extra lathes or looms, an extension to a factory, a venture in some completely new product, and so on. It is helpful to think of these ’opportunities for investment’ as existing, in a given situation, in great number and variety, whether they are at that moment under active consideration or not. When any such possibility is considered it is assessed in respect of ’expected profitability’. One may conveniently think of all possibilities of investment as ’quanta’ that can be placed in a schedule of small ranges of expected profitability according to these assessments. The placement of a given ’opportunity for investment’ on this schedule has some ’margin of uncertainty”

Arnold Tustin (1899–1994) British engineer

a curious analogy with the case of the quanta of physics
Source: The Mechanism of Economic Systems (1953), p. 103; As cited in: Prices Revalued as Information: Circuit Elements, online document 2013

Life, Thinking, Time, Help

“Now I know many of you today walked in with numbers already swimming in your heads: 360, 16x9, 1080, 8.2 GHz. Well, we'd like to add one more number to the mix. And that number is two.”

Reggie Fils-Aimé (1961) American businessman

Reference to the big numbers in hardware power and specifications that Microsoft and Sony had mentioned about their upcoming video game consoles
'2' refers to Nintendo having sold two billion games since the NES
On Nintendo
Source: E3 2005 Press Event

“But, as we consider the totality of similarly broad and fundamental aspects of life, we cannot defend division by two as a natural principle of objective order. Indeed, the “stuff” of the universe often strikes our senses as complex and shaded continua, admittedly with faster and slower moments, and bigger and smaller steps, along the way. Nature does not dictate dualities, trinities, quarterings, or any “objective” basis for human taxonomies; most of our chosen schemes, and our designated numbers of categories, record human choices from a cornucopia of possibilities offered by natural variation from place to place, and permitted by the flexibility of our mental capacities. How many seasons (if we wish to divide by seasons at all) does a year contain? How many stages shall we recognize in a human life?”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox: Mending the Gap between Science and the Humanities (Harmony, 2003), p. 82

Life, Way, Nature, Sense

“Members of the international community, first of all our Western partners, have chosen the path of supporting one of the sides in the civil war – probably the party that represented the Libyan people's legitimate aspirations, but this still increased the number of casualties among the civilian population.”

Sergey Lavrov (1950) Russian politician and Foreign Minister

Saying that NATO's interference in Libya caused more casualties {December 2011) http://rt.com/politics/lavrov-nato-libya-victims-201/

War, People, Communication, Support

“There were a large number of Jews who held more favorable positions than they should have, according to their percentage of the population. Germans should have held those positions.”

Otto Ohlendorf (1907–1951) German general

To Leon Goldensohn, March 1, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.

“Since one cannot create 'depth' by carving a hole in the picture, and since one should not attempt to create the illusion of depth by tonal gradation, depth as a plastic reality must be two dimensions in a formal sense as well in the sense of color. 'Depth' is not created on a flat surface as an illusion, but as a plastic reality. The nature of the picture plane makes it possible to achieve depth without destroying the two-dimensional essence of the picture plane.. A plane is a fragment in the architecture of space. When a number of planes are opposed one to another, a spatial effect results. A plane functions in the same manner as the walls of a building... Planes organized within a picture create the pictorial space of its composition... The old masters were plane-consciousness. This makes their pictures restful as well as vital…”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 44
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Color, Nature, Reality, Sense

“A new point is determined in Euclidean Geometry exclusively in one of the three following ways:
Having given four points A, B, C, D, not all incident on the same straight line, then
(1) Whenever a point P exists which is incident both on (A, B) and on (C, D), that point is regarded as determinate.
(2) Whenever a point P exists which is incident both on the straight line (A, B) and on the circle C(D), that point is regarded as determinate.
(3) Whenever a point P exists which is incident on both the circles A(B), C(D), that point is regarded as determinate.
The cardinal points of any figure determined by a Euclidean construction are always found by means of a finite number of successive applications of some or all of these rules (1), (2) and (3). Whenever one of these rules is applied it must be shown that it does not fail to determine the point. Euclid's own treatment is sometimes defective as regards this requisite.
In order to make the practical constructions which correspond to these three Euclidean modes of determination, correponding to (1) the ruler is required, corresponding to (2) both ruler and compass, and corresponding to (3) the compass only.
…it is possible to develop Euclidean Geometry with a more restricted set of postulations. For example it can be shewn that all Euclidean constructions can be carried out by means of (3) alone…”

E. W. Hobson (1856–1933) British mathematician

Source: Squaring the Circle (1913), pp. 7-8

Way, Success

“"Another situation generally exposed to ressentiment danger is the older generation's relation with the younger. The process of aging can only be fruitful and satisfactory if the important transitions are accompanied by free resignation, by the renunciation of the values proper to the preceding stage of life. Those spiritual and intellectual values which remain untouched by the process of aging, together with the values of the next stage of life, must compensate for what has been lost. Only if this happens can we cheerfully relive the values of our past in memory, without envy for the young to whom they are still accessible. If we cannot compensate, we avoid and flee the “tormenting” recollection of youth, thus blocking our possibilities of understanding younger people. At the same time we tend to negate the specific values of earlier stages. No wonder that youth always has a hard fight to sustain against the ressentiment of the older generation. Yet this source of ressentiment is also subject to an important historical variation. In the earliest stages of civilization, old age as such is so highly honored and respected for its experience that ressentiment has hardly any chance to develop. But education spreads through printing and other modern media and increasingly replaces the advantage of experience. Younger people displace the old from their positions and professions and push them into the defensive. As the pace of “progress” increases in all fields, and as the changes of fashion tend to affect even the higher domains (such as art and science), the old can no longer keep up with their juniors. “Novelty‟ becomes an ever greater value. This is doubly true when the generation as such is seized by an intense lust for life, and when the generations compete with each other instead of cooperating for the creation of works which outlast them. “Every cathedral,” Werner Sombart writes, “every monastery, every town hall, every castle of the Middle Ages bears testimony to the transcendence of the individual's span of life: its completion spans generations which thought that they lived for ever. Only when the individual cut himself loose from the community which outlasted him, did the duration of his personal life become his standard of happiness.” Therefore buildings are constructed ever more hastily—Sombart cites a number of examples. A corresponding phenomenon is the ever more rapid alternation of political regimes which goes hand in hand with the progression of the democratic movement. But every change of government, every parliamentary change of party domination leaves a remnant of absolute opposition against the values of the new ruling group. This opposition is spent in ressentiment the more the losing group feels unable to return to power. The “retired official” with his followers is a typical ressentiment figure. Even a man like Bismarck did not entirely escape from this danger."”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Life, Happiness, People, Youth

“I have written a number of good sentences. I have kept free of delusions. I know I am going to die soon.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Entry (1977)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)
Context: Disraeli felt that "nothing could compensate his obscure youth, not even a glorious old age." Practically all writers and artists are aware of their destiny and see themselves as actors in a fateful drama. With me, nothing is momentous: obscure youth, glorious old age, fateful coincidences — nothing really matters. I have written a number of good sentences. I have kept free of delusions. I know I am going to die soon.

