Cumulative Quotes

• The cumulative effect of each person making a change in his or her own life will make a difference.

  James Balog

  Differences, Making A Difference, Making Changes

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• Even the most wretched individual of our present society could not exist and develop without the cumulative social efforts of countless generations.

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Effort, Generations, Individual

  Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin (1953). “The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism”, Free Pr

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• A man's accomplishments in life are the cumulative effect of his attention to detail.

  John Foster Dulles

  Motivational, Men, Details

  "Trump's Secretary of State pick: What every American should know about Rex Tillerson" by Robert Charles, www.foxnews.com. December 13, 2016.

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• The character of a whole society is the cumulative result of the countless small actions, day in and day out, of millions of persons. Who we are as a society, is the synergistic accumulation of who we are as individuals... Small changes that seem insignificant in isolation can be great contributions when they are simultaneously undertaken by many others.

  Duane Elgin

  Character, Small Changes, Environmental

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• Words have great cumulative power, but in the 21st century, a single image is much stronger. An image suggests the unvarnished truth. That is its power and its fiction.

  Alexandra Kerry

  Stronger, Fiction, Century

  Alexandra Kerry (2008). “Notes from the Trail: Presidential Politics from the Inside Out”, p.8, Rodale

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• The only way forward is in the direction of a common passion, for nothing in the universe can ultimately resist the cumulative ardor of the collective soul.

  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

  Passion, Way Forward, Soul

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• You will say these are very small sins... [But] it does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, Light, Doe

  The Screwtape Letters ch. 12 (1941)

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• I'm always interested in understanding the math of things and understanding as much as I can about all aspects of business. And what I learn today may be useful to me two years from now. That's really the wonderful thing about investments is your knowledge is cumulative.

  Warren Buffett

  Math, Years, Two

  "Three Hours With Warren Buffett - Live From Omaha". Interview with Becky Quick, www.cnbc.com. August 22, 2008.

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• Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can offer with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation, but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Expression, Self Reliance

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Self-Reliance and Other Essays”, p.35, Courier Corporation

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• The force of character is cumulative.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Perseverance, Character, Force

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Jean Ferguson Carr (1987). “The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.34, Harvard University Press

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• At some point, human intelligence became collective and cumulative in a way that happened to no other animal.

  Matt Ridley

  Animal, Way, Collectives

  Matt Ridley (2010). “The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves”, p.5, HarperCollins UK

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• Probably the most pervasive false belief most of us harbor is the fallacy that only some superhuman act would have the power to turn our problems around. Nothing could be further from the truth. Life is cumulative. Whatever results we're experiencing in our lives are the accumulation of a host of small decisions we've made as individuals, as a family, as a community, as a society, and as a species.

  Tony Robbins

  Motivational, Community, Decision

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• The cumulative nature of the evolutionary process, the fact that memory is preserved, means that life grows not just through a random proliferation of new forms, but there's a kind of cumulative quality.

  Rupert Sheldrake

  Memories, Mean, Quality

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• It isn't a hunch but the subconscious mind, which is the creative mind, at work. That is the mind which makes artists do things without their knowing how they came to do them. Perhaps with me it was the cumulative effect of a lot of little things individually insignificant but collectively powerful.

  Jesse Lauriston Livermore

  Powerful, Artist, Knowing

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• Progress is cumulative in science and engineering, but cyclical in finance.

  James Grant

  Engineering, Progress, Banking

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• I've had the thought that a person's 'artistic vision' is really just the cumulative combination of whatever particular stances he has sincerely occupied during his creative life - even if some of those might appear contradictory.

  George Saunders

  Creative, Vision, Might

  "On 'Tenth of December': an interview with George Saunders". Interview with Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. January 24, 2013.

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• I quickly learned that reading is cumulative and proceeds by geometrical progression: each new reading builds upon whatever the reader has read before.

  Alberto Manguel

  Reading, Progression, Reader

  Alberto Manguel (2014). “A History of Reading”, p.36, Penguin

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• Reading is not a straightforward linear movement, a merely cumulative affair: our initial speculations generate a frame of reference within which to interpret what comes next, but what comes next may retrospectively transform our original understanding, highlighting some features of it and backgrounding others.

  Terry Eagleton

  Reading, Understanding, Movement

  Terry Eagleton (2011). “Literary Theory: An Introduction”, p.67, John Wiley & Sons

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• The cumulative power of doing things the same way every day seems to be a way of saying to the mind: You're going to be dreaming soon.

  Stephen King

  Dream, Mind, Routine

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• Enlightenment is cumulative. You become a little more enlightened each day as you practice yoga and Buddhism.

  Frederick Lenz

  Inspirational, Yoga, Buddhism

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• The cumulative effect of the Romantic theory of creativity, as played out in the context of belief in the virtue of the avant-garde, is that while the art world has effectively freed itself from the tyranny of artistic tradition and its historic patronage system, it has ended up inhabiting an autonomous but perceived irrelevance.

  John Walford

  Art, Creativity, Irrelevance

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• Although scientific revolutions in how we see the world do occur, the bulk of our scientific understanding comes from the cumulative impact of numerous incremental studies that together paint an increasingly coherent picture of how nature works.

  Michael E. Mann

  Impact, Understanding, Together

  Michael E. Mann (2013). “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines”, p.38, Columbia University Press

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• When someone is unrelentingly critical of you, always finds fault, can never be pleased, and blames you for everything that goes wrong, it is the insidious nature and cumulative effects of the abuse that do the damage. Over time, this type of abuse eats away at your self-confidence and sense of self-worth, undermining any good feelings you have about yourself and about your accomplishments .

  Beverly Engel

  Self Confidence, Self Worth, Accomplishment

  Beverly Engel (2002). “The Emotionally Abusive Relationship: How to Stop Being Abused and How to Stop Abusing”, p.29, John Wiley & Sons

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• In orthodox film-making, you never shoot sequentially - but with improv, obviously every move you make has a knock-on effect; it is a cumulative process. I have improvised, on the non-scripted 'Timecode.' It can become entirely indulgent: actors smashing crockery and competing verbally.

  Saffron Burrows

  Moving, Actors, Film

  "Word comes through that another punch-up has taken place. Blimey. It's only day three..." by Saffron Burrows, www.theguardian.com. January 18, 2001.

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• There is broad scientific consensus that genetically engineered crops currently on the market are safe to eat. After 14 years of cultivation and a cumulative total of 2 billion acres planted, no adverse health or environmental effects have resulted from commercialization of genetically engineered crops.

  Pamela Ronald

  Years, Environmental, Acres

  "Scientists Are Happy California Won't Label Genetically Modified Food" by Christie Wilcox, www.businessinsider.com. November 7, 2012.

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