Magnitude Quotes - Page 7

• Because the region of the Celestial World is of so great and such incredible magnitude as aforesaid, and since in what has gone before it was at least generally demonstrated that this comet continued within the limits of the space of the Aether, it seems that the complete explanation of the whole matter is not given unless we are also informed within narrower limits in what part of the widest Aether, and next to which orbs of the Planets [the comet] traces its path, and by what course it accomplishes this.

  Tycho Brahe

  Space, World, Matter

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• The laws of thermodynamics, as empirically determined, express the approximate and probable behavior of systems of a great number of particles, or, more precisely, they express the laws of mechanics for such systems as they appear to beings who have not the fineness of perception to enable them to appreciate quantities of the order of magnitude of those which relate to single particles, and who cannot repeat their experiments often enough to obtain any but the most probable results.

  J. Willard Gibbs

  Order, Law, Numbers

  "Elementary Principles in Statististical Mechanics". Book by J. Willard Gibbs (Preface, p. 8), 1902.

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• That this subject [of imaginary magnitudes] has hitherto been considered from the wrong point of view and surrounded by a mysterious obscurity, is to be attributed largely to an ill-adapted notation. If, for example, +1, -1, and the square root of -1 had been called direct, inverse and lateral units, instead of positive, negative and imaginary (or even impossible), such an obscurity would have been out of the question.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Squares, Views, Roots

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• Magnitudes are algebraically represented by letter, men by men of letters, and so on.

  Lewis Carroll

  Men, Letters, Representation

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• It is well known, that on the Ohio, and in many parts of America further north, tusks, grinders, and skeletons of unparalleled magnitude are found in great numbers, some lying on the surface of the earth, and some a little below it ... But to whatever animal we ascribe these remains, it is certain that such a one has existed in America, and that it has been the largest of all terrestrial beings.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Lying, Animal, Skeletons

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• The most important thing I can teach my kids is that you can't put your value in looks. Presence is based upon magnitude. You can pretend to have an air about you but it is quickly deflated, you cannot deflate presence. Presence walks into a room and surrounds and fills anything that's in that room without trying to demand it, it takes over. It can come from a smile. Like I said, love makes you beautiful. What is beautiful radiates.

  Terrence Howard

  Beautiful, Kids, Air

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• For me the starting point for everything - before strategy, tactics, theories, managing, organizing, philosophy, methodology, talent, or experience - is work ethic. Without one of significant magnitude, you're dead in the water.

  Bill Walsh

  Philosophy, Water, Work Ethic

  Bill Walsh, Steve Jamison, Craig Walsh (2009). “The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership”, p.212, Penguin

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• Bioterrorism is like earthquakes, you should think in order of magnitudes. If you can kill 10 people that's a one, 100 people that's a two... Bioterrorism is the thing that can give you not just sixes, but sevens, eights and nines.

  Bill Gates

  Thinking, Order, Earthquakes

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• Not only the phenomena of the others followed from this, but also it so bound together both the order and magnitude of all the planets and the spheres and the heaven itself, that in no single part could one thing be altered without confusion among the other parts and in all the universe.

  Nicolaus Copernicus

  Order, Confusion, Heaven

  "On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (Preface Letter to Pope Paul III)". Book by Nicolaus Copernicus, 1543.

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• We can break the mountains apart; we can drain the rivers and flood the valleys. We can turn the most luxuriant forests into throw-away paper products. We can tear apart the great grass cover of the western plains and pour toxic chemicals into the soil and pesticides onto the fields until the soil is dead and blows away in the wind. We can pollute the air with acids, the rivers with sewage, the seas with oil - all this in a kind of intoxication with our power for devastation at an order of magnitude beyond all reckoning.

  Thomas Berry

  Blow, Oil, Rivers

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• No one is strong enough  -  given the magnitude of the task, everyone has to step up their game.

  Bill McKibben

  Strong, Games, Tasks

  Source: thinkprogress.org

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• The gigantic challenge is the magnitude of the individual differences in the optimal set point for "good stress." For one person, it's doing something risky with your bishop in a chess game; for someone else, it's becoming a mercenary in Yemen.