“[A] number of points are worth making at once [that challenge Foucault’s Madness and Civilization]: (1) There is ample evidence of medieval cruelty towards the insane; (2) In the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the mad were already confined, to cells, jails or even cages; (3) ‘dialogue’ or no ‘dialogue’, even madness during those times was frequently connected with sin -- even in the Ship of Fools mythology; and, to that extent, it was regarded in a far less benevolent light than suggested by Foucault (pre-modern minds accepted the reality of madness -- ‘madness as a part of truth’ -- just as they accepted the reality of sin; but this does not mean they valued madness, any more than sin; (4) as Martin Schrenk (himself a severe critic Foucault) has shown, early modern madhouses developed from medieval hospitals and monasteries rather than as reopened leprosaria; (5) the Great Confinement was primarily aimed not at deviance but at poverty -- criminal poverty, crazy poverty or just plain poverty; the notion that it heralded (in the name of the rising bourgeoise) a moral segregation does not bear close scrutiny; (6) at any rate, as stressed by Klaus Doerner, another of critic of Foucault (Madmen and the Bourgeoisie, 1969), that there was no uniform state-controlled confinement: the English and German patterns, for example, strayed greatly from the Louis Quatorzian Grand Renfermement; (7) Foucault’s periodization seems to me amiss. By the late eighteenths century, confinement of the poor was generally deemed a failure; but it is then that confinement of the mad really went ahead, as so conclusively shown in statistics concerning England, France, and the United States; (8) Tuke and Pinel did not ‘invent’ mental illness. Rather, they owe much to prior therapies and often relied also on their methods; (9) moreover, in nineetenth-century England moral treatment was not that central in the medicalization of madness. Far from it: as shown by Andrew Scull, physicians saw Tukean moral therapy as a lay threat to their art, and strove to avoid it or adapt it to their own practice. Once more, Foucault’s epochal monoliths crumble before the contradictory wealth of the historical evidence.”

José Guilherme Merquior book Foucault

Source: Foucault (1985), pp. 28-29

Truth, Age, Fools, Art

“Despite declining catches, New England fishermen continue to receive state and federal tax incentives that encourage them — in some cases all but compel them — to acquire bigger boats and to harvest the seas more intensively. Today the fishermen of Massachusetts are reduced to fishing the hideous hagfish, for which there is a slight market in the Far East, but even their numbers are now falling.”

Bill Bryson book A Short History of Nearly Everything

Page 285
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

Fish, Sea

“The more recent practice of writing numbers on the arms of thousands of Palestinians who have been crammed in Israeli detention camps since February 2002 through the present further demonstrates the Nazi system as a model for the Israeli army.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Massad, "The Ends of Zionism: Racism and the Palestinian Struggle", Interventions, 2003
On Comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany

“The Arab countries, understanding that the arrival of holocaust survivors in Palestine would increase the Zionists' numbers and manpower, introduced a UN resolution calling for West countries to take in the holocaust refugees. All the countries that supported the partition plan resolution voted against or abstained on the refugee resolution.”

Joseph Massad (1963) Associate Professor of Arab Studies

Ibid.
"Palestinians and Jewish History: Recognition or Submission?"

Understanding, Support, Country

“Muhammad took the fort [of Rawar] and stayed there for two or three days. He put six thousand fighting men, who were in the fort, to the sword, and shot some with arrows. The other dependents and servants were taken prisoners, with their wives and children… When the number of the prisoners was calculated, it was found to amount to thirty thousand persons, amongst whom thirty were the daughters of chiefs, and one of them was Rai Dahir's sister's daughter, whose name was Jaisiya. They were sent to Hajjaj. The head of Dahir and the fifth part of the prisoners were forwarded in charge of Ka'ab, son of Mharak. When the head of Dahir, the women, and the property all reached Hajjaj, he prostrated himself before Allah, offered thanksgivings and praises… Hajjaj then forwarded the head, the umbrellas, and wealth, and the prisoners to Walid the Khalifa. When the Khalifa of the time had read the letter, he praised Almighty Allah. He sold some of those daughters of the chiefs, and some he granted as rewards. When he saw the daughter of Rai Dahir’s sister he was much struck with her beauty and charms, and began to bite his finger with astonishment…. It is said that after the conquest was effected and the affairs of the country were settled and the report of the conquest had reached Hajjaj, he sent a reply to the following effect. 'O my cousin! I received your life-inspiring letter. I was much pleased and overjoyed when it reached me. The events were recounted in an excellent and beautiful style, and I learnt that the ways and rules you follow are conformable to the Law. Except that you give protection to all, great and small alike, and make no difference between enemy and friend. God says, - Give no quarter to Infidels, but cut their throats. Then know that this is the command of the great God [Allah]. You shall not be too ready to grant protection, because it will prolong your work. After this, give no quarter to any enemy except to those who are of rank.”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

The Chach Nama, in: Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Volume I, p. 172-173. Also partially quoted in B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946)
Quotes from The Chach Nama

Life, Women, Men, God

“Is it just me, or are the number of comments steadily going down each week? Am I just losing my touch, or has everyone wised up and realised that commenting on internet videos is viciously futile?”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

4 October 2009
Fully Ramblomatic

“I still think, notwithstanding, that under all the disadvantages of slave cultivation, much improvement in it is practicable. Proofs are annually taking place within my own sphere of observation; particularly where slaves are held in small numbers, by good masters and managers. As to the very wealthy proprietors, much less is to be said. But after all, protesting against any inference of a disposition to undertake the evil of slavery, is it certain that in giving to your wealth a new investment, you would be altogether freed from the cares and vexations incident to the shape it now has? If converted into paper, you already feel some of the contingencies belonging to it; if into commercial stock, look at the wrecks every where giving warning of the danger. If into large landed property, where there are no slaves, will you cultivate it yourself? Then beware of the difficulty of procuring faithful or complying labourers. Will you dispose of it in leases? Ask those who have made the experiment what sort of tenants are to be found where an ownership of the soil is so attainable.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

1820s, Letter to F. Corbin (1820)

Faith, Feeling, Thinking, Evil

“In some organizations where staff assistance is overemphasized, from the standpoint of both the influence and the number of staff officials, the chief executive is likely to be cut off from his department heads. An executive should never lose sight of the fact that his closest contacts must be with the heads of the operating departments, and that it is upon them more than any others that the success of the program depends. If he permits himself to become cloistered because of the more favored position of the staff officials, the morale and driving force of the program will be impaired.”

Marshall E. Dimock (1903–1991) American writer

Source: "The Meshing of Line and Staff", 1945, pp. 102-104, as cited in Albert Lepawsky (1949), Administration, p. 306-7

Success, Dependency

“The Web is the ultimate marketplace of ideas, governed by the laws of big numbers.”

