Quotes about number
page 8

“There are fears amongst those who are responsible for government to-day, fears not yet gripping us by the throat but taking grisly shape in the twilight, that the Great War, by the destruction of our best lives in such numbers, has not left enough of the breed to carry on the work of Empire. Our task is hard enough, but it will be accomplished; yet who in Europe does not know that one more war in the West, and the civilization of the ages will fall with as great a shock as that of Rome? She has left danger-signals along the road; it is for us to read them.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Classical Association (8 January 1926), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), p. 106.
1926

War, Age, Fear, Reading

“The first Christian who can write decent Latin is Minucius Felix, whose Octavius, written in the first half (possibly the first quarter) of the Third Century must have done much to make Christianity respectable. He concentrates on ridiculing pagan myths that no educated man believed anyway and on denying that Christians (he means his kind, of course!) practice incest (a favorite recreation of many sects that had been saved by Christ from the tyranny of human laws) or cut the throats of children to obtain blood for Holy Communion (as some groups undoubtedly did). He argues for a monotheism that is indistinguishable from the Stoic except that the One God is identified as the Christian deity, from whose worship the sinful Jews are apostates, and insists that Christians have nothing to do with the Jews, whom God is going to punish. What is interesting is that Minucius has nothing to say about any specifically Christian doctrine, and that the names of Jesus or Christ do not appear in his work. There is just one allusion: the pagans say that Christianity was founded by a felon (unnamed) who was crucified. That, says Minucius, is absurd: no criminal ever deserved, nor did a man of this world have the power, to be believed to be a god (erratis, qui putatis deum credi aut meruisse noxium aut potuisse terrenum). That ambiguous reference is all that he has to say about it; he turns at once to condemning the Egyptians for worshipping a mortal man, and then he argues that the sign of the cross represents (a) the mast and yard of a ship under sail, and (b) the position of man who is worshipping God properly, i. e. standing with outstretched arms. If Minucius is not merely trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the gullible pagans, it certainly sounds as though this Christian were denying the divinity of Christ, either regarding him, as did many of the early Christians, as man who was inspired but was not to be identified with God, or claiming, as did a number of later sects, that what appeared on earth and was crucified was merely a ghost, an insubstantial apparition sent by Christ, who himself prudently stayed in his heaven above the clouds and laughed at the fools who thought they could kill a phantom. Of course, our holy men are quite sure that he was "orthodox."”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

The Jewish Strategy, Chapter 12 "Christianity"
1990s, The Jewish Strategy (2001)

Men, God, Children, World

“To tell the indigenous inhabitants of Brixton or Southall or Leicester or Bradford or Birmingham or Wolverhampton, to tell the pensioners ending their days in streets of nightly terror unrecognisable as their former neighbourhoods, to tell the people of towns and cities where whole districts have been transformed into enclaves of foreign lands, that "the man with a coloured face could be an enrichment to my life and that of my neighbours" is to drive them beyond the limits of endurance. It is not so much that it is obvious twaddle. It is that it makes cruel mockery of the experience and fears of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of ordinary, decent men and women…In understanding this matter, the beginning of wisdom is to grasp the law that in human societies power is never left unclaimed and unused. It does not blow about, like wastepaper on the streets, ownerless and inert. Men's nature is not only, as Thucydides long ago asserted, to exert power where they have it: men cannot help themselves from exerting power where they have it, whether they want to or not…It is the business of the leaders of distinct and separate populations to see that the power which they possess is used to benefit those for whom they speak. Leaders who fail to do so, or to do so fast enough, find themselves outflanked and superseded by those who are less squeamish. The Gresham's Law of extremism, that the more extreme drives out the less extreme, is one of the basic rules of political mechanics which operate in this field: it is a corollary of the general principle that no political power exist without being used. Both the general law and its Gresham's corollary point, in contemporary circumstances, towards the resort to physical violence, in the form of firearms or high explosive, as being so probable as to be predicted with virtual certainty. The experience of the last decade and more, all round the world, shows that acts of violence, however apparently irrational or inappropriate their targets, precipitate a frenzied search on the part of the society attacked to discover and remedy more and more grievances, real or imaginary, among those from whom the violence is supposed to emanate or on whose behalf it is supposed to be exercised. Those commanding a position of political leverage would then be superhuman if they could refrain from pointing to the acts of terrorism and, while condemning them, declaring that further and faster concessions and grants of privilege are the only means to avoid such acts being repeated on a rising scale. This is what produces the gearing effect of terrorism in the contemporary world, yielding huge results from acts of violence perpetrated by minimal numbers. It is not, I repeat again and again, that the mass of a particular population are violently or criminally disposed. Far from it; that population soon becomes itself the prisoner of the violence and machinations of an infinitely small minority among it. Just a few thugs, a few shots, a few bombs at the right place and time – and that is enough for disproportionate consequences to follow.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the Stretford Young Conservatives (21 January 1977), from A Nation or No Nation? Six Years in British Politics (Elliot Right Way Books, 1977), pp. 168-171
1970s

Life, Wisdom, Women, Men

“The Yugoslavs accuse us of allegedly being chauvinists, of interfering in their internal affairs, and of demanding a rectification of the Albanian -Yugoslav borders. A number of our friends think and imply that we Albanian communists swim in such waters. We tell our friends who think thus that they are grossly mistaken. We are not chauvinists, we have neither demanded nor demand rectification of boundaries. But what we demand and will continually demand from the Titoites, and we will expose them to the end for this, is that they give up perpetrating the crime of genocide against the Albanian minority in Kosova and Metohia, that they give up the white terror against the Albanians of Kosova, that they give up driving the Albanians from their native soil and deporting them 'en masse' to Turkey. We demand that the rights of the Albanian minority in Yugoslavia should be recognized according to the Constitution of the People's Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Is this chauvinist or Marxist?”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Speeches, Moscow Address

People, Thinking, Water

“So, when a pebble breaks the surface of a motionless pool, in its first movements it forms tiny rings; and next, while the water glints and shimmers under the growing force, it swells the number of the circles over the rounding pond, until at last one extended circle reaches with wide-spreading compass from bank to bank.”
Sic, ubi perrupit stagnantem calculus undam, exiguos format per prima volumina gyros, mox tremulum uibrans motu gliscente liquorem multiplicat crebros sinuati gurgitis orbes, donec postremo laxatis circulus oris contingat geminas patulo curuamine ripas.

Silius Italicus Punica

Book XIII, lines 24–29
Compare:
As on the smooth expanse of crystal lakes
The sinking stone at first a circle makes;
The trembling surface, by the motion stirred,
Spreads in a second circle, then a third;
Wide, and more wide, the floating rings advance,
Fill all the watery plain, and to the margin dance.
Alexander Pope, Temple of Fame, lines 436–441
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake:
The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds,
Another still, and still another spreads.
Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, Ep. IV, lines 364–367
Punica

Water

“Specialization, as has been noted, is the confining of human activity to a limited field. In industrial work this means the limitation of an enterprise to a portion of the field and to the production of a limited line of products. But even when the line of products is limited, there are usually many types that are possible in that line and an infinite number of sizes of any one type. Thus suppose a manufacturer specializes in the manufacture of men's shoes. Here there is no limit to the types that may be produced and no limit to the number of sizes of any type since no two feet are exactly alike. Again a manufacturer may specialize on the production of motors between the sizes, say, of one-half horse-power and twenty horse-power. Here again many types are possible and an infinite number of sizes for each type. But it has been shown that one of the essentials of cheap production is quantity, and for a given total output the greatest number of each element entering into the product is secured when the numbers of types and sizes are a minimum.”

