Large Numbers Quotes - Page 2

• Mathematicians deal with large numbers sometimes, but never in their income.

  Isaac Asimov

  Math, Numbers, Income

  Isaac Asimov (2012). “Prelude to Foundation”, p.25, Spectra

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• Generally speaking, our prisoners were capable of loving animals, and if they had been allowed they would have delighted to rear large numbers of domestic animals and birds in the prison. And I wonder what other activity could better have softened and refined their harsh and brutal natures than this. But it was not allowed. Neither the regulations nor the nature of the prison made it possible.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Animal, Numbers, Bird

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• Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy profession, and a large number of its practitioners spend many nights drowning their sorrows in Ouisghian Zodahs.

  Douglas Adams

  Night, Numbers, Sorrow

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• What TV is extremely good at - and realize that this is 'all it does' - is discerning what large numbers of people think they want, and supplying it.

  David Foster Wallace

  Thinking, Numbers, People

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• To be rich nowadays merely means to possess a large number of poor objects.

  Raoul Vaneigem

  Mean, Numbers, Rich

  Guy Debord, Ivan Chtcheglov, Asger Jorn, Raoul Vaneigem, Mustapha Khayati (2014). “Situationism: A Compendium”, p.141, Bread and Circuses Publishing

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• Technological innovation has dramatically lowered the cost of computing, making it possible for large numbers of consumers to own powerful new technologies at reasonably low prices.

  James Surowiecki

  Powerful, Technology, Numbers

  "Blackberry Season". www.newyorker.com. February 13 & 20, 2012.

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• If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.

  Bertrand Russell

  Happiness, Happy, Hippie

  Attributed to Bertrand Russell, Think, Vol. 27 (p. 32), 1961.

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• Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong.

  Terry Pratchett

  Numbers, Opera, Failing

  Terry Pratchett (2009). “Maskerade: (Discworld Novel 18)”, p.81, Random House

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• A battery by definition is a collection of cells. So the cell is a little can of chemicals. And the challenge is taking a very high-energy cell, and a large number of them, and combining them safely into a large battery.

  Elon Musk

  Cells, Numbers, Challenges

  "Extended Interview: Tesla Motors Chairman Elon Musk". Interview with Spencer Michels, www.pbs.org. June 25, 2008.

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• As any speaker will tell you, when you address a large number of people from a stage, you try to make eye contact with people in the audience to communicate that you're accessible and interested in them.

  Simon Mainwaring

  Eye, Numbers, People

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• The most powerful recent innovation in government is when states aggressively use community colleges for retraining. In Michigan, where large numbers of workers were displaced from the manufacturing industry, we created a wildly successful program: No Worker Left Behind.

  Jennifer Granholm

  Powerful, Successful, College

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• And it turns out that tribes, not money, not factories, that can change our world, that can change politics, that can align large numbers of people. Not because you force them to do something against their will. But because they wanted to connect.

  Seth Godin

  Our World, Numbers, People

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• You know, I'm very proud of the large number of Hispanic endorsements that I've received.

  Carly Fiorina

  Numbers, Proud, Endorsements

  "Carly Fiorina on 'FNS'". "Fox News Sunday" with Chris Wallace, www.foxnews.com. June 13, 2010.

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• No one has done a study on this, as far as I can tell, but I think Facebook might be the first place where a large number of people have come out. We didn't create that - society was generally ready for that. I think this is just part of the general trend that we talked about, about society being more open, and I think that's good.

  Mark Zuckerberg

  Thinking, Numbers, People

  "The Face of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg opens up" by Jose Antonio Vargas, www.newyorker.com. September 20, 2010.

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• We live on a hunk of rock and metal that circles a humdrum star that is one of 400 billion other stars that make up the Milky Way Galaxy which is one of billions of other galaxies which make up a universe which may be one of a very large number, perhaps an infinite number, of other universes. That is a perspective on human life and our culture that is well worth pondering.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Rocks, Circles

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• Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last.

  Rene Descartes

  Numbers, Years, Childhood

  Meditationes "Meditation I" (1641)

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• What a large number of factors constitute a single human being! How very many layers we operate on, and how very many influences we receive from our minds, our bodies, our histories, our families, our cities, our souls and our lunches!

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Cities, Lunch, Numbers

  Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.52, A&C Black

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• The widespread abuse of prisoners is a virtually foolproof indication that politicians are trying to impose a system--whether political, religious or economic--that is rejected by large numbers of the people they are ruling. Just as ecologists define ecosystems by the presence of certain "indicator species" of plants and birds, torture is an indicator species of a regime that is engaged in a deeply anti-democratic project, even if that regime happens to have come to power through elections.

  Naomi Klein

  Religious, Numbers, Ecosystems

  Naomi Klein (2010). “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”, p.156, Macmillan

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• I've never created a riot before. I did cause a brawl at the last formal. A large number of young women there actually arrived with the expectation of seducing me into matrimony, and a couple of their mothers came to blows. It was hilari—I mean, dreadful. Simply dreadful.

  Ilona Andrews

  Mother, Couple, Mean

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• The pretense in disputed elections is that the great conflict is between the two major parties. The reality is that there is a much bigger conflict that the two parties jointly wage against large numbers of Americans who are represented by neither party and against powerless millions around the world." (p. 65)

  Howard Zinn

  Party, Reality, Two

  Howard Zinn (2013). “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress”, p.65, City Lights Books

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• Four billion people on this earth, but my imagination is still the same. It's bad with large numbers. It's still taken by particularity. It flits in the dark like a flashlight, illuminating only random faces while all the rest go blindly by, never coming to mind and never really missed. . . . I can't tell you how much I pass over in silence.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Taken, Dark, Numbers

  Wislawa Szymborska (2015). “View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems”, p.105, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• A piratical ghost story in thirteen ingenious but potentially disturbing rhyming couplets, originally conceived as a confection both to amuse and to entertain by Mr. Neil Gaiman, scrivener, and then doodled, elaborated upon, illustrated, and beaten soundly by Mr. Cris Grimly, etcher and illuminator, featuring two brave children, their diminutive but no less courageous gazelle, and a large number of extremely dangerous trolls, monsters, bugbears, creatures, and other such nastiness, many of which have perfectly disgusting eating habits and ought not, under any circumstances, to be encouraged.

  Neil Gaiman

  Children, Two, Numbers

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• Best-selling horror fiction is indeed necessarily conservative because it must entertain a large number of readers. It’s like network television. I’m your local cable access station.

  Thomas Ligotti

  Numbers, Fiction, Television

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• If we're mad, we're mad in large numbers, at least larger than yours.

  Shannon Hale

  Numbers, Mad, Ifs

  Shannon Hale (2010). “The Goose Girl”, p.80, A&C Black

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• The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking.

  Terry Pratchett

  Peace, Military, War

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