Chris Anderson book The Long Tail

Source: The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More (2006), Ch. 5, p. 70

Law, Idea

“All the usual rules of uprising realpolitik still apply, especially that concerning the peculiar of dialectic of dissent which—simply stated—dictates that in all but the most dedicatedly repressive hegemonies, if in a sizable population there are one hundred rebels, all of whom are then rounded up and killed, the number of rebels present at the end of the day is not zero, and not even one hundred, but two hundred or three hundred or more; an equation based on human nature which seem often to baffle the military and political mind.”

Iain Banks (1954–2013) Scottish writer

“A Few Notes on the Culture” (pp. 168-169)
Short fiction, The State of the Art (1991)

Nature

“Such was Gods Poem, this Worlds new Essay;
So wild and rude in its first draught it lay;
Th' ungovern'd parts no Correspondence knew,
An artless war from thwarting Motions grew;
Till they to Number and fixt Rules were brought
By the eternal Minds Poetique Thought.
Water and Air he for the Tenor chose,
Earth made the Base, the Treble Flame arose,
To th' active Moon a quick brisk stroke he gave,
To Saturns string a touch more soft and grave.
The motions Strait, and Round, and Swift, and Slow,
And Short, and Long, were mixt and woven so,
Did in such artful Figures smoothly fall,
As made this decent measur'd Dance of All.”

Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) British writer

Book I, lines 451-464
Davideis (1656)

God, War, World, Art

“Road to Social Justice. The first and perhaps the most important of the factors which have contributed to our failure to make real impact on poverty expressed in terms of total number who live below the poverty line has clearly been the uncontrolled growth of our population… First, we must, at all costs, make a much more earnest effort at controlling the growth of our population. As it is, we are running out of time and there is no longer any possibility of preventing it from exceeding 1,000 million souls by the end of the century.”

J. R. D. Tata (1904–1993) Indian businessman

At The International Seminar of Economic Journalists, New Delhi, December 5, 1972.
Keynote: Excerpts from his speeches and chairman's statements to shareholders

Justice, Soul, Failure, Effort

“Vietnam vet: We haven't heard why you voted against your colleagues' proposals to increase health care funding in 2004, '05, '06, and '07, when we had troops coming back from two wars.
Madow: Instead of the answer the questioner is looking for, McCain now takes credit for the GI bill and takes a political shot at Jim Webb.
McCain: On the issue of the GI bill, I was disappointed that Senator Webb didn't support making it permanent. Senator Graham, other veterans and I will be looking to extend that to all veterans, not just 2001. I hope you'll urge Senator Webb to agree with that.
McCain: I received every award from every major veterans' organization in America. The reason is I have a perfect voting record from organizations like Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, and all the other veterans service organizations because of my support of them.
Vietnam vet: You do not have a perfect voting record by the DIV and the VFW. That's where these votes [of yours against increasing vet health care] are recorded. The votes were proposals by your colleagues in the Senate to increase health care funding of the VA in 2003, '04, '05, and '06 for troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and you voted against those proposals. I can give you specific Senate votes, the numbers of those Senate votes right now.
McCain: I thank you, and I'll examine your version of what my voting record is, but again, I've been endorsed in every election by all of the veterans' organizations that do that. I've been supported by them, and I've received their highest rewards, from all of those organizations, so I guess they don't know something you know.
Rieckoff: [McCain's] voting record is not very strong. The Disabled American Veterans gave him a 20% rating out of 100. Our organization, the IAVA, gave him a D rating in the last voting session. He does not have a perfect voting record from the VFW. He's consistently voted against increased funding of the VA, and he's been a major opponent of the new GI bill.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

Paul Rieckhoff of Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans for America and author of Chasing Ghosts, on Countdown, discussing a town hall exchange between McCain and another Vietnam vet; 9 July 2008; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnyEMLXvgV8 IAVA ratings: McCain: D; Obama: B+ http://www.iava.org/full-ratings-list; DAV: McCain: 20%; Obama: 80%; the AL and VFW don't perform such voting record ratings http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/does_mccain_have_a_perfect_voting_record.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnyEMLXvgV8 2000s, 2008

War, Health, Hope, Disappointment

“They first sallied forth in a body of about 500 persons to attack the market place of the village known as Poorwa, where they slaughtered a cow. With the blood of the animal they defiled a Hindu temple. Then they hung up the four quarters (of the cow) in the different parts of the market place. They maltreated and wounded an unfortunate Brahmin and threatened to make him a Muslim… The village of Laoghatty in the Nadia district was their next object attack. Here they commenced operations by the repetition of the same outrage to the religious feelings of the Hindus which they had committed at Poorwa, viz, the slaughter of a cow in that part of the village exclusively occupied by Hindu residents. But being opposed by Hardeb Ray, a principal inhabitant of the village, and a Brahmin, at the head of a party of villagers, an affray ensued in which one Debnath Ray was killed and Hardeb Ray and a number of villagers were severely wounded… Titu’s party went on increasing and with growing confidence they went on killing cows in different places, making raids on the neighbouring villages, forcing from the raiyats agreements to furnish grain, compelling many of them to profess conformity to the tenets of their sect… They openly proclaimed themselves masters of the country, asserting that the Mussalmans from whom the English usurped it, were the rightful owners of the empire… The rebels issued parwanas to the principal zamindars of the district. Their tenor was as follows: “This country is now given to our Deen Mohammed. You must, therefore, immediately send grain to the army.’ In a written report the magistrate of Nadia states that a paper written in Bengali and signed in Arabic characters, was put into his hand, purporting to be an order of Allah to the Pal Chowdhuries of Ranaghat to supply russud (rations) to the army of fakirs who were about to fight with the government.”

Titumir

About the exploits of Titumir. Narahari Kaviraj, Wahabi And Faraizi Rebels of Bengal, New Delhi, 1982, Pp. 37-38, 43-44, 50-51. Quoted in Goel, Sita Ram (1995). Muslim separatism: Causes and consequences. ISBN 9788185990262

Feeling, Confidence, Animals, Fight

“You can imagine my dismay when I got to Cambridge and found that I had done everything wrong. I shouldn't have named the chimps; I should have given them numbers. I couldn't talk about their personalities, their minds or their feelings because that was unique to us.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Then & Now: Jane Goodall (2005)

Feeling, Imagination, Personality

“They went by daily marches through the hills, from stage to stage, and when they arrived at their destination at early dawn they surrounded Kambayat and the idolaters were awakened from their sleepy state of carelessness and were taken by surprise, not knowing where to go, and mothers forgot their children and dropped them from their embrace. The Muhammadan forces began to 'kill and slaughter on the right and on the left unmercifully, throughout the impure land, for the sake of Islam,' and blood flowed in torrents. They plundered gold and silver to an extent greater than can be conceived, and an immense number of brilliant precious stones, such as pearls, diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, etc. as well as a great variety of cloths, both silk and cotton, stamped, embroidered, and coloured.”