Dexter S. Kimball (1865–1952) American engineer

Source: Principles of industrial organization, 1913, p. 41-42

Men, Shoe, Horse

“If there is some determinate succession of defined whole real numbers, among which there exists no greatest, on the basis of this second principle of generation a new number is obtained which is regarded as the limit of those numbers, i. e. is defined as the next greater number than all of them.”

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

From Kant to Hilbert (1996)

Success

“Just as the number one never can be reduced to zero, once we act or speak, our action or speech is never completely erased. An old oriental saying tells us, "sow good, and the harvest will be good. Sow evil and reap evil". We must understand that everything we do comes back to ourselves. Therefore before wishing for our own happiness and welfare and that of our children, we must do good in secret. To do good in secret means to act without seeking attention and praise, to act without any hope of reward. This is called "intoku."”

Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) Japanese aikidoka

Among the various ways of performing intoku, to walk the way of the universe and to lead others along this way is best.
20. Intoku - good done in secret
Ki Sayings (2003)

Happiness, Children, Secret, Hope

“In what people irritatingly call "iconic" terms, Bin Laden certainly had no rival. The strange, scrofulous quasi-nobility and bogus spirituality of his appearance was appallingly telegenic, and it will be highly interesting to see whether this charisma survives the alternative definition of revolution that has lately transfigured the Muslim world. The most tenaciously lasting impression of all, however, is that of his sheer irrationality. What had the man thought he was doing? Ten years ago, did he expect, let alone desire, to be in a walled compound in dear little Abbottabad?…Ten years ago, I remind you, he had a gigantic influence in one rogue and failed state—Afghanistan—and was exerting an increasing force over its Pakistani neighbor. Taliban and al-Qaida sympathizers were in senior positions in the Pakistani army and nuclear program and had not yet been detected as such. Huge financial subventions flowed his way, often through official channels, from Saudi Arabia and other gulf states…. Then, not only did he run away from Afghanistan, leaving his deluded followers to be killed in very large numbers, but he chose to remain a furtive and shady figure, on whom the odds of a successful covert "hit," or bought-and-paid-for betrayal, were bound to lengthen every day…It seems thinkable that he truly believed his own mad propaganda, often adumbrated on tapes and videos, especially after the American scuttle from Somalia. The West, he maintained, was rotten with corruption and run by cabals of Jews and homosexuals. It had no will to resist. It had become feminized and cowardly. One devastating psychological blow and the rest of the edifice would gradually follow the Twin Towers in a shower of dust. Well, he and his fellow psychopaths did succeed in killing thousands in North America and Western Europe, but in the past few years, their main military triumphs have been against such targets as Afghan schoolgirls, Shiite Muslim civilians, and defenseless synagogues in Tunisia and Turkey. Has there ever been a more contemptible leader from behind, or a commander who authorized more blanket death sentences on bystanders?”

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

2011-05-02
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/05/death_of_a_madman.html
Death of a Madman
Slate
1091-2339
2010s, 2011

Death, People, World, Way

“I can hardly describe the discord produced by the comparison of the retouched part of the painting and the part left untouched, the former having lost entirely the immediacy and brio of the brushwork and the latter the mastery of sensitive and discerning touches... For it is true that the more one retouches under the pretext of restoration, the more harm one does, and even the artists themselves, were they able to return, would not able to retouch their painting perfectly on account of the necessary change in the hue of pigments over time… No painting by Titian should be relined, nor any paintings by a number of other painters.... and, even when it is possible, the operation is more likely to result in deterioration than in improvement of the painting.”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

from his Letters 263-264. circa 1801; in Goya, A life in Letters, edited and introduced by Sarah Simmons; translations by Philip Troutman, London, Pimlico, 2004
Early 1801 - Goya was then First Painter of the Court - the artist is sent to check the results of some restoration operated on works belonging to the Spanish crown. His 263-264 letters reveal the total opposition of Goya against any cleaning or restoration of older paintings
1800s

Change, Time, Parting, Painting

“Five hundred years ago, when faced with an eclipse, many of us would have believed it was the work of an angry god. But as we've unearthed the language of the Code, we've discovered that the apparent mysteries of our world can be understood without invoking the supernatural. And this for me is what's so remarkable. That despite the incredible complexity of the world we live in, it can all, ultimately, be explained by numbers. Just like the orbit of the planets, life too follows a pattern. And it can all be reduced to cause and effect. In the end, even the flip of a coin is determined by how fast it's spinning and how long it takes to hit the ground. The ultimate symbol of chance isn't random at all. It only appears that way. When we don't understand the Code, the only way we can make sense of our world is to make up stories. But the truth is far more extraordinary. Everything has mathematics at its heart. When everything is stripped away all that remains is the Code.”

Marcus du Sautoy (1965) British professor of mathematics

Conclusion in BBC's The Code, episode 3.

Life, God, Truth, World

“It is almost as hard to define mathematics as it is to define economics, and one is tempted to fall back on the famous old definition attributed to Jacob Viner, “Economics is what economists do,” and say that mathematics is what mathematicians do. A large part of mathematics deals with the formal relations of quantities or numbers.”

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

Source: 1970s, Economics As a Science, 1970, p. 97

Mathematics, Parting

“The migratory movement is at once perpetual, partial and universal. It never ceases, it affects every people … [and although] at a given moment it sets in motion only a small number of each population … in fact there is never a moment of immobility for any people, because no migration remains isolated.”

Eugene M. Kulischer (1881–1956) American sociologist

Source: Europe on the Move: War and Population Changes, 1917-1947, 1948, p. 9 as cited in: Sarah Collinson (1999) Globalisation and the dynamics of international migration implications for the refugee regime http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/pdfid/4ff59b852.pdf. May 1999. p. 1

People, Universe

“Dantzig explains why the language of number had to be increased to meet the needs created by the new technology of letters.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 200

“The number of compound nebulæ… being so considerable, it will follow, that if they owe their origin to the breaking up of some former extensive nebulosities of the same nature with those which have been shewn to exist at present, we might expect that the number of separate nebulæ should far exceed the former, and that moreover these scattered nebulas should be found not only in great abundance, but also in proximity or continuity with each other… Now this is exactly what by observation, we find to be the state of the heavens.”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

p, 125
Astronomical Observations relating to the Construction of the Heavens... (1811)

Nature

“I use the example of the rainbow and of the phenomena connected with it, of which sort are the circle around the sun and the stars, likewise the rod lying at the side of the sun or of a star which appears to the eye in a straight line… called the rod by Seneca, and the circle is called the corona, which often has the colors of the rainbow. But neither Aristotle nor Avicenna, in their Natural Histories, has given us knowledge of things of this sort, nor has Seneca, who composed a special book on them. But Experimental Science makes certain of them. [The experimenter] considers rowers and he finds the same colors in the falling drops dripping from the raised oars when the solar rays penetrate drops of this sort. It is the same with waters falling from the wheels of a mill; and when a man sees the drops of dew in summer of a morning lying on the grass in the meadow or the field, he will see the colors. And in the same way when it rains, if he stands in a shady place and if the rays beyond it pass through dripping moisture, then the colors will appear in the shadow nearby; and very frequently of a night colors appear around the wax candle. Moreover, if a man in summer, when he rises from sleep and while his eyes are yet only partly opened, looks suddenly toward an aperture through which a ray of the sun enters, he will see colors. And if, while seated beyond the sun, he extend his hat before his eyes, he will see colors; and in the same way if he closes his eye, the same thing happens under the shade of the eyebrow; and again, the same phenomenon occurs through a glass vessel filled with water, placed in the rays of the sun. Or similarly if any one holding water in his mouth sprinkles it vigorously into the rays and stands to the side of the rays; and if rays in the proper position pass through an oil lamp hanging in the air, so that the light falls on the surface of the oil, colors will be produced. And so in an infinite number of ways, as well natural as artificial, colors of this sort appear, as the careful experimenter is able to discover.”