  Robert M. Sapolsky

  Stress, Individual Differences, Games

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• Although population and consumption are societal issues, technology is the business of business. If economic activity must increase tenfold over what it is today to support a population nearly double its current size, then technology will have to reduce its impact twenty-fold merely to keep the planet at its current levels of environmental impact. For example, to stabilize the climate we may have to reduce real carbon emissions by as much as 80 percent, while simultaneously growing the world economy by an order of magnitude.

  Stuart L. Hart

  Real, Technology, Order

  Stuart L. Hart (2010). “Capitalism at the Crossroads: Next Generation Business Strategies for a Post-Crisis World”, p.52, FT Press

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• Secondly, figures, the symbols of numerical magnitude, are frequently also the symbols of operations, as when they are the indices of powers. Wherever terms have a shifting meaning, independent sets of considerations are liable to become complicated together, and reasoning and results are frequently falsified.

  Ada Lovelace

  Independent, Together, Shifting

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• Two magnitudes whether commensurable or incommensurable, balance at distances reciprocally proportional to the magnitudes.

  Archimedes

  Distance, Two, Balance

  "On the Equilibrium of Planes". Treatise by Archimedes, Book 1, Propositions 6 & 7, The Law of the Lever,

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• It is not a question of observation which propels mankind forward as if toward a looking glass of great magnitude; it is an instance of aggrandized reflection that insinuates the human psyche to the inhuman.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Reflection, Glasses, Mankind

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• But we must not underestimate the potency of the mathematical process of abstraction. A surprising variety of things happen to have both magnitude and direction and to combine according to the parallelogram law; and many of them are not at all reminiscent of journeys.

  Banesh Hoffmann

  Journey, Law, Statistics

  Banesh Hoffmann (2012). “About Vectors”, p.8, Courier Corporation

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• A man is but a little thing in the midst of the objects of nature, yet, by the moral quality radiating from his countenance, he may abolish all considerations of magnitude, and in his manners equal the majesty of the world.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Quality, World

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.233

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• Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease.

  Abraham Lincoln

  War, Party, Duration

  Second Inaugural Address, delivered 4 March 1865

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• "(Big name research firm) says our market will be $50 billion in 2010." Every entrepreneur has a few slides about how the market potential for his segment is tens of billions. It doesn't matter if the product is bar mitzah planning software or 802.11 chip sets. Venture capitalists don't believe this type of forecast because it's the fifth one of this magnitude that they've heard that day. Entrepreneurs would do themselves a favor by simply removing any reference to market size estimates from consulting firms.

  Guy Kawasaki

  Business, Believe, Names

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• I sometimes struggle with how to properly respond to God’s magnitude in a world bent on ignoring or merely tolerating Him.  But know this: God will not be tolerated.  He instructs us to worship and fear Him.

  Francis Chan

  Struggle, World, Worship

  Francis Chan, Preston Sprinkle (2014). “The Francis Chan Collection: Crazy Love, Forgotten God, Erasing Hell, and Multiply”, p.18, David C Cook

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• Viewing the man from the genuine abolitionist ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed cold, tardy, weak and unequal to the task. But, viewing him from the sentiments of his people, which as a statesman he was bound to respect, then his actions were swift, bold, radical and decisive. Taking the man in the whole, balancing the tremendous magnitude of the situation, and the necessary means to ends, Infinite Wisdom has rarely sent a man into the world more perfectly suited to his mission than Abraham Lincoln.

  Frederick Douglass

  War, Mean, Men

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• Little did I conceive of the greatness of the defeat (at Bull Run), the magnitude of the disaster which it had entailed upon the United States. So short-lived has been the American Union, that men who saw it rise may live to see it fall.

  William Howard Russell

  Running, War, Fall

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• War, at the best, is terrible, and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible.

  Abraham Lincoln

  War, Duration, Terrible

  Abraham Lincoln, Bob Blaisdell (2005). “The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: A Book of Quotations”, p.77, Courier Corporation

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• When you consider the magnitude of how many people use Wikipedia globally, there is a potential here for really creating some noise and getting some attention in the U.S.

  Jimmy Wales

  Creating, People, Wikipedia

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