Alauddin Khalji (1266–1316) Ruler of the Khalji dynasty

Elliot and Dowson, Vol. III : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 43 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes from The History of India as told by its own Historians

Children, Clothes

“During that time, he asked me for my phone number, which I gave to him. Later that evening, he invited me to his room. I said I didn’t feel right going alone, so two other women came with me. In the penthouse suite, I met Donald again. When we entered the room he grabbed each of us tightly in a hug and kissed each of us on the lips without asking for permission. He was wearing pyjamas. […] Donald then asked me "What do you want?"”

Jessica Drake (1974) American pornographic actress

"How much?" Jessica Drake: porn star is 11th woman to allege Trump sexual misconduct https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/22/trump-news-porn-star-jessica-drake-gloria-allred, The Guardian.com, 22 October 2016.

Women, Feeling, Kiss, Time

“Islam uses the notion of taqiyya, where Muslims, consciously or unconsciously, hide their true opinion as they are not in the majority. If I ask a Muslim in the street what he thinks about homosexuality, he will either remain silent or give a politically correct answer. As the number of Muslims increases, even when they are not violent, the ideology of Islam will become more prominent and society will change.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

"Geert Wilders: an interview with the Netherlands' controversial politician." http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Geert+Wilders%3A+an+interview+with+the+Netherlands'+controversial...-a0205111713 Contemporary Review (22 March 2009) 2000s

Thinking, Change

“It is hoped that systematic study of the light changes of all the variables, nearly two thousand in number, in the two Magellanic Clouds may soon be undertaken at this Observatory.”

Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868–1921) astronomer

Periods of 25 Variable Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1912HarCi.173....1L (1912)

Hope, Study, Light, Change

“Budgeting is a math exercise, number crunching. Planning is a logical, linear process. Strategizing requires a great deal of information about customers and competitors, along with conceptual skills. Visioning uses a very different part of the brain than budgeting. As the name implies, it involves trying to see possible futures. It inevitably has both a creative and emotional component (e. g., “How do we feel about the options?”). When you use “orthodox planning” to create a vision, frustration and failure are inevitable.”

John P. Kotter (1947) author of The heart of Change

Step 3, p. 68
The Heart of Change, (2002)

Feeling, Exercises, Failure, Future

“We know that most of the wealth and income of the country is owned by a few large corporations, that these corporations in turn are owned by an infinitesimally small number of people and that the profits from the operation of these corporations go to a very small group with the result that the new opportunities for new enterprise, whether corporate or individual, are constantly being restricted. The committee therefore recommends the vigorous and vigilant enforcement of the antitrust laws, confident that an awakening business conscience will realize the necessity of complete cooperation in the elimination of monopolistic practice.”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: The transformation of corporate control, 1993, p. 166

People, Law, Confidence, Business

“A gun cracked, quite close to the tent. Soldier's instinct pulled Lee's head up. Then he smiled and laughed to himself. One of his staff officers, most likely, shooting at a possum or squirrel. He hoped the young man had scored a hit. But no sooner had the smile appeared than it vanished. The report of the gun sounded- odd. It had been an abrupt bark, not a pistol shot or the deeper boom of an Enfield rifle musket. Maybe it was a captured Federal weapon. The gun cracked again and again and again. Each report came closer to the one than two heartbeats were to each other. A Federal weapon indeed, Lee thought: one of those fancy repeaters their cavalry like so well. The fusillade went on and on. He frowned at the waste of precious cartridges- no Southern armory could easily duplicate them. He frowned once more, this time in puzzlement, when silence fell. He had automatically kept track of the number of rounds fired. No Northern rifle he knew was a thirty-shooter. He turned his mind back to the letter to President Davis. -Valley, he wrote. Then gunfire rang out again, an unbelievably rapid stutter of shots, altogether too quick to count and altogether unlike anything he had ever heard. He took off his glasses and set down the pen. Then he put on a hat and got up to see what was going on.”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 4

Smile, Hope, Silence, Appearance

“Number, place, and combination... the three intersecting but distinct spheres of thought to which all mathematical ideas admit of being referred.”

James Joseph Sylvester (1814–1897) English mathematician

James Joseph Sylvester, Collected Mathematical Papers, Vol. 1 (1904), p. 91.

Mathematics, Idea

“[Number is] the commanding and self-begotten container of the eternal duration of mundane concerns.”

Philolaus (-470–-390 BC) ancient greek philosopher

Quoted by Aristotle, Metaphysics (ca. 350 BC) Tr. Thomas Taylor, The Philosophical and Mathematical Commentaries of Proclus on the First Book of Euclid's Elements (1792) Vol. 1 https://books.google.com/books?id=AD1WAAAAYAAJ, p. xix.

“I present, for what it is worth, and may prove to be worth, the following bill of axioms or aphorisms on public administration, as fitting this important occasion.
# The continuous and fairly efficient discharge of certain functions by government, central and local, is a necessary condition for the existence of any great society.
# As a society becomes more complicated, as its division of labor ramifies more widely, as its commerce extends, as technology takes the place of handicrafts and local self-sufficiency, the functions of government increase in number and in their vital relationships to the fortunes of society and individuals.
# Any government in such a complicated society, consequently any such society itself, is strong in proportion to its capacity to administer the functions that are brought into being.
# Legislation respecting these functions, difficult as it is, is relatively easy as compared with the enforcement of legislation, that is, the effective discharge of these functions in their most minute ramifications and for the public welfare.
# When a form of government, such as ours, provides for legal changes, by the process of discussion and open decision, to fit social changes, then effective and wise administration becomes the central prerequisite for the perdurance of government and society — to use a metaphor, becomes a foundation of government as a going concern.
# Unless the members of an administrative system are drawn from various classes and regions, unless careers are open in it to talents, unless the way is prepared by an appropriate scheme of general education, unless public officials are subjected to internal and external criticism of a constructive nature, then the public personnel will become a bureaucracy dangerous to society and to popular government.
# Unless, as David Lilienthal has recently pointed out in an address on the Tennessee Valley Authority, an administrative system is so constructed and operated as to keep alive local and individual responsibilities, it is likely to destroy the basic well-springs of activity, hope, and enthusiasm necessary to popular government and to the following of a democratic civilization.”

Charles A. Beard (1874–1948) American historian

Administration, A Foundation of Government (1940)

Education, Hope, Way, Spring

“After this, having invited over to him all persons whatsoever that were famous for valour in foreign nations, he began to augment the number of his domestics, and introduced such politeness into his court, as people of the remotest countries thought worthy of their imitation. So that there was not a nobleman who thought himself of any consideration, unless his clothes and arms were made in the same fashion as those of Arthur's knights.”
Tunc invitatis probissimis quibusque ex longe positis regnis, cepit familiam suam augmentare, tantamque facetiam in domo sua habere ita et emulationem longe manentibus populis ingereret. Unde nobilissimus quisque incitatus nichili pendebat se nisi sese sive in induendo sive in arma ferendo ad modo militum Arturi haberet.