Roger Bacon book Opus Majus

6th part Experimental Science, Ch.2 Tr. Richard McKeon, Selections from Medieval Philosophers Vol.2 Roger Bacon to William of Ockham
Opus Majus, c. 1267

Books, Color, Way, History

“…among no people of the pre-Christian era do we find so great a number of intellectually prominent men who, by their words and by their whole personality, have devoted themselves to the religious guidance of their nation, as among the people of the early Bible… our Germanists would do well to notice… the science of religions is able to make the comparison; and to the people of Israel it will award this certificate: You have excelled them all by the sublimity of your religion…”

Michael von Faulhaber (1869–1952) German Roman Catholic Cardinal

Sermon 1

Men, People, Religion, Science

“The most probable view is that adopted by Nesselmann, that the works which we know under the three titles formed part of one arithmetical work, which was, according to the author's own words, to consist of thirteen Books. The proportion of the lost parts to the whole is probably less than it might be supposed to be. The Porisms form the part the loss of which is most to be regretted, for from the references to them it is clear that they contained propositions in the Theory of Numbers most wonderful for the time.”

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

Source: Diophantos of Alexandria: A Study in the History of Greek Algebra (1885), Ch. II, p.37

Books, Loss, Time, Parting

“Owing to the strength of this [the Navajo] tribe which numbered then not less than sixty or seventy thousand (60 or 70,000) souls embracing as it did some of those Indians who now call themselves 'Apaches' but who still speak the same language, and who are so alike, and to the fact that they inhabit a country equal to one-third of the whole Territory; that this section was a 'Terra Incognita' and that there is no portion of the American Continent so well adapted by nature for the peculiar style of warfare adopted by the Indians, it is not at all surprising that the many powerful campaigns made against them by the Spanish Government were entirely barren of results as to their subjugation.”

Kit Carson (1809–1868) American frontiersman and Union Army general

Letter to General James Henry Carleton (May 17, 1864) as quoted by Ralph Emerson Twitchell, The Leading Facts of New Mexican History Vol. 3 https://books.google.com/books?id=GUUOAAAAIAAJ (1917)

Soul, Nature, Country

“Quality grouse shooting cannot be evaluated by numbers any more than diamonds can be measured by the pound. It is not a process but a reflection – a reflection in the gunner from the dog he shoots over and the gun he carries, and above all a feedback from the grouse. When these things happen well, looking back at end of day is to be as content as it is given a man to feel. It has been my past, it is my life and my hereafter, like these mountains endless in their splendor.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

An Affair with Grouse (1982)

Life, Dogs, Feeling, Mountain

“How can you own […] numbers? Numbers belong to the world.”

Donald Ervin Knuth (1938) American computer scientist

In his video account on the creation of TeX http://www.webofstories.com/people/donald.knuth/52?o=SH, he comments that Xerox offered to allow him to use their equipment, but that the fonts he created would belong to them.

World

“A number of proposals have been advanced in recent years for the development of ‘general systems theory’ which, abstracting from properties peculiar to physical, biological, or social systems, would be applicable to all of them. We might well feel that, while the goal is laudable, systems of such diverse kinds could hardly be expected to have any nontrivial properties in common. Metaphor and analogy can be helpful, or they can be misleading. All depends on whether the similarities the metaphor captures are significant or superficial.
It may not be entirely vain, however, to search for common properties among diverse kinds of complex systems… The ideas of feedback and information provide a frame of reference for viewing a wide range of situations, just as do the ideas of evolution, of relativism, of axiomatic method, and of operationalism… hierarchic systems have some common properties that are independent of their specific content…”

Herbert A. Simon (1916–2001) American political scientist, economist, sociologist, and psychologist

H.A. Simon (1962) "The Architecture of complexity." in: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. Vol 106, pp. 467-468. as cited in: "James Grier Miller (1916-)" at isss.org retrieved Nov 16, 2012.
1960s-1970s

Feeling, Search, Idea, Help

“"Tighter and Tighter" was actually written around the same time as "Black Hole Sun." In fact, I did a demo with four songs on it to play for the band. "Black Hole Sun," "Sounds Like Days," "Tighter and Tighter" and a song called "Anxious." We blew off "Anxious" entirely and recorded "Tighter and Tighter" for the last record. It was the last song we did. It was number 16 and we ran out of studio time. We had the rhythm tracks done and it was just needing vocals and my guitar solos. We just ran out of time. It was falling flat anyway. I changed the arrangement a little bit.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Soundgarden Era

Change, Time, Sun

“Intersectionality is a concept, not a theory. It is a description of how different forms of oppression--racism, sexism, LGBTQ oppression and all other forms--interact with each other and become fused into a single experience. … Intersectionality is another way of describing "simultaneity of oppression," "overlapping oppressions," "interlocking oppressions" or any number of other terms that Black feminists used to describe the intersection of race, class and gender.”

Sharon Smith (writer) (1956) American historian

A Marxist Case For Intersectionality (2017)

Way

“Well, that sounds - who wrote that? Did Hillary's scriptwriters write it? Because everybody that went out there, we also had John Allen who failed with ISIS. I mean, he was a general, Allen, General Allen. He went out. And he was ranting and raving. And then I read a report. He was in there for a number of months. And he failed with ISIS.”

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

2010s, 2016, July, This Week Interview (July 30, 2016)

Reading

“Mike Morgan is the pitcher. Here's the pitch to McGwire … SWING … looky there! LOOKY THERE!!!! Looky there! McGwire's number sixty-one!!! McGwire's flight 61 headed for Planet Maris! History! Bedlam! What a moment! Pardon me while I stand up and applaud!”

Jack Buck (1924–2002) American sportscaster

Calling Mark McGwire's single season record-tying 61st home run in 1998.
1990s

History

“A government, a regime that is not willing to slaughter large numbers of its own citizens to stay in tyrannical power will lose power.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011), Q&A

“I don’t want to punish anybody, but there are an extraordinary number of people who I might want to kill…I think it would be a good thing to make everybody come before a properly appointed board just as he might come before the income tax commissioner and say every 5 years or every 7 years…just put them there and say, ‘Sir or madam will you be kind enough to justify your existence…if you’re not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little bit more then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive. Because your life does not benefit us and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

“George Bernard Shaw reopens capital punishment controversy”, Paramount British Pictures (March 5, 1931)
1930s

Life, People, Thinking

“I think most journalists are pretty lazy, number one. A little lazy and also they're spoon-fed information, such as the weapons of mass destruction back in 2003…. you have these people who create a package of news, develop it as a story line, a scenario, and they find, as Mailer once said about the press, that they're like a donkey. You have to feed the donkey. The donkey every day has to eat. So [special interests] throw information at this damn animal that eats everything. Tin cans, garbage.”

Gay Talese (1932) American writer

Interview with Gay Talese, David Shankbone, Wikinews, October 27, 2007.

People, Thinking, Animals

“One of the most unfortunate things about being an unfit Englishman cycling long distances in France is the number of signs that yell 'PAIN' down every high street.”

