Numbers quotes
4.9K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside numbers — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Heavy Connection is just basically about psychic stuff...it's kind of about connections that you're not normally making. It's like a fate number where you're making psychic connections that you're not really aware of but they're there."
"[I am fascinated by stupidity] because normal intelligence is boring. Two plus two makes four - finished. You have no possibilities! Stupidity is infinite. Two plus two can make billions of different numbers."
"Well, Diotallevi and I are planning a reform in higher education. A School of Comparative Irrelevance, where useless or impossibe courses are given. The school's aim is to turn out scholars capable of endlessly increasing the number of unnecessary subjects."
"There is a limited number of plots. There is no limit to the number of stories."
"If I had my choice, I'd pick a song that tells a story every time. There is a great deal of pleasure in doing the vocal on a number that you can put feeling into."
"Four!" I call out. Why am I calling a number? Oh yes. Because that's his name. — Tris."
"A news conference is a device by which the establishment keeps large numbers of reporters from covering the news every place else."
"In this world, which is so plainly the antechamber of another, there are no happy men. The true division of humanity is between those who live in light and those who live in darkness. Our aim must be to diminish the number of the latter and increase the number of the former. That is why we demand education and knowledge."
"Numbers serve to discipline rhetoric. Without them it is too easy to follow flights of fancy, to ignore the world as it is and to remold it nearer the heart's desire."
"Every word we speak is million-faced or convertible to an indefinite number of applications. If it were not so we could read no book. Your remark would only fit your case, not mine."
"Our religion vulgarly stands on numbers of believers. Whenever the appeal is made--no matter how indirectly--to numbers, proclamation is then and there made, that religion is not. He that finds God a sweet, enveloping presence, who shall dare to come in?"
"The amount of a man's wealth consists in the number of things he can do without."
"Again, the great number of cultivated men keep each other up to a high standard. The habit of meeting well-read and knowing men teaches the art of omission and selection."
"Great is the art, Great be the manners, of the bard. He shall not his brain encumber With the coil of rhythm and number; But, leaving rule and pale forethought, He shall aye climb For his rhyme. "Pass in, pass in," the angels say"
"You'll be surprised how infinitely merciful they [these tablets] are. The prescription number is 96814. I think of it as the telephone number of God!"
"The prosperity of a people is proportionate to the number of hands and minds usefully employed. To the community, sedition is a fever, corruption is a gangrene, and idleness is an atrophy. Whatever body or society wastes more than it acquires, must gradually decay, and every being that continues to be fed, and eases to labor, takes away something from the public stock."
"The hostility perpetually exercised between one man and another, is caused by the desire of many for that which only few can possess. Every man would be rich, powerful, and famous; yet fame, power, and riches, are only the names of relative conditions, which imply the obscurity, dependence, and poverty of greater numbers."
"When it's time to stop living, I will certainly make Death my number one choice!"
"There are, almost by definition, an unlimited number of Hells - potentially at least a personal one for every living sapient being."
"It's either because of the number of times the scholar puts the boot into Peter Jackson the director of The Lord of the Rings films or is making a point they have never heard of."
