Numbers quotes
4.9K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside numbers — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"There are many occasions when the muscles that form the lips of the mouth move the lateral muscles that are joined to them, and there are an equal number of occasions when these lateral muscles move the lips of this mouth, replacing it where it cannot return of itself, because the function of muscle is to pull and not to push except in the case of the genitals and the tongue."
"Nothing is so oppressive as a secret: women find it difficult to keep one long; and I know a goodly number of men who are women in this regard."
"Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together. When we say of somebody that he is 'in power' we actually refer to his being empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name. The moment the group, from which the power originated to begin with ... disappears, 'his power' also vanishes."
"Bad reviews I've gotten never diminished the number of people in my audience; good reviews have never added to the number of people in my audience; be your own critic."
"We all have a vast number of areas in which we have no talent or skill and little chance of becoming even mediocre. In those areas a knowledge workers should not take on work, jobs and assignments. It takes far more energy to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence."
"Once you've learned to think you can't stop. And an enormous number of people devote their lives to keeping their minds busy and feel extremely uncomfortable with silence."
"The number of people that can reason well is much smaller than those that can reason badly. If reasoning were like hauling rocks, then several reasoners might be better than one. But reasoning isn't like hauling rocks, it's like, it's like racing, where a single, galloping Barbary steed easily outruns a hundred wagon-pulling horses."
"The truth is that the 143 million orphaned children and the 11 million who starve to death or die from preventable diseases and the 8.5 million who work as child slaves, prostitutes, or under other horrific conditions and the 2.3 million who live with HIV add up to 164.8 million needy children. And though at first glance that looks like a big number, 2.1 billion people on this earth proclaim to be Christians. The truth is that if only 8 percent of the Christians would care for one more child, there would not be any statistics left."
"Success is not a pie with a limited number of pieces. The success of others has very little bearing on your success. You and everyone you know can become successful without anyone suffering setbacks, harm, or downturns."
"I am gone quite mad with the knowledge of accepting the overwhelming number of things I can never know, places I can never go, and people I can never be."
"The greatest legacy is that which benefits the widest number of people for the longest period without limit to value. No one but the Prophet Muhammad was given that role as the seal of God's message."
"There are no small number of people in this world who, solitary by nature, always try to go back into their shell like a hermit crab or a snail."
"Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die."
"Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the 'expert' state of mind a great number of things become impossible."
"A large number of us have developed a feeling that architects tend to design houses for the approval of fellow architects and critics, not for the tenants."
"When I am no longer being copied, I shall know that I am a back number. ... the fear of being copied is often the characteristic of the meager imagination."
"Age is only a number, a cipher for the records. A man can't retire his experience. He must use it. Experience achieves more with less energy and time."
"The key for us, number one, has always been hiring very smart people."
"The survival of democracy depends on the ability of large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of adequate information."
"The ability to sell is the number one skill in business. If you cannot sell, don't bother thinking about becoming a business owner."