Geoffrey of Monmouth The History of the Kings of Britain

Bk. 9, ch. 11; p. 239.
Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain)

People, Fashion, Personality, Clothes

“Strictly speaking, the theory of numbers has nothing to do with negative, or fractional, or irrational quantities, as such. No theorem which cannot be expressed without reference to these notions is purely arithmetical: and no proof of an arithmetical theorem, can be considered finally satisfactory if it intrinsically depends upon extraneous analytical theories.”

George Ballard Mathews (1861–1922) British mathematician

Part 1, sect. 1.
Theory of Numbers, 1892

Dependency

“We are obliged to hear all that witnesses have to say; but it is a canticle of Courts of justice that witnesses non numerentur sed ponderentur: they are not to be numbered but weighed. It is the nature of the human mind, it is the perfection of the human heart, to serve a friend in distress; but in doing so, a man should not transgress the higher calls of religion and morality, the obligations of an oath. We are not monks and recluses, as was said in another place,1 but come from a class in society that I hope and believe gives us opportunities of seeing as much of the world, and that has as much virtue amongst its members as any other, however elevated.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Rex v. Rusby (1800), Peake's N. P. Ca. 193.

World, Religion, Justice, Hope

“My brother, Toby, is six-foot-six, [and] he [went to] Vassar; my other brother, Brown; my sister, without one penny from me or my [step]dad, NYU Law, number one in her class—Jesus, it's such a functional family, I don't know where I came from.”

Courtney Love (1964) American punk singer-songwriter, musician, actress, and artist

On her siblings, The David Letterman Show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzX8Zv_dosM (17 March 2004) 1996–2005

Family, Law, Sister

“Alas! it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the Book of Human Life to light the fires of passion with from day to day, that man begins to see that the leaves which remain are few in number.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow book Hyperion

Hyperion, book iv. Chap. viii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life, Books, Light, Passion

“When any hungry wretch takes it into his head to ruin the kingdom, he goes to the king and says to him: 'Sire; if your majesty will give me the permission to raise money and a certain number of armed men, I will pay so many millions. The king then asks how it is intended to raise the money. It is by nothing else than the seizure of everybody in the kingdom, men and women, and by dint of torture compelling them to pay what is demanded. Such financiers are hateful and avaricious men. The king generally consents to their unjust proposals, as he thereby satisfies his own greed; he accords the asked-for permission, and demands security bonds.”

Niccolao Manucci (1638–1717) Italian writer and historian

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 4
Storia do Mogor

Women, Men, Money, Hate

“Suppose then I want to give myself a little training in the art of reasoning; suppose I want to get out of the region of conjecture and probability, free myself from the difficult task of weighing evidence, and putting instances together to arrive at general propositions, and simply desire to know how to deal with my general propositions when I get them, and how to deduce right inferences from them; it is clear that I shall obtain this sort of discipline best in those departments of thought in which the first principles are unquestionably true. For in all 59 our thinking, if we come to erroneous conclusions, we come to them either by accepting false premises to start with—in which case our reasoning, however good, will not save us from error; or by reasoning badly, in which case the data we start from may be perfectly sound, and yet our conclusions may be false. But in the mathematical or pure sciences,—geometry, arithmetic, algebra, trigonometry, the calculus of variations or of curves,—we know at least that there is not, and cannot be, error in our first principles, and we may therefore fasten our whole attention upon the processes. As mere exercises in logic, therefore, these sciences, based as they all are on primary truths relating to space and number, have always been supposed to furnish the most exact discipline. When Plato wrote over the portal of his school. “Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here,” he did not mean that questions relating to lines and surfaces would be discussed by his disciples. On the contrary, the topics to which he directed their attention were some of the deepest problems,—social, political, moral,—on which the mind could exercise itself. Plato and his followers tried to think out together conclusions respecting the being, the duty, and the destiny of man, and the relation in which he stood to the gods and to the unseen world. What had geometry to do with these things? Simply this: That a man whose mind has not undergone a rigorous training in systematic thinking, and in the art of drawing legitimate inferences from premises, was unfitted to enter on the discussion of these high topics; and that the sort of logical discipline which he needed was most likely to be obtained from geometry—the only mathematical science which in Plato’s time had been formulated and reduced to a system. And we in this country [England] have long acted on the same principle. Our future lawyers, clergy, and statesmen are expected at the University to learn a good deal about curves, and angles, and numbers and proportions; not because these subjects have the smallest relation to the needs of their lives, but because in the very act of learning them they are likely to acquire that habit of steadfast and accurate thinking, which is indispensable to success in all the pursuits of life.”

Joshua Girling Fitch (1824–1903) British educationalist

Source: Lectures on Teaching, (1906), pp. 291-292

Life, God, Truth, World

“Truth may be found in the heart of a philosopher but seldom in the figures of a statistician; it is far too delicate a thing to be pinned down to columns of numbers on ruled paper.”

Louis Bromfield (1896–1956) American author and conservationist

The Work of Robert Nathan (1920)

Truth, Heart

“Adolescents are simply those people who haven't as yet chosen between childhood and adulthood. For as long as anyone tries to hold on to the advantages of childhood—the freedom from responsibility, principally—while seeking to lay claim to the best parts of adulthood, such as independence, he is an adolescent. […] Eventually most people choose to be adults, or are forced into it. A very few retreat into childhood and never leave it again. A large number remain adolescents for life.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Volume 2, Ch. 23
Fiction, The Book of the Short Sun (1999–2001)

Life, People, Freedom, Parting

“The consolidations need to be carried out with due regard to public interest and to the rights and established life of various communities in our country. It does not seem to me necessary that we endeavor to anticipate any final plan or adhere to an artificial and unchangeable project which shall stipulate a fixed number of systems, but rather we ought to approach the problem with such a latitude of action that it can be worked out step by step in accordance with a comprehensive consideration of public interest. Whether the number of ultimate systems shall be more or less seems to me can only be determined by time and actual experience in the development of such consolidations.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Life, Communication, Problem, Time

“The continental drift theory is designed to avoid two problems for the evolutionists. One, the magnetic field is getting weaker. Number two, there is very little sediment in the ocean. And another explanation for that might be that the Bible is right and the Earth is not billions of years old.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

Problem

“It is not solely by weapons that ISIS imposes its control. More important is the terror it has instilled in millions in Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and, increasingly, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Indeed, Jordan’s panic-driven decision to execute two jihadists in response to the burning of its captured pilot is another sign of the terror Daesh has instilled in Arab governments and much of the public. In the short run, terror is a very effective means of psychological control of unarmed and largely defenseless populations. Even in areas far from Daesh’s reach, growing numbers of preachers, writers, politicians and even sheiks and emirs, terrorized by unprecedented savagery, are hedging their bets. Today, Daesh is a menacing presence not only in Baghdad but in Arab capitals from Cairo to Muscat — an evil ghost capable of launching attacks in the Sinai and organizing deadly raids on Jordanian and Saudi borders. ISIS enjoys yet another advantage: It has a clear strategy of making areas beyond its control unsafe. No one thinks Daesh can seize Baghdad, but few Baghdadis feel they’re living anything close to a normal life. Daesh’s message is clear: No one is safe anywhere, including in non-Muslim lands, until the whole world is brought under “proper Islamic rule.””