Tim Moore (1964) British travel writer and humorist

French Revolutions (2001)

Pain

“We must pursue the removal of church property by any means necessary in order to secure for ourselves a fund of several hundred million gold rubles (do not forget the immense wealth of some monasteries and lauras). Without this fund any government work in general, any economic build-up in particular, and any upholding of soviet principles in Genoa especially is completely unthinkable. In order to get our hands on this fund of several hundred million gold rubles (and perhaps even several hundred billion), we must do whatever is necessary. But to do this successfully is possible only now. All considerations indicate that later on we will fail to do this, for no other time, besides that of desperate famine, will give us such a mood among the general mass of peasants that would ensure us the sympathy of this group, or, at least, would ensure us the neutralization of this group in the sense that victory in the struggle for the removal of church property unquestionably and completely will be on our side.
One clever writer on statecraft correctly said that if it is necessary for the realization of a well-known political goal to perform a series of brutal actions then it is necessary to do them in the most energetic manner and in the shortest time, because masses of people will not tolerate the protracted use of brutality. … Now victory over the reactionary clergy is assured us completely. In addition, it will be more difficult for the major part of our foreign adversaries among the Russian emigres abroad, i. e., the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Milyukovites, to fight against us if we, precisely at this time, precisely in connection with the famine, suppress the reactionary clergy with utmost haste and ruthlessness.
Therefore, I come to the indisputable conclusion that we must precisely now smash the Black Hundreds clergy most decisively and ruthlessly and put down all resistance with such brutality that they will not forget it for several decades. … The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and the reactionary bourgeoisie that we succeed in shooting on this occasion, the better because this "audience" must precisely now be taught a lesson in such a way that they will not dare to think about any resistance whatsoever for several decades.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Letter to Comrade Molotov for the Politburo (19 March 1922) http://www.ibiblio.org/expo/soviet.exhibit/ae2bkhun.html Variant translation: It is precisely now and only now, when in the starving regions people are eating human flesh, and hundreds if not thousands of corpses are littering the roads, that we can (and therefore must) carry out the confiscation of church valuables. … I come to the categorical conclusion that precisely at this moment we must give battle to the Black Hundred clergy in the most decisive and merciless manner and crush its resistance with such brutality that it will not forget it for decades to come. The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and reactionary bourgeoisie we succeed in executing for this reason, the better. As translated in The Unknown Lenin : From the Secret Archive (1996) edited by Richard Pipes, pp. 152-4 1920s

People, Way, Mood, Thinking

“The internet's completely over. […] The internet's like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you.”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

Daily Mirror: Prince - world exclusive interview: Peter Willis goes inside the star's secret world http://www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/news/2010/07/05/prince-world-exclusive-interview-peter-willis-goes-inside-the-star-s-secret-world-115875-22382552/ (5 July 2010)

Time

“The natural history of these islands is eminently curious, and well deserves attention. Most of the organic productions are aboriginal creations, found nowhere else; there is even a difference between the inhabitants of the different islands; yet all show a marked relationship with those of America, though separated from that continent by an open space of ocean, between 500 and 600 miles in width. The archipelago is a little world within itself, or rather a satellite attached to America, whence it has derived a few stray colonists, and has received the general character of its indigenous productions. Considering the small size of these islands, we feel the more astonished at the number of their aboriginal beings, and at their confined range. Seeing every height crowned with its crater, and the boundaries of most of the lava-streams still distinct, we are led to believe that within a period, geologically recent, the unbroken ocean was here spread out. Hence, both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact — that mystery of mysteries — the first appearance of new beings on this earth.”

Charles Darwin book The Voyage of the Beagle

Source: The Voyage of the Beagle (1839), chapter XVII: "Galapagos Archipelago" (second edition, 1845), entry for 8 October 1835, pages 377-378 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=390&itemID=F14&viewtype=image

World, Feeling, History, Nature

“[The opposition to the Reform Bill of 1866 was directed] against the admission of any portion of the working men to the suffrage. The Tory party, and those from the Liberal ranks who join it, are animated by an unchangeable hostility to any Bill which gives the franchise to the working men. They object to any transfer of power from those who now possess it, and they object to share their power with any increased number of their countrymen who form the working class. They regard the workmen here as the southern planter regards the negroes who were so lately his slaves. They can no longer be bought or sold; so far they are free men. They may work and pay taxes; but they must not vote. They must obey the laws, but must have no share in selecting the men who are to make them. The future position of the millions of working men in the United Kingdom is now determined, if the opposition of the Tory party is to prevail—it is precisely that fixed by the southern planter for the negro. Millions of workmen will bear this in mind; they will now know the point or the gulf which separates one party from the other in the House of Commons.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Public letter (25 March 1866), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 351-352.
1860s

Men, Hostility, Law, Future

“Sri Seshadri has cited the advice which Sarat Chandra Chatterjee had tendered to his people. He had written as follows in October, 1926: “Hindustan is the land of the Hindus. It is, therefore, the duty of the Hindus alone to liberate it from the shackles of foreign domination. Muslims are sitting with their faces turned towards Arabia or Turkey. Their heart is not in the land of Hindustan. But when it is not there, it is no use lamenting over it. We need not be unnerved by counting the heads of Muslims. Numbers are not the supreme truth in the world… In freedom’s battle in any country, do all the people of that country take part? When the Americans fought for their freedom, more than half the people of that country were with the British. In the Irish freedom struggle, how many were actually involved in it?… Right or wrong is not decided by the counting of heads. It is decided by the intensity of tapasya or the single-minded devotion to the cause. The problem before the Hindus is not to devise ways and means of bringing about an artificial unity. The problem before them in how to organise themselves.””

H.V. Sheshadri (1926–2005) Indian writer

Sarat Chandra Chatterjee cited by H.V. Sheshadri, quoted from S.R. Goel, Muslim Separatism - Causes and Consequences Ch.12
The Tragic Story of Partition (1982)

People, Truth, World, Way

“The next monument visited was the great Jain temple built only a few years before by Shantidas Jhaveri, one of the wealthiest men of Gujarat in his day and high in favour both with Shah Jahan and after him with Aurangzeb. …In 1638, however, when Mandelslo visited the place, this temple which he calls ‘ the principal mosque of the Banyas ’ was in all its pristine splendour and ‘ without dispute one of the noblest structures that could be seen’. ‘It was then new,’ he adds, ‘ for the Founder, who was a rich Banya merchant, named Shantidas, was living in my time.
As Mandelslo’s description is the earliest account we have of this famous monument, which was desecrated only seven years after visit by the Orders of Aurangzeb, then viceroy of Gujarat (1645), we shall reproduce it at some length. It stood in the middle of a great court which was enclosed by a high wall of freestone. All about this wall on the inner side was a gallery, similar to the cloisters of the monasteries in Europe, with a large number of cells, in each of which was placed a statue in white or black marble. These figures no doubt represented the Jain Tirthankars, but Mandelslo may be forgiven when he speaks of each of them as ‘ representing a woman naked, sitting, and having her legs lying cross under her, according to the mode of the country. Some of the cells had three statues in them, namely, a large one between two smaller ones.’ At the entrance to the temple stood two elephants of black marble in life- size and on one of them was seated an effigy of the builder. The walls of the temple were adorned with figures of men and animals. At the further end of the building were the shrines consisting of three chapels divided from each other by wooden rails. In these were placed marble statues of the Tirthankars with a lighted lamp before that which stood in the central shrine. One of the priests attending the temple was busy receiving from the votaries flowers which were placed round the images, as also oil for the lamps that hung before the rails, and wheat and salt as a sacrifice. The priest had covered his mouth and nose with a piece of linen cloth so that the impurity of his breath should not profane the images.”

Shantidas Jhaveri (1580–1659) Indian jewellery and bullion trader during Mughal era

Description of the temple built by Shantidas Jhaveri. Mandelslo’s Travels In Western India (a.d.1638-9) https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.531053 p. 23-25

Life, Men, Flowers, Lying

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

Stephen J. Mellor (1952) British computer scientist

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

World

“The number of different aspects that the face of a man has assumed may be taken almost as a physiognomical measure of his … genius.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 108.

“The sixt Definition. A Whole number is either a unitie, or a compounded multitude of unities.”

