Calculations Quotes - Page 3

• No matter how invasive the technologies at their disposal, marketers and pollsters never come to terms with the living process through which people choose products or candidates; they are looking at what people just bought or thought, and making calculations based on that after-the-fact data.

  Douglas Rushkoff

  Technology, Data, People

  Douglas Rushkoff (2013). “Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now”, p.8, Penguin

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• We are more often treacherous through weakness than through calculation.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Weakness

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• I know I'm not some matinee idol, but I think we're sold this bill of goods by the media, which says that only the most beautiful and dashing people can become movie stars. So when someone like me sneaks in, they have to redo the calculations.

  John C. Reilly

  Beautiful, Stars, Thinking

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• I've done the calculation and your chances of winning the lottery are identical whether you play or not.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Funny, Money, Winning

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• I'm trying not to pay too much attention to the rankings because calculations can distract you.

  Novak Djokovic

  Trying, Attention, Pay

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• Everything that is beautiful and noble is the product of reason and calculation.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Beautiful, Math, Noble

  Charles Baudelaire (1992). “Selected Writings on Art and Literature”, Penguin Classics

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• Arab leaders worry more about making money from the profits they get from oil and gas that they turn the other way when Lebanon is being destroyed right next to them. Their neighbours are being murdered, but they only make calculations for their own benefit.

  Abu Bakar Bashir

  Oil, Worry, Leader

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• We have to choose between a global market driven only by calculations of short-term profit, and one which has a human face.

  Kofi Annan

  Economic Globalization, Faces, Driven

  Kofi A. Annan (2015). “We the Peoples: A UN for the Twenty-First Century”, p.68, Routledge

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• Common sense is calculation applied to life.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Common Sense, Common

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• History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.

  Winston Churchill

  Memories, Passion, Fate

  Winston Churchill, David Cannadine (1989). “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat: The Speeches of Winston Churchill”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• But by accident, not by cunning calculation, books, because of their weight and texture, and because of their sweetly token resistance to manipulation, involve our hands and eyes, and then our minds and souls, in a spiritual adventure I would be very sorry for my grandchildren not to know about.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Spiritual, Sorry, Book

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• The game of life does not proceed like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four. Sometimes they make five, or minus four, and sometimes the blackboard topples over in the middle of the sum and the pedagogue is left with a black eye.

  Winston Churchill

  Eye, Games, Two

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• Half an hour later, each of them had been given a complicated circular chart, and was attempting to fill in the position of the planets at their moment of birth. It was dull work, requiring much consultation of timetables and calculation of angles. “I’ve got two Neptunes here,” said Harry after a while, frowning down at his piece of parchment, “that can’t be right, can it?” “Aaaaah,” said Ron, imitating Professor Trelawney’s mystical whisper, “when two Neptunes appear in the sky, it is a sure sign that a midget in glasses is being born, Harry . . .

  J. K. Rowling

  Sky, Two, Glasses

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• Come here,” she says. “No, you come here.” “I said it first.” “Rock paper scissors.” “No. Because you’ll do nerdy calculations and work out what I chose the last six times and then you’ll win.” Will pushes away from the table and his hand snakes out and he pulls her toward him and Tom figures that Will was always going to go to her first.

  Melina Marchetta

  Winning, Rocks, Hands

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• Small businesses have made the call that to stay alive, health care isn't something they can provide. I think it's a tragic calculation.

  Peter Lee

  Thinking, Alive, Care

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• The reason for your poor projections is often right in front of you. Whether you are using statistical analysis or just an average, sometimes the way you are calculating your numbers doesn't make any sense. Sometimes it's best to get up, take a walk, and revisit your calculations later. I have returned to my work many times and said: "Why the hell would I calculate it like that?"

  Des MacHale

  Average, Numbers, Analysis

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• If it were possible to make an accurate calculation of the evils which police regulations occasion, and of those which they prevent, the number of the former would, in all cases, exceed that of the latter.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Numbers, Evil, Police

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• A warrior is a hunter. He calculates everything. That's control. Once his calculations are over, he acts. He lets go. That's abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can push him; no one can make him do thingsagainst himself or against his better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive, and he survives in the best of all possible fashions.

  Carlos Castaneda

  Letting Go, Spiritual, Wisdom

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• Common sense is the measure of the possible; it is composed of experience and prevision; it is calculation applied to life.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Science, Common Sense, Experience

  "On the Art of Business" by Abdul Wahab Al-Falaij and James Howard Merkel, (p. 88), 2004.

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• The general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.

  Sun Tzu

  Art, Military, War

  Lionel Giles', Sun Tzu (1910). “Sun Tzu's Art of War - Illustrated & Translated for Modern Readers”, p.7, SJ Creations Tokyo

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• Cults and prophets proclaiming the imminent end of the world have been with us for several millennia, and it has been another sour sort of fun to ridicule them the morning after, when they discover that their calculations were a little off. But, just as with Marxists, there are some among them who are working hard to "hasten the inevitable," not merely anticipating the End Days with joy in their hearts, but taking political action to bring about the conditions they think are the prerequisites for that occasion.

  Daniel Dennett

  Morning, Fun, Heart

  Daniel C. Dennett (2007). “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon”, p.294, Penguin UK

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• Anyone who has had actual contact with the making of the inventions that built the radio art knows that these inventions have been the product of experiment and work based on physical reasoning, rather than on the mathematicians' calculations and formulae. Precisely the opposite impression is obtained from many of our present day text books and publications.

  Edwin Howard Armstrong

  Art, Book, Science

  "Electronics" by P. Arun, (p. 310), 2005.

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• The mind has its illusions as the sense of sight; and in the same manner that the sense of feeling corrects the latter, reflection and calculation correct the former.

  Pierre-Simon Laplace

  Science, Reflection, Sight

  Pierre-Simon Laplace (2012). “A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities”, p.115, Courier Corporation

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• But again and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two and two make four is punished with death. The schoolteacher is well aware of this. And the question is not one of knowing what punishment or reward attends the making of this calculation. The question is one of knowing whether two and two do make four

  Albert Camus

  Men, Two, Knowing

  Albert Camus (1948). “The Plague”, Vintage

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• Let your beauty manifest itself without talking and calculation.​ You are silent. It says for you: I am. And comes in meaning thousandfold​, comes at long last over everyone.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Talking, Long, Lasts

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2014). “The Book of Images”, p.107, North Point Press

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