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

How ISIS is winning: The long reach of terror http://nypost.com/2015/02/05/how-isis-is-winning-the-long-reach-of-terror/, New York Post (February 5, 2015). New York Post

Life, World, Feeling, Thinking

“Meanwhile, from our federal government, there was a plan of the National Council of Public Security to resolve the worst and most urgent problem, which is the number of homicides in Brazil, for which we are already in the first place. The first place belonged to Russia, but we are now, with our 50,000 homicides a year, first. Russia has whatever, 42. Russia still was a little bit ahead, but we've got 50. Not saying it's 50, it is 49,999. So we are record-breakers. I already told you, our students take the last places on international tests, and we practice more homicides. Then it is not wrong to conclude: The Brazilian is the dumbest and most murderous of people in the universe!”

Olavo de Carvalho (1947) Brazilian journalist, essayist and professor of philosophy

True Outspeak - 7m58s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_KCwlovX0Y#t=7m58s (4 January 2012)

People, Problem, Universe

“On symbolic use of equalities and proportions. Chapter II.
The analytical method accepts as proven the most famous [ as known from Euclid ] symbolic use of equalities and proportions that are found in items such as:
1. The whole is equal to the sum of its parts.
2. Quantities being equal to the same quantity have equality between themselves. [a = c & b = c => a = b]
3. If equal quantities are added to equal quantities the resulting sums are equal.
4. If equals are subtracted from equal quantities the remains are equal.
5. If equal equal amounts are multiplied by equal amounts the products are equal.
6. If equal amounts are divided by equal amounts, the quotients are equal.
7. If the quantities are in direct proportion so also are they are in inverse and alternate proportion. [a:b::c:d=>b:a::d:c & a:c::b:d]
8. If the quantities in the same proportion are added likewise to amounts in the same proportion, the sums are in proportion. [a:b::c:d => (a+c):(b+d)::c:d]
9. If the quantities in the same proportion are subtracted likewise from amounts in the same proportion, the differences are in proportion. [a:b::c:d => (a-c):(b-d)::c:d]
10. If proportional quantities are multiplied by proportional quantities the products are in proportion. [a:b::c:d & e:f::g:h => ae:bf::cg:dh]
11. If proportional quantities are divided by proportional quantities the quotients are in proportion. [a:b::c:d & e:f::g:h => a/e:b/f::c/g:d/h]
12. A common multiplier or divisor does not change an equality nor a proportion. [a:b::ka:kb & a:b::(a/k):(b/k)]
13. The product of different parts of the same number is equal to the product of the sum of these parts by the same number. [ka + kb = k(a+b)]
14. The result of successive multiplications or divisions of a magnitude by several others is the same regardless of the sequential order of quantities multiplied times or divided into that magnitude.
But the masterful symbolic use of equalities and proportions which the analyst may apply any time is the following:
15. If we have three or four magnitudes and the product of the extremes is equal to the product means, they are in proportion. [ad=bc => a:b::c:d OR ac=b2 => a:b::b:c]
And conversely
10. If we have three or four magnitudes and the first is to the second as the second or the third is to the last, the product of the extremes is equal to that of means. [a:b::c:d => ad=bc OR a:b::b:c => ac=b2]
We can call a proportion the establishment of an equality [equation] and an equality [equation] the resolution of a proportion.”

François Viète (1540–1603) French mathematician

From Frédéric Louis Ritter's French Tr. Introduction à l'art Analytique (1868) utilizing Google translate with reference to English translation in Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (1968) Appendix
In artem analyticem Isagoge (1591)

Change, Time, Success, Parting

“The underlying theme of Western poetry is mortality. The theme of carpe diem asks us to seize the day because we have only a limited number of them. To see life through the lens of death is to approach the condition of gratitude for the gift (or simply the fact) of our existence. And as Wallace Stevens said, Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers.”

Billy Collins (1941) American poet

Interview with Kritya: In the Name of Poetry

Life, Death, Beauty, Flowers

“Our amendment earmarks $10 million out of the account called Army Research, Development, Test and Evaluation. The money would go to a research program administered by the Army Medical Research and Materiel Command in the DoD, for identifying the biological mechanisms behind the illnesses — particularly the neurological and immunological ones; the chronic disease effects; better diagnostic criteria for the illnesses; and identification of treatments. The MRMC will design a research plan for that purpose, relying heavily on the expertise outside DoD and the VA. It will be subject to peer review by experts, a significant number of which will be independent of DoD.$10 million will have a large impact on veterans who rely on the government to take care of them after they have taken care of us.I urge my colleagues to support the Kucinich-Shays-Sanders amendment. Vote 'yes' to restore research funding for Gulf War Illnesses.”

Dennis Kucinich (1946) Ohio politician

Speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressional Record (20 June, 2005) http://frwebgate5.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate.cgi?WAISdocID=239772330196+0+0+0&WAISaction=retrieve.

Money, War, Disease, Support

“Aglionby Academy was the number one reason Blue had developed her two rules: One, stay away from boys because they were trouble. And two, stay away from Aglionby boys, because they were bastards.”

Maggie Stiefvater (1981) American writer

Blue
The Raven Cycle Series, The Raven Boys (2012)

Boy

“I observe you have thought proper to insert the last number of the Philosophical Magazine your opinion that my attempts at the safety tubes and apertures were borrowed from what I have heard of Sir Humphrey Davy's researches. The principles upon which a safety lamp might be constructed I stated to several persons long before Sir Humphrey Davy came into this part of the country. The plan of such a lamp was seen by several and the lamp itself was in the hands of the manufacturers during the time he was here.”

George Stephenson (1781–1848) English civil engineer and mechanical engineer

Letter published in The Philosophical Magazine (1817-03-13)

Time, Parting, Personality, Country

“The cultural-revolutionary politics of personal relations may be far more firmly established in the domains of domesticity, leisure, and consumption than in the organization of practical life. It may still flourish more strongly among the educated professional classes than among ordinary working people. Its war against the tyranny of roles and hierarchies may be perverted by a lack of institutional imagination. Yet its achievements are real. We cannot understand them merely as a series of episides in the confined life of high culture. We can often trace the ideas of this cultural-revolutionary politics of role-jumbling to the work of small numbers of thinkers, artists, and professional outsiders. But the diffusion of these ideas through the medium of popular culture, and the sympathy with which they have been greeted by ever larger sectors of the population, would have been inconceivable without a prior transformation of social life. As always, people had to see enacted before their eyes a fragmentary example of the connection between the freedom to revise social arrangements and assumptions and freedom from dependence and depersonalization. Only then could they want more of the same and believe more possible.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: False Necessityː Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy (1987), pp. 293-294

Life, War, People, Education

“Though Wallis was advanced for his times and accepted negative numbers, he thought they were larger than infinity but not less than zero. In his Arithmetica Infinitorum (1655), he argued that since the ratio a/0, when a is positive, is infinite, then, when the denominator is changed to a negative number, as in a/b with b negative, the ratio must be greater than infinity.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 253.

