Numbers Quotes - Page 69

If it be admitted that a man, possessing absolute power, may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should a majority not be liable to the same reproach? Men are not apt to change their character by agglomeration; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with the consciousness of their strength. And for these reasons I can never willingly invest any number of my fellow creatures with that unlimited authority which I should refuse to any one of them.

It is an axiom of political science in the United States that the sole means of neutralizing the effects of newspapers is to multiply their number.

The injury which may possibly be done by defeating a few good laws, will be amply compensated by the advantage of preventing a number of bad ones.

Ultimately, the number of books always exceeds the space they are granted.

War is possible only if you have a lot of enemies. If all the enemies get together and form one front - if you cut down the number of enemies - there would be no war.

The number of natural hypothesis that can explain any given phenomena is infinite.

I have lived to prove Thoreau's contention that a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.

The importance of a problem should not be judged by the number of pages devoted to it.

In the human mind, the number of possible connections that can be made between neurons greatly exceeds the number of atoms in the universe.

The Prophet defeated the enemies of Islam even when he and his followers were small in number.

No country can sustain, in idleness, more than a small percentage of its numbers. The great majority must labor at something productive.

When would I stop being second choice? Would I ever be number one to the person I cared most about in the world?

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.

Despotism increases in severity with the number of despots; the responsibility is more divided, and the claims are more numerous.

When a whole system is composed of a numbers of subsystems, the one that tends to dominate is the least stable.

If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take us as long to recall a space of time as it took the original time to elapse, and we should never get ahead with our thinking. All recollected times undergo, accordingly, what M. Ribot calls foreshortening; and this foreshortening is due to the omission of an enormous number of facts which filled them.

If goodness were only a theory, it were a pity it should be lost to the world. There are a number of things, the idea of which is a clear gain to the mind. Let people, for instance, rail at friendship, genius, freedom, as long as they will -the very names of these despised qualities are better than anything else that could be substituted for them, and embalm even the most envenomed satire against them.

I'm going to reduce the size of the Cabinet, cut the number of ministers, reduce the size of the House of Commons, campaign for a European Parliament with 100 fewer members, halve the number of political advisers, and abolish a huge swathe of Labour's regional bureaucracies - and agencies and their offices in Brussels.

The pile of guts was a black blob of flies that buzzed like a saw. After a while these flies found Simon. Gorged, they alighted by his runnels of sweat and drank. They tickled under his nostrils and played leapfrog on his thighs. They were black and iridescent green and without number; and in front of Simon, the Lord of the Flies hung on his stick and grinned. At last Simon gave up and looked back; saw the white teeth and dim eyes, the blood—and his gaze was held by that ancient, inescapable recognition.

I was always geared towards either wanting to finish number one or be number one as far as the best player that I could be, or be the best player at my position in the league. I wanted that to be a constant reminder to my teammates that they looked to their leader who is wearing that number, this is what you should strive for as well.

It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part.

Number one rule for fiction: Coincidence can be used to worsen a characters predicament, but never to solve his problems.

If I can't blow to significant heights, at least I can inspire the niggas that's doing the big numbers.

Sometimes I can't believe I'm going to be 60. I always say there's no point moaning about getting older, when there's nothing you can do about it. But still, I do find it quite funny. I look at that number, 60, and I think, really? Me?

I'll name check Radiohead on this--they've done a pretty suave marketing plan on this new record. I think generally it's been a pretty cool thing, but what they've done is used those (sales) numbers in a way that they can spin them anyway they want cause you don't know what they are.