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

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

“Despite strikes and riots all over the country, bloodily put down by the Minute Men, Windrip's power in Washington was maintained. The most liberal four members of the Supreme Court resigned and were replaced by surprisingly unknown lawyers who called President Windrip by his first name. A number of Congressmen were still being "protected" in the District of Columbia jail; others had seen the blinding light forever shed by the goddess Reason and happily returned to the Capitol. The Minute Men were increasingly loyal—they were still unpaid volunteers, but provided with "expense accounts" considerably larger than the pay of the regular troops. Never in American history had the adherents of a President been so well satisfied; they were not only appointed to whatever political jobs there were but to ever so many that really were not; and with such annoyances as Congressional Investigations hushed, the official awarders of contracts were on the merriest of terms with all contractors.... One veteran lobbyist for steel corporations complained that there was no more sport in his hunting—you were not only allowed but expected to shoot all government purchasing-agents sitting.”

Sinclair Lewis book It Can't Happen Here

It Can't Happen Here (1935)

Men, History, Sport, Light

“When we examine this suggestion, we see that it is no more than a formal acknowledgement of a problem, the problem of how (by what institutional arrangement, by what organization of affairs) the equilibrium prices are to be discovered. Repeated trial and error, while the market stands in suspense awaiting the outcome, is not a practical resort. The number of distinct trials, even if confined to discrete steps of price and quantity, would be so immense that the necessary 'market day' would extend beyond human life-times… [The] theoretical ideal applies to mutually isolated days or moments, each to be treated as perfectly self-contained and looking to no yesterday and no tomorrow. But the real market is dealing with goods inherited from yesterday, and in means of production whose products will not be ready till tomorrow. Meanwhile the non-economic circumstances are changing and rendering each successive equilibrium obsolete.”

G. L. S. Shackle (1903–1992) British economist

Source: Epistemics and Economics. (1972), p. 150

Life, Error, Problem, Change

“I think the verdict that has been given against me is a proof that I am more than ordinary myself, but that the circumstances and the help that is given is more than ordinary, are more than ordinary, and although I consider myself only as others, yet by the will of God, by his Providence, by the circumstances which have surrounded me for fifteen years, I think that I have been called to do something which at least in the North-West nobody has done yet, and in some way I think that to a certain number of people the verdict against me to day is a proof that maybe I am a prophet, maybe Riel is a prophet. He suffers for it.”

Louis Riel (1844–1885) Canadian politician

Address on sentencing (1885)

God, People, Way, Thinking

“Supergravity theories generically contain non-compact global symmetry groups. The general rule is that the scalar fields of the theory in question parametrize a symmetric space. Thus, if the non-compact symmetry group is G, and its maximal compact subgroup is H, the scalar fields map the space-time into the symmetric space G/H, and the number of scalar fields is dim G – dim H. The first supergravity example of this type to be found, N = 4 supergravity is one of the most interesting. In this case there are two scalar fields and the symmetric space is SL(2,R)/SO(2).”

John Henry Schwarz (1941) American theoretical physicist

p. 1

Question, Time

“Scientific number, being set over such things as these, should be harmoniously constituted, in accordance with itself; not by any other but by itself.”

Nicomachus (60–120) Ancient Greek mathematician

Book I, Chapter VI
Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic (1926)

“When modern horror films or fundamentalists talk about “demons,” they mean something very different than what Socrates meant by the term. It was a lot closer to what I was talking about: the essential drive, the highest self, if you like. So maybe there is a connection, when I met, or appeared to meet, a demon. It was a little bit frightening at first, but after a while we found that we got on OK and we could have a civilized conversation, and I found him very engaging, very pleasant. And it struck me that this was a brilliant literal example of the process of demonization. That when I had approached the demon with fear and loathing, it was fearsome and loathsome. When I approached it with respect, then it was respectable. And I thought, All right, there’s a kind of mirroring that is going on here that is probably applicable to a wide number of social situations. The people or classes of people that we demonize, and that we treat with fear and loathing, respond accordingly. We are projecting a persona of manner of behavior upon them, as well as responding to a manner of behavior that’s already there. When we’re looking at the flaws in their personality that we are able to recognize, the fact that we can recognize them suggests that they are probably in some way a version of flaws that we have ourselves.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

As quoted in ""HEY, YOU CAN JUST MAKE STUFF UP." Differences between magic and art: None" https://www.believermag.com/issues/201306/?read=interview_moore, by Peter Bebergal, The Believer, (2013). The Believer interview (2013)

People, Fear, Way, Behavior

“(referring to phone numbers stored in a database of phone and email records) Since '1' identifies anyone in the regional zone 1 of the world, that's the US, Canada and some of the islands - it's right there in the front of your white pages book … all they have to do is use that as a base of knowledge to go in to their entire database and count all of the phone numbers there that had a one in them, right-and then the ones are in the United States and then they'd have a count of how many Americans are in the database and how often each one's there. And yet they claim they can't do that, which is false. You can do the same thing with email, with service providers, IPs and things like that.”

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

source: William Binney - 'The Government is Profiling You' - video lecture at MIT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB3KR8fWNh0

Books, World, Knowledge, Falseness

“I should be glad to know your Excellency's mind about holding all the ground from King's Bridge to the lower lines. If we attempt to hold the ground, the garrison must still be reenforced; but if the garrison is to draw into Mount Washington, and only keep that, the number of troops on the Island is too large.”

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

Letter to George Washington (31 October 1776)

Drawing

“Obviously we have now had a number of very credible leads and there is increasing hope - no more than hope, no more than hope - that we might be on the road to discovering what did happen to this ill-fated aircraft.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

About Malaysia Airlines MH370, quoted on BBC News, "Malaysia flight MH370: New data 'shows possible debris'" http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26705073, March 23, 2014. 2014

Fate, Hope

“The first thing Michael Phelps should have done when that photo came out was call Kobe Bryant's publicist. Cuz Kobe was accused of rape, and all he had to do was settle in court for millions of dollars, change his jersey number and win a championship and that soulless town in LA couldn't be prouder. I just hope that when parents let their kids run around in #24 jerseys, they have the decency to say: 'well come on, number 8 was the rapist. Number 24 has a great work ethic and an unblockable turnaround.”

Daniel Tosh (1975) American stand-up comedian

Happy Thoughts (2011)

Hope, Photo, Parent, Change

“The great majority of politicians and other interested persons tend to…. concentrate on…. measures such as education and training of labour and investment in modern efficient capital equipment…. These reforms are of extreme importance but they are concerned basically with raising the output per head of those who are in employment rather than about the number of heads that will find suitable employment.”

James Meade (1907–1995) British economist

James Meade, Full Employment Regained? An Agathotopian Dream, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, (1995), p. xvii; As cited in: O'higgins, Niall. "The challenge of youth unemployment." International Social Security Review 50.4 (1997): p. 89

Education, Personality, Training

“The separation of men from women at the dinner was still in the mediaeval tradition. Another interesting feature of the evening is the relatively small number of people involved. Eighteen sat down to dinner, fifteen couples danced at the ball. The entertaining was ‘the finest that ever was seen’ because of the style and richness of the accompaniments, not because of its size. This was typical of the period. Feasts for several hundred people were still being given in the country, to prepare for an election or celebrate Christmas, births, weddings, and comings of age. They usually centred round dinner in the hall, and could involve all the neighbouring gentry and near-gentry, and even the tenants and local freeholders. But the entertainments which enjoyed the most prestige were small but elaborate ones for relatively few people – just as the prestigious part of the house was devoted to a few large apartments for great people coming on what amounted to a state visit. A hard line was still drawn between the inner ring of the great and smaller fry.”