Change, Time

“One trouble with living beyond your deserved number of years is that there's always some reason to live another year. And I'd like to live another year so that Nixon won't be President. If he's re-elected I'll have to live another four years.”

Rex Stout (1886–1975) American writer

Nixon was re-elected in 1972, but Stout survived his August 1974 resignation from the Presidency by more than a year.
The New York Times, "Rex Stout, 85, Gives Clues on Good Writing"

“I immediately recognized the nearly finished score as incidental music destined by an unlikely congress of muses, including the pre-ghost of Jack Kevorkian, to accompany the death of Tim McVeigh, as his inexplicable circumstances resoundingly invoke the symbols, shapes and numbers found on these pages.”

David Woodard (1964) American writer, conductor and businessman

The Pitch (Apr. 12, 2001)

Death, Music

“I am always working on a number of canvases at one time, eight, ten.... I take years to finish them, but I look at them each day... You see the advantage of not working from real life – the apples would be rotten long before I completed my canvas... I find that it is important to work slowly. Anyone who looks at such a canvas will follow the same path the artist took, and he will experience that it is the path which counts more than the outcome of it, and that the route taken has been the most interesting part.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1946 - 1963, Cahiers d'art', 1954, p. 14

Life, Time, Parting

“Fermat died with the belief that he had found a long-sought-for law of prime numbers in the formula 2^{2^n} + 1 = a prime, but he admitted that he was unable to prove it rigorously. The law is not true, as was pointed out by Euler in the example 2^{2^5} + 1 = 4,294,967,297 = 6,700,417 times 641. The American lightning calculator Zerah Colburn, when a boy, readily found the factors but was unable to explain the method by which he made his marvellous mental computation.”

Florian Cajori book A History of Mathematics

Source: A History of Mathematics (1893), p. 180; also cited in Moritz, Memorabilia Mathematica; Or, The Philomath's Quotation-book (1914) pp. 156-157. https://books.google.com/books?id=G0wtAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA156

Law, Boy, Time

“It was perhaps a bad moment to undertake an architectural guide to the City of London. There are, at the time of writing, still whole areas lying waste after bombing in the Second World War. A number of the City churches, also, are not yet repaired or restored. Yet the publication of this volume was much asked for; so I decided to undertake it in spite of these disadvantages.”

Nikolaus Pevsner (1902–1983) German-born British scholar

The Buildings of England

War, World, Lying, Time

“Women do not enter a profession in significant numbers until it is physically safe. So until we care enough about men’s safety to turn the death professions into safe professions, we in effect discriminate against women. But when we overprotect women—and only women—it also leads to discrimination against women. …If [an employer works] for a large company for which quotas prevent discrimination, they find themselves increasingly hiring free-lancers rather than taking on a woman and therefore a possible sexual harassment lawsuit…”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 121.

Death, Women, Men

“Mathematics is the science of the functional laws and transformations which enable us to convert figured extension and rated motion into number.—Howison, G. H.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

"The Departments of Mathematics, and their Mutual Relations," Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Vol. 5, p. 170. Reported in Moritz (1914)
Journals

Law, Mathematics, Science

“"Among those who give thoughts to things, is there one who does not think of suicide?" With me was the knowledge that that fellow Ikkyu twice contemplated suicide. I have "that fellow", because the priest Ikkyu is known even to children as a most amusing person, and because anecdotes about his limitlessly eccentric behavior have come down to us in ample numbers. It is said of him that children climbed his knee to stroke his beard, that wild birds took feed from his hand. It would seem from all this that he was the ultimate in mindlessness, that he was an approachable and gentle sort of priest. As a matter of fact he was the most severe and profound of Zen priests. Said to have been the son of an emperor, he entered a temple at the age of six, and early showed his genius as a poetic prodigy. At the same time he was troubled with the deepest of doubts about religion and life. "If there is a god, let him help me. If there is none, let me throw myself to the bottom of the lake and become food for fishes." Leaving behind these words he sought to throw himself into a lake, but was held back. … He gave his collected poetry the title "Collection of the Roiling Clouds", and himself used the expression "Roiling Clouds" as a pen name. In his collection and its successor are poems quite without parallel in the Chinese and especially the Zen poetry of the Japanese middle ages, erotic poems and poems about the secrets of the bedchamber that leave one in utter astonishment. He sought, by eating fish and drinking spirits and having commerce with women, to go beyond the rules and proscriptions of the Zen of his day, and to seek liberation from them, and thus, turning against established religious forms, he sought in the pursuit of Zen the revival and affirmation of the essence of life, of human existence, in a day civil war and moral collapse.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)

Life, Women, God, War

“I shall here present the view that numbers, even whole numbers, are words, parts of speech, and that mathematics is their grammar. Numbers were therefore invented by people in the same sense that language, both written and spoken, was invented. Grammar is also an invention. Words and numbers have no existence separate from the people who use them. Knowledge of mathematics is transmitted from one generation to another, and it changes in the same slow way that language changes. Continuity is provided by the process of oral or written transmission.”

Carl Eckart (1902–1973) American physicist

Source: Our Modern Idol: Mathematical Science (1984), p. 95.

People, Way, Mathematics, Knowledge

“72 Virgins" is very suspicious to me. It's a clue. It tells you we're dealing with people from a bartering culture. Because nobody starts with that number; somebody said, "100 virgins!" "50!" "85!" "69!" "79!" "71!" "73!" "72!" "Done!”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

That's how you got 72.
Victory Begins at Home (20 January 2004)

People

“The reaction time studies conducted during the first few years of Wundt’s laboratory constitute the first historical example of a coherent research program, explicitly directed toward psychological issues and involving a number of interlocking studies.”

Kurt Danziger (1926) German academic

Source: Wilhelm Wundt in History: The Making of a Scientific Psychology, 1980, p. 106

Study, Time

“They are at least proof of the inalienable part played, in the functioning of our complex vision, by sensation as an organ of research. But they have a further interest. They are an illuminating revelation of the inherent character and personal bias of the individual soul who is philosophizing. I suppose to a great many minds what we call "the universe" presents itself as a colossal circle, without any circumference, filled with an innumerable number of material objects floating in some thin attenuated ether. I suppose the centre of this circle with no circumference is generally assumed to be the "self" or "soul" of the person projecting this particular image.”

John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) British writer, lecturer and philosopher

Source: The Complex Vision (1920), Chapter I

Soul, Universe, Parting, Personality

“For five thousand infantry would now cross the Kaitna at a place where men said the river was uncrossable, then fight an enemy horde at least ten times their number. […] The enemy had stolen a march, the redcoats had journeyed all night and were bone tired, but Wellesley would have his battle.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Narrator, p. 197
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Triumph (1997)

Men, Time, Fight, Night

“Moral phenomena, when observed on a great scale, are found to resemble physical phenomena; and we thus arrive… at the fundamental principle, that the greater the number of individuals observed, the more do individual peculiarities, whether physical or moral, become effaced, and leave in a prominent point of view the general facts, by virtue of which society exists and is preserved.”

