Numbers Quotes - Page 117

I was in my office when - on 9/11. I think I had a number of meetings scheduled. I was just getting to know the bureau. And somebody walked in and said the first plane had - or a plane had struck the World Trade Center, one of the towers.

Few people realize the number of things that are possible.

I have tried, with little success, to get some of my friends to understand my amazement that the abstraction of integers for counting is both possible and useful. Is it not remarkable that 6 sheep plus 7 sheep makes 13 sheep; that 6 stones plus 7 stones make 13 stones? Is it not a miracle that the universe is so constructed that such a simple abstraction as a number is possible? To me this is one of the strongest examples of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics. Indeed, I find it both strange and unexplainable.

When an actor asks you to read his script, your heart sinks. The number of scripts I've been given by actors that are so unbelievably terrible!

In medieval times, the Church used to sell 'indulgences' for money. This amounted to paying for some number of days' remission from purgatory, and the Church literally (and with breathtaking presumption) issued signed certificates specifying the number of days off that had been purchased. . . . And of all its money-making rip-offs, the selling of indulgences must surely rank among the greatest con tricks in history. . . .

Numbers are limits, and perfection doesn't have limits.

Everyone is talking about sustainability and resilience, yet all that knowledge is thrown in the bin. [Lagos is] a unique case, but also a test case. It's unbelievably unique, but also it's now considered with a number of really generic opinions, generic solution, generic expectations.

The U.S. has in its stockpiles more nuclear bombs, chemical and biological weapons, more aircraft, rockets and delivery systems in number and sophistication than the rest of the world combined. Included are twenty commissioned Trident II nuclear submarines any one of which could destroy Europe.

All Gaza's temples are torn down and burned and the city is cleansed of every belief but the Christian faith. The most stubborn opponents, faute de mieux, are tied up, marched away to the provincial capital, severely tortured, and all killed mala morte, 'a great number.'

I am quite sure that a good number of "cures" of psychotics consist in the fact that the patient has decided, for one reason or other, once more to play at being sane.

I do not want to drive across a bridge designed by an engineer who believed the numbers in structural stress models are relative truths.

Observation of my life to date shows that the larger the number for whom I work, the more positively effective I become. Thus, it is obvious that if I work always and only for all humanity, I will be optimally effective.

Over the last 30 years there have been a steadily growing number of architects who are returning to traditional and classical principles.

Many of our brothers and sisters are 'baptized, but insufficiently evangelized.' In a number of cases, nations once rich in faith and in vocations are losing their identity under the influence of a secularized culture. The need for a new evangelization, so deeply felt by my venerable Predecessor, must be valiantly reaffirmed, in the certainty that God's word is effective.

It is no great wonder if in long process of time, while fortune takes her course hither and thither, numerous coincidences should spontaneously occur. If the number and variety of subjects to be wrought upon be infinite, it is all the more easy for fortune, with such an abundance of material, to effect this similarity of results.

One should not associate with controversy; one should always reach for the highest ratings; one should never forget that there is safety in numbers; one should always remember that comedy, adventure, and escapism provide the best atmosphere for selling.

To be effective, every knowledge worker, and especially every executive, therefore needs to dispose of time in fairly large chunks. To have small dribs and drabs of time at his disposal will not be sufficient even if the total is an impressive number of hours.

Unfortunately I have never been good in math. Numbers simply do not interest me or seem as real to me as words.

...what threatens us today in the world of computers and other invasions of privacy is not a national ID card but a number of other things.

I had this whole issue of doing a crime film in the 2010s. The genre's been mined very, very heavily. Post-Scorsese, post-Tarantino, post-Guy Ritchie, what do you do? I wasn't attracted to pulp so much as all of a sudden I had a pulp problem. I had to find a way to make this interesting, because there's a lot of crime films that come out on VOD every week, and a number of these star Nicolas Cage.

To give emphasis only to beauty makes me think of a mathematics that deals with positive numbers only.

Typically, in the last round of open tournaments the level of play is markedly lower, the number of blunders higher.

Every organization has an allotted number of positions to be filled by misfits.

As brands become larger, the need to reach greater numbers of customers makes them less edgy and dilutes their unique positioning as they try to please everyone. It is therefore not surprising to find such brands go into a few years of decline before they are able to reinvent themselves.

Immigrants, as troubling as they are to some people, are an integral part of what the American Dream is supposed to be. They're understandable to a considerable number of Americans.