Mark Girouard (1931) British architectural historian

Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History (1978)

Women, Men, People, Age

“Imaginary numbers are not imaginary and the theory of complex numbers is no more complex than the theory of real numbers. Complex numbers are as intuitive for an electronics engineer as -100 is for the average person with an overdrawn bank account.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari (1948) Israeli computer scientist

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 3, “Words Scientists Don’t Use: At Least Not the Way You Do” (p. 56)

Personality

“Hold somebody's hand and feel its warmth. Gram per gram, it converts 10 000 times more energy per second that the sun. You find this hard to believe? Here are the numbers: an average human weighs 70 kilograms and consumes about 12 600 kilojoules / day; that makes about 2 millijoules / gram. second, or 2 milliwatts / gram. For the sun it's a miserable 0.2 microjoules / gram. second. Some bacteria, such as the soil bacterium "Azotobacter" convert as much as 10 joules / gram. second, outperforming the sun by a factor 50 million. I am warm because inside each of my body cells there are dozens, hundreds or even thousands of mitochondria that burn the food I eat.”

Gottfried Schatz (1936–2015) biochemist

Jeff's view on science and scientists (Amsterdam, Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, 2006, ISBN 0-444-52133-X, pbk.), Ch. 5: "The tragic matter" (p. 43).

Food, Feeling, Time, Sun

“There are a large number of religious establishments ["convents "] which they call khanqahs, and the nobles vie with one another in building them. Each of these is set apart for a separate school of darwishes, mostly Persians, who are men of good education and adepts in the mystical doctrines. Each has a superior and a doorkeeper and their affairs are admirably organized. They have many special customs one of which has to do with their food. The steward of the house comes in the morning to the darwishes, each of whom indicates what food he desires, and when they assemble for meals, each person is given his bread and soup in a separate dish, none sharing with another. They eat twice a day. They are each given winter clothes and summer clothes, and a monthly allowance of from twenty to thirty dirhams. Every Thursday night they receive sugar cakes, soap to wash their clothes, the price of a bath, and oil for their lamps. These men are celibate; the married men have separate convents.”

Ibn Battuta (1304–1377) Moroccan explorer

Travels in Asia and Africa (Rehalã of Ibn Battûta)

Men, Education, School, Food

“To make everything yield to custom would be to do the greatest injustice. Were the judgments of mankind correct, custom would be regulated by the good. But it is often far otherwise in point of fact; for, whatever the many are seen to do, forthwith obtains the force of custom. But human affairs have scarcely ever been so happily constituted as that the better course pleased the greater number. Hence the private vices of the multitude have generally resulted in public error.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Prefatory Address, p. 23
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)

Error

“A mistake that most people make is to assume that the more followers you can recruit, the better. That's true if you are trying to win an election. A vote is a vote regardless of whether the voter is deeply committed or just barely interested enough to get to the polls. But when you're building a revolutionary movement, the number of people you have is far less important than the quality of your people and the depth of their commitment. Too many lukewarm or otherwise unsuitable people will ruin the movement.”

Theodore Kaczynski (1942) American domestic terrorist, mathematician and anarchist

Letters to David Skrbina
The Road to Revolution (2008)

People

“What preoccupies most scientists now is not how much they know compared to 50 years ago, though that is enormous as a difference, but how little they know compared to what they're finding out […] For a few milliseconds really of cosmic time our species has lived on one very very small rock, in a very small solar system that's a part of a fantastically unimportant suburb, in one of an uncountable number of galaxies […] Every single second since the big bang a star the size of our sun has blown up, gone to nothing […] And indeed physicists now exist who can tell you the date on which our sun will follow suit […] We know when it's [the world] coming to an end and we know how it will be, but we know something even more extraordinary which is the rate of expansion of this explosion we're looming through is actually speeding up. Our universe is flying apart further and faster than we thought it was […] Everyone who studies it professionally finds it impossible to reconcile this extraordinarily destructive, chaotic, self-destructive process, to find in it the finger of god, to find in that the idea of a design. And it's not just because we know so little about it, it's because what we know about it that's essential doesn't seem as if it's the intended result brought about by a divine-benign creator who loves every single one of us living as we do on this tiny rock in this negligible suburb of the cosmos.”

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

Christopher Hitchens vs. William Dembski, 18/11/2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctuloBOYolE&t=11m29s 2010s, 2010

Love, God, World, Star

“Dad is a man of few words. He rarely discusses my compositions. But I hear him humming my numbers to my nephew. The recent one is a hit from the Telugu flick “Oy”. A musical genius in the family is both a huge advantage and a disadvantage. I’ve absorbed so much from my father. But, at the same time, fans keep writing to me saying they expect more from me — because of my lineage!”

Yuvan Shankar Raja (1979) Indian musician

Yuvan Unplugged (2009)

Family, Music, Time

“In the course of the fifteenth century, the sexagesimal division of the radius, in terms of which cords and goniometrical line-segments were expressed, was generally superseded, though not immediately replaced, by a decimal system of positional notation. Instead, mathematicians sought to avoid fractions by taking the Radius equal to a number of units of length of the form {\displaystyle 10^{n}} {\displaystyle 10^{n}}…The first to apply this method was the German astronomer Regiomontanus… the second half of the sixteenth and the first decades of the seventeenth century… observed of a gradual development of this method of Regiomontanus into a complete system of decimal positional fractions. Yet none of the steps taken by… writers is comparable in importance and scope with the progress achieved by Stevin in his De Thiende.”

Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis (1892–1965) Dutch historian

Source: Simon Stevin: Science in the Netherlands around 1600, 1970, p. 17-18

“I made a list of things that I might consider sin if the concept of sin were valid:
Number 1: Credulity, gullibility. I'd say that's a sin.
Voluntary willful ignorance. I'd say that's a sin.
Letting fear prevent you from understanding reality. I'd call that a sin.
Limiting the rights and freedoms of others in order to make them abide by your standards. That's a sin.
Sacrificing the mental, emotional and physical well-being of a child in deference to your religion. That's a sin.
Wasting the one and only life that you know you're going to have, worrying about and working for an afterlife that somebody told you might be there. That's a sin.”

Matt Dillahunty (1969) American activist

Episode 578: "Still More Scamlets" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDcLAeTm5AY, Channel Austin (November 9, 2008) The Atheist Experience

Life, Fear, Religion, Understanding

“What to children learn at school? They go varying distances in their studies, but at any rate they learn to read, to write and to add - i. e. a number of techniques, and a number of other things as well, including elements (which may be rudimentary or on the contrary thoroughgoing) of scientific' or 'literary culture', which are directly useful in the different jobs in production (one instruction for manual workers, another for technicians, a third for engineers, a final one for higher management, etc.). Thus they learn 'know-how.”

Louis Althusser book Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays

Source: Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968), "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", p.132

Children, School, Study, Learning

“In my country, the Netherlands, 60 percent of the population now sees the mass immigration of Muslims as the number one policy mistake since World War II. And another 60 percent sees Islam as the biggest threat.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

2000s, Speech at the Four Seasons, New York (25 September 2008)

War, World, Country

“Today more than ninety per cent of all large animals are domesticated. Consider the chicken, for example. Ten thousand years ago it was a rare bird confined to small niches of South Asia. Today billions of chickens live on almost every continent and island, bar Antarctica. The domesticated chicken is probably the most widespread bird in the annals of planet Earth. If you measure success in terms of numbers, chickens, cows and pigs are the most successful animals ever. Alas, domesticated species paid for their unparalleled collective success with unprecedented individual suffering.”

Yuval Noah Harari (1976) Israeli historian

Introduction to Animal Liberation

Bird, Suffering, Success, Animals

“For me, the nude body is like a raw material.. another artist might use oil or clay. I love the fact that, en masse, it can be turned into an infinite number of shapes or abstractions, while the setting I choose.. rural, urban, indoors or out.. is like a canvas.”