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

Introductory
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)

“Bombay is far ahead of Bengal in the matter of female education. I have visited some of the best schools in Bengal and Bombay, and I can say from my own experience that there are a larger number of girls receiving public education in Bombay than in Bengal; but while Bengal has not come up to Bombay as far as regarded extent of education, Bengal is not behind Bombay in the matter of solidarity and depth.”

Keshub Chunder Sen (1838–1884) Indian academic

Speech delivered at the East India Association, London, on 13th May 1870. See Female Education in India for full speech.

Education, School, Girl

“In the third period, which lasted from the middle of the eighteenth century until late in the nineteenth century, attention was turned to critical investigations of the true nature of the number π itself, considered independently of mere analytical representations. The number was first studied in respect of its rationality or irrationality, and it was shown to be really irrational. When the discovery was made of the fundamental distinction between algebraic and transcendental numbers, i. e. between those numbers which can be, and those numbers which cannot be, roots of an algebraical equation with rational coefficients, the question arose to which of these categories the number π belongs. It was finally established by a method which involved the use of some of the most modern of analytical investigation that the number π was transcendental. When this result was combined with the results of a critical investigation of the possibilities of a Euclidean determination, the inferences could be made that the number π, being transcendental, does not admit of a construction either by a Euclidean determination, or even by a determination in which the use of other algebraic curves besides the straight line and the circle are permitted. The answer to the original question thus obtained is of a conclusive negative character; but it is one in which a clear account is given of the fundamental reasons upon which that negative answer rests.”

E. W. Hobson (1856–1933) British mathematician

Source: Squaring the Circle (1913), p. 12

Question, Nature, Study

“Cultural change is the statistical product of the separate behavioral responses of large numbers of human beings who cope as best they can with social existence.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.4 Emergence

Behavior, Change

“Mathematicians have tried in vain to this day to discover some order in the sequence of prime numbers, and we have reason to believe that it is a mystery into which the human mind will never penetrate.”

Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) Swiss mathematician

As quoted in Calculus Gems (1992) by G. Simmons

“Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in our colonies, which contributes no mean part towards the growth and effect of this untractable spirit. I mean their education. In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful; and in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to the congress were lawyers. But all who read, and most do read, endeavour to obtain some smattering in that science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the plantations. The colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England. General Gage marks out this disposition very particularly in a letter on your table. He states, that all the people in his government are lawyers, or smatterers in law; and that in Boston they have been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one of your capital penal constitutions. The smartness of debate will say, that this knowledge ought to teach them more clearly the rights of legislature, their obligations to obedience, and the penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But my honourable and learned friend on the floor, who condescends to mark what I say for animadversion, will disdain that ground. He has heard, as well as I, that when great honours and great emoluments do not win over this knowledge to the service of the state, it is a formidable adversary to government. If the spirit be not tamed and broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn and litigious. Abeunt studia in mores. This study renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources. In other countries, the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance; and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

Men, Happiness, People, Books

“Quite distinct from the theoretical question of the manner in which mathematics will rescue itself from the perils to which it is exposed by its own prolific nature is the practical problem of finding means of rendering available for the student the results which have been already accumulated, and making it possible for the learner to obtain some idea of the present state of the various departments of mathematics…. The great mass of mathematical literature will be always contained in Journals and Transactions, but there is no reason why it should not be rendered far more useful and accessible than at present by means of treatises or higher text-books. The whole science suffers from want of avenues of approach, and many beautiful branches of mathematics are regarded as difficult and technical merely because they are not easily accessible…. I feel very strongly that any introduction to a new subject written by a competent person confers a real benefit on the whole science. The number of excellent text-books of an elementary kind that are published in this country makes it all the more to be regretted that we have so few that are intended for the advanced student. As an example of the higher kind of text-book, the want of which is so badly felt in many subjects, I may mention the second part of Prof. Chrystal’s “Algebra” published last year, which in a small compass gives a great mass of valuable and fundamental knowledge that has hitherto been beyond the reach of an ordinary student, though in reality lying so close at hand. I may add that in any treatise or higher text-book it is always desirable that references to the original memoirs should be given, and, if possible, short historic notices also. I am sure that no subject loses more than mathematics by any attempt to dissociate it from its history.”

James Whitbread Lee Glaisher (1848–1928) English mathematician and astronomer

Source: "Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science," 1890, p. 466 : On the need of text-books on higher mathematics

Books, Beauty, Feeling, History

“In March 1879 Clifford died at Madeira; six years afterwards a posthumous work is for the first time placed before the public. …The original work as planned by Clifford was to have been entitled The First Principles of the Mathematical Sciences Explained to the Non-Mathematical, and to have contained six chapters, on Number, Space, Quantity, Position, Motion, and Mass respectively. Of the projected work Clifford in the year 1875 dictated the chapters on Number and Space completely, the first portion of the chapter on Quantity, and somewhat later nearly the entire chapter on Motion. The first two chapters were afterwards seen by him in proof, but never finally revised. Shortly before his death he expressed a wish that the book should only be published after very careful revision and that its title should be changed to The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences.”

William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher

Preface by Karl Pearson
The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (1885)

Death, Books, Mathematics, Sense

“It would seem at first sight as if the rapid expansion of the region of mathematics must be a source of danger to its future progress. Not only does the area widen but the subjects of study increase rapidly in number, and the work of the mathematician tends to become more and more specialized. It is, of course, merely a brilliant exaggeration to say that no mathematician is able to understand the work of any other mathematician, but it is certainly true that it is daily becoming more and more difficult for a mathematician to keep himself acquainted, even in a general way, with the progress of any of the branches of mathematics except those which form the field of his own labours. I believe, however, that the increasing extent of the territory of mathematics will always be counteracted by increased facilities in the means of communication. Additional knowledge opens to us new principles and methods which may conduct us with the greatest ease to results which previously were most difficult of access; and improvements in notation may exercise the most powerful effects both in the simplification and accessibility of a subject. It rests with the worker in mathematics not only to explore new truths, but to devise the language by which they may be discovered and expressed; and the genius of a great mathematician displays itself no less in the notation he invents for deciphering his subject than in the results attained…. I have great faith in the power of well-chosen notation to simplify complicated theories and to bring remote ones near and I think it is safe to predict that the increased knowledge of principles and the resulting improvements in the symbolic language of mathematics will always enable us to grapple satisfactorily with the difficulties arising from the mere extent of the subject”

James Whitbread Lee Glaisher (1848–1928) English mathematician and astronomer

Source: "Presidential Address British Association for the Advancement of Science," 1890, p. 466 : On the expansion of the field of mathematics, and on the importance of a well-chosen notation

Truth, Faith, Way, Exercises