Spencer Tunick (1967) American photographer

Over 1,700 men and women strip naked in square in Germany.. and not a sun lounger in sight, 2012

Love

“Having given her the formula of invocation only once, she hath, O king, managed to obtain two sons. Have I not been thus deceived by her, I fear, O king, that she will soon surpass me in the number of her children. This, indeed, is the way of all wicked women. Fool that I was, I did not know that by invoking the twin gods I could obtain at one birth twin children. I beseech thee, O king, do not command me any further. Let this be the boon granted (by thee) to me.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Kunti reply to Pandu who requested her on behalf of Madri for more children.
The Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section CXXIV

Women, God, Children, Fear

“The Code-and-Fix Model. The basic model used in the earliest days of software development contained two steps:
:1. Write some code.
:2. Fix the problems in the code.
Thus, the order of the steps was to do some coding first and to think about the requirements, design, test, and maintenance later. This model has three primary difficulties: (a) After a number of fixes, the code became so poorly structured that subsequent fixes were very expensive. This underscored the need for a design phase prior to coding. (b) Frequently, even well designed software was such a poor match to users' needs that it was either rejected outright or expensively redevelopment…”

Barry Boehm (1935) American software engineer

Source: A spiral model of software development and enhancement. (1988), p. 61-62

Problem, Thinking

“And they noticed what few others had done – that all over the world, charismatic animals that were once numerous were beginning to disappear. The Arabian oryx, which once had been widespread all over the peninsula had now been reduced to a few hundred. In Spain, there were less than a hundred imperial eagles. The Californian condor was down to about sixty. In Hawaii, a goose that had lived in flocks on the lava fields around the great volcanoes were reduced to fifty. The strange little rhinoceros that lived in the dwindling forests of Java – to about forty. Wherever you looked there were examples of animals whose populations were falling rapidly. This planet was in danger of losing a significant number of its inhabitants – both animals and plants.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

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

World, Animals

“We went around the room together, And he Clement Greenberg finally let me know that he thought my picture was the worst one in the show.. [she laughs]. At the same time he took my phone number.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

Greenberg visited her early show early 1950, Frankenthaler was asked to organize a benefit show of paintings by Bennington alumnae
1970s - 1980s, interview with Deborah Salomon in 'New York Times', 1989

Time

“We must express the view, based on our empirical observations, that a substantial number of journalists are ignorant, lazy, opinionated, and intellectually dishonest. The profession is heavily cluttered with aged hacks toiling through a miasma of mounting decrepitude and often alcoholism, and even more so with arrogant and abrasive youngsters who substitute 'commitment' for insight.”

Conrad Black (1944) Canadian-born newspaper publisher

Black, Conrad et al, "A Brief to the Special Senate Committee on the Mass Media from the Sherbrooke Record...", 1969 : Despite Black's involvement in press ownership, he heaped scorn on journalism

Alcohol, Age

“I've never had a message for someone in my entire life. Except maybe to give out my room number.”

Bon Scott (1946–1980) Rock musician

From The Good Times, July 1979.

Life

“Monotheism is a dictatorship. The number of the beast is 1.”

Johannes Grenzfurthner (1975) Austrian artist, writer, curator, and theatre and film director

from documentary Traceroute

“The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives reports that there are 250,000,000 privately-owned guns of all kinds in America. The firearms industry says that there are three times that number — three quarters of a billion guns — 'of modern design in good working order'. Americans are better heeled than most foreign armies.
And that's exactly the way it should be.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Tastes Like Chicken" http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle563-20100328-02.html 28 March 2010.

Alcohol, Way, Time

“Some… agreeing with Philolaus, believe that the proportion is called harmonic because it attends upon all geometric harmony, and they say that 'geometric harmony' is the cube because it is harmonized in all three dimensions, being the product of a number thrice multiplied together. For in every cube this proportion is mirrored; there are in every cube 12 sides, 8 angles and 6 faces; hence 8, the [harmonic] mean between 6 and 12, is according to harmonic proportion…”

Nicomachus (60–120) Ancient Greek mathematician

this harmonic proportion may be expressed as <math>\frac{12}{6}=\frac{12-8}{8-6}</math> or inversely.
Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic (1926)

“Whatever knowledge of the question is manifested herein comes largely from my work in a variety of movements intended either to diminish the number of dependents or to ameliorate the conditions of poverty.”

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

Source: Poverty (1912), p. vii

Question, Knowledge, Dependency

“I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret Magic of numbers.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 12
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

Secret, Way

“If low-wage workers do not always behave in an economically rational way, that is, as free agents within a capitalist democracy, it is because they dwell in a place that is neither free nor in any way democratic. When you enter the low-wage workplace — and many of the medium-wage workplaces as well — you check your civil liberties at the door, leave America and all it supposedly stands for behind, and learn to zip your lips for the duration of the shift. The consequences of this routine surrender go beyond the issues of wages and poverty. We can hardly pride ourselves on being the world's preeminent democracy, after all, if large numbers of citizens spend half their waking hours in what amounts, in plain terms, to a dictatorship.”

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941) American writer and journalist

Evaluation (p. 210)
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America (2001)

World, Way, Democracy, Learning

“Is a virus a living organism? What is a gene, and how does the original genetic constitution of a living organism express itself in the developed characteristics of the adult? Do complex protein molecules "know how" to reduplicate their pattern, and is this an essential clue to the problem of reproduction of living creatures? All these are certainly complex problems, but they are not problems of disorganized complexity, to which statistical methods hold the key. They are all problems which involve dealing simultaneously with a sizable number of factors which are interrelated into an organic whole. They are all, in the language here proposed, problems of organized complexity.”

Warren Weaver (1894–1978) American mathematician

Source: Science and Complexity, 1948, p. 537

Problem

“The term "just war" contains an internal contradiction. War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to deal with evil, tyranny, and oppression without killing huge numbers of people.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

Terrorism and War (2002)

War, People, Evil, Time

“All the Progressive people with their supporters, the entire Judenschaft and most foreign countries, that is to say, taken together are formidable foes … In view of the colossal influence which the Jews wiled by virtue of their wealth, through which they have secured the services of Christians in influential positions, even though they themselves are few in number, they are by far the most dangerous of our enemies.”

Alfred von Waldersee (1832–1904) Prussian Field Marshal

From a 1887 letter to Prince Wilhelm (the future Kaiser)

People, Support, Country, Wealth

“No superior can supervise directly the work of more than five or, at the most, six subordinates whose work interlocks. The reason for this is simple. What is supervised is not only the individuals, but the permutations and combinations of the relationships between them. And while the former increase in arithmetical progression with the addition of each fresh subordinate, the latter increase by geometrical progression. If a superior adds a sixth to five immediate subordinates he Increases his opportunity of delegation by 20 per cent, but he adds over 100 per cent to the number of relationships he has to take into account. Because ultimately it is based on the limitations imposed by the human span of attention, this principle is called The Span of Control.”

Lyndall Urwick (1891–1983) British management consultant

Source: 1940s, The Elements of Business Administration, 1943, p. 53

“The true greatness of a Nation cannot be in triumphs of the intellect alone. Literature and art may widen the sphere of its influence; they may adorn it; but they are in their nature but accessaries. The true grandeur of humanity is in moral elevation, enlightened and decorated by the intellect of man. The truest tokens of this grandeur in a State are the diffusion of the greatest happiness among the greatest number, and that passionless God-like Justice, which controls the relations of the State to other States, and to all the people, who are committed to its charge.”

Charles Sumner (1811–1874) American abolitionist and politician

"True Grandeur of Nations," oration before the authorities of the City of Boston (July 4, 1845)

God, Happiness, People, Justice

“If we would reach a degree of civilization higher and grander than any yet attained, we should welcome to our ample continent all the nations, kindreds, tongues and peoples, and as fast as they learn our language and comprehend the duties of citizenship, we should incorporate them into the American body politic. The outspread wings of the American eagle are broad enough to shelter all who are likely to come. As a matter of selfish policy, leaving right and humanity out of the question, we cannot wisely pursue any other course. Other governments mainly depend for security upon the sword; ours depends mainly upon the friendship of the people. In all matters, in time of peace, in time of war, and at all times, it makes its appeal to the people, and to all classes of the people. Its strength lies in their friendship and cheerful support in every time of need, and that policy is a mad one which would reduce the number of its friends by excluding those who would come, or by alienating those who are already here.”

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

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Friendship, War, People, Peace

“When an equation…clearly leads to two negative or imaginary roots, [Diophantus] retraces his steps and shows by how by altering the equation, he can get a new one that has rational roots. …Diophantus is a pure algebraist; and since algebra in his time did not recognize irrational, negative, and complex numbers, he rejected equations with such solutions.”

Morris Kline (1908–1992) American mathematician

Source: Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972), p. 143.

Time

“… in economic political discussions there is a nearly infinite number of specific questions that may be asked. Besides the ones mentioned in section 3 consider for instance these: "Should we build a road between points A and B in the country?", "Should we promote investments that will give employment to many people, or should we on the contrary promote such investment which will save labour?"… "Should we put more emphasis on things that have up to now not been included in the statistical concept of the gross national product? For instance, should we try to avoid air-pollution and all the kinds of intoxications that may be caused by refuse and waste (a problem that must be studied in its totality as a problem of circulation of matter in society, much in the same way as we study interindustry relations in an input-output table)?“, “Should we assess economic value to an undisturbed nature?””

Ragnar Frisch (1895–1973) Norwegian economist

etc.
Source: 1970s and later, From Utopian Theory to Practical Applications, 1970, p. 29

People, Way, Question, Nature

“… of all the minorities in America, the blacks have undertaken assimilation as first-class citizens under the greatest number of handicaps. Many early political leaders of the United States, including Abraham Lincoln, were fearful the blacks might never achieve complete adjustment because of the slavery culture in which the first few generations were raised. Nevertheless, freedom and education brought a whole new horizon of hope to the blacks within three generations. Tens of thousands of them hurdled the culture gap, and soon the blacks in other countries saw their ethnic cousins in the United States enjoying a higher standard of living than blacks in any part of the world. In fact, by 1970 a black high school student in Alabama or Mississippi had a better opportunity to get a college education than a white student in England.”

W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist

The 5,000 Year Leap (1981)

World, Education, Fear, School

“In science fiction, we dream. In order to colonize in space, to rebuild our cities, which are so far out of whack, to tackle any number of problems, we must imagine the future, including the new technologies that are required.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Playboy interview (1996)

Dreams, Imagination, Problem, Science

“Architecture worth great attention. As we double our numbers every 20 years we must double our houses. Besides we build of such perishable materials that one half of our houses must be rebuilt in every space of 20 years. So that in that term, houses are to be built for three fourths of our inhabitants. It is then among the most important arts: and it is desireable to introduce taste into an art which shews so much.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Hints to Americans travelling in Europe, letter to John Rutledge, Jr. (June 19, 1788); in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd (1956), vol. 13, p. 269
1780s

Art, Housing

“It seems to me a defect in our much famed Constitution, to have to part with an admirable Govt like Ld Salisbury's for no question of any importance or any particular reason, merely on account of the number of votes.”

Victoria of the United Kingdom (1819–1901) British monarch who reigned 1837–1901

Comment made after Salisbury lost power to Gladstone in 1892, quoted in Queen Victoria: A Biographical Companion by Helen Rappaport (2003), p. 331 http://books.google.com/books?id=NLGhimIiFPoC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA331#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Question, Parting

“Nearly conscious in someone like Michelangelo, or Paolo Uccello, quite intuitive in painters such as Ingres, or Corot, it works on the basis of numbers which belong to the painting itself, not to whatever it represents.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Cubism was born

Painting

“Countless numbers of people have justified war on grounds of the end in view and the spirit of the combatants.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

"What is War?" (1924)

War, People

“First there are the Jews who, dwelling in every country throughout the world, identify themselves with that country, enter into its national life and, while adhering faithfully to their own religion, regard themselves as citizens in the fullest sense of the State which has received them. Such a Jew living in England would say, 'I am an English man practising the Jewish faith.' This is a worthy conception, and useful in the highest degree. We in Great Britain well know that during the great struggle the influence of what may be called the 'National Jews' in many lands was cast preponderatingly on the side of the Allies; and in our own Army Jewish soldiers have played a most distinguished part, some rising to the command of armies, others winning the Victoria Cross for valour. There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution, by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews, it is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd) or of Krassin or Radek -- all Jews. In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses. The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers in the population is astonishing.”

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

"Zionism versus Bolshevism", Illustrated Sunday Herald (February 1920)
Early career years (1898–1929)

Life, People, World, Faith

“In order to proceed with abstraction, the organism must be exposed to a sufficient number of events which contain the same factors. Only then is a person equipped to cope with the most frequent happenings that he may encounter.”

Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist

Source: Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry, 1951, p. 7

Personality

“Their reason for killing and destroying such an infinite number of souls is that the Christians have an ultimate aim, which is to acquire gold, and to swell themselves with riches in a very brief time and thus rise to a high estate disproportionate to their merits.”

Bartolomé de las Casas (1474–1566) Spanish Dominican friar, historian, and social reformer

History of the Indies (1561)

Soul, Time

“Monotheism has manufactured a number of hate-filled words - infidel, kãfir, unbeliever, munkir, mushrik, heathen, heretic, hypocrite, polytheist, pantheist, pagan - which raise unbreakable barriers between brother and brother, and which divide the one human family into a number of warring camps.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Defence of Hindu Society (1983)

Hate, War, Family

“I really don’t think I was influenced by anyone. I think I will leave it up to someone else to determine who influenced me. I admired a tremendous number of photographers, but for some reason I arrived at a point of view of my own.”

Saul Leiter (1923–2013) American photographer

Saul Leiter: The Quiet Iconoclast (2009)

Thinking

“The Roman historian Tacitus once said, that the health and the disease of a state can be measured in the number of its laws. If we Germans nowadays look at the huge number of laws, we have to say, that it's not health, but death that we're approaching. … It is strange that it is Social Democracy of all movements, which in the old state complained about exceptions, that now issues exception laws itself. These exception-laws are means of force and are created in the parliaments with the help of supranational financial powers. …
In the old state an interest rate of more than 6 percent was deemed usury. Today this usury is legalized. It was YOU, the men of the left -- who always pretend to fight against capitalism and exploitation -- who accomplished this. It will be your downfall!”

Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician

Der römische Geschichtsschreiber Tacitus hat einmal gesagt, dass man die Gesundheit und die Krankheit eines Staates nach der Zahl seiner Gesetze ermessen könne. Wenn wir Deutsche heute die große Zahl unserer Gesetze betrachten, dann müssen wir sagen, dass wir nicht der Gesundheit, sondern dem Tode entgegengehen. … Es ist sonderbar, dass ausgerechnet die Sozialdemokratie, die sich im alten Staat immer über Ausnahmen aufgeregt hat, jetzt selbst Ausnahmegesetze erläßt! Diese Ausnahmegesetze sind Zwangsmittel und werden in den Parlamenten mit Hilfe überstaatlicher Finanzmächte geschaffen. …
Im alten Staate galt ein Zinsfuß von mehr als 6 Prozent als Wucher. Heute ist dieser Wucher gesetzlich genehmigt. Das haben SIE, meine Herren von der Linken, die Sie immer vorgeben, Kapitalismus und Ausbeutung zu bekämpfen, fertiggebracht! Daran werden Sie zugrunde gehen!
04/20/1926, speech in the Bavarian regional parliament ("Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938)

Death, Men, Health, Disease