Calculating Quotes

• I've always said to myself that if a little pocket calculator can do it why shouldn't I?

  Roald Dahl

  Believe In Yourself, Pockets, Littles

  Roald Dahl (1996). “Matilda”, Puffin

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• You only get one sunrise and one sunset a day, and you only get so many days on the planet. A good photographer does the math and doesn't waste either.

  Galen Rowell

  Inspirational, Photography, Nature

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• Numbers have life; they’re not just symbols on paper.

  Shakuntala Devi

  Life, Numbers, Paper

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• The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul?

  Oscar Wilde

  Stars, Moon, Heaven

  Letter to Alfred Douglas, Jan. - Mar. 1897

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• 'Easter' is a movable event, calculated by the relative positions of sun and moon, an impossible way of fixing year by year the anniversary of a historical event, but a very natural and indeed inevitable way of calculating a solar festival. These changing dates do not point to the history of a man, but to the hero of a solar myth.

  Annie Besant

  Easter, Hero, Moon

  Annie Besant (2012). “The Theosophical Writings of Annie Besant”, p.796, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Innocence alone dares commit certain acts of audacity. Virtue, when tutored, is as calculating as vice.

  Honore de Balzac

  Vices, Audacity, Innocence

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• Humans. Violent but peace-loving. Passionate but cerebral. Humane but cruel. Impulsive but calculating. Generous but selfish. And yet, somehow I knew that they represented the best hope of the galaxy.

  Katherine Applegate

  Selfish, Passionate, Violent

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• I don't like that sort of school... where the bright childish imagination is utterly discouraged... where I have never seen among the pupils, whether boys or girls, anything but little parrots and small calculating machines.

  Charles Dickens

  Girl, Creativity, School

  Charles Dickens (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles Dickens (Illustrated)”, p.14216, Delphi Classics

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• If you meditate long enough, deep enough, it is impossible for you to hurt anybody for food; it is impossible. It is not a question of argument, it is not a question of scriptures, it is not who says what, it is not a question of calculating that if you take vegetarian food you will become spiritual; it is automatic. It is not a question of cunningness, you simply become spiritual. The whole thing seems so absurd. Just for food, killing animals, birds, seems so absurd, it falls down.

  Rajneesh

  Spiritual, Hurt, Fall

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• To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced, requires years of contemplation. Not activity Not reasoning. Not calculating. Not busy behaviour of any kind. Not reading. Not talking. Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is one needs to know.

  George Spencer-Brown

  Reading, Math, Thinking

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• I go to Las Vegas--or at least I went to Las Vegas--because even though I knew everything that was sinister, calculating, and evil about it, I loved Las Vegas. Only in Vegas could I dare to fantasize that I was a Friend of Frank. Or that I was throwing the dice at Dino's favorite table. Or that I might luck out and sip bourbon with Rickles after his last lounge show. The D.I. oozed that kind of heady fantasy.

  Marc Cooper

  Vegas, Evil, Luck

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• Very soon I discovered that if one gets a feeling for no more than a dozen other radiation and nuclear constants, one can imagine the subatomic world almost tangibly, and manipulate the picture dimensionally and qualitatively, before calculating more precise relationships.

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Feelings, Nuclear, World

  "Adventures of a Mathematician" by Stanislaw Ulam, Third Edition, (p. 148), 1991.

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• With all due respect, many in the entertainment industry are deep into mind-altering substance abuse, and when one's logic and intellectual calculating powers are replaced with dopey feel-good, fantasy-driven denial, the democratic party serves them well.

  Ted Nugent

  Party, Feel Good, Abuse

  "Captain McShitpants blasts Matt Damon on Palin". The Christian Science Monitor, September 18, 2008.

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• Eternity.—Thy name Or glad, or fearful, we pronounce, as thoughts Wandering in darkness shape thee. Thou strange being, Which art and must be, yet which contradict'st All sense, all reasoning,—thou, who never wast Less than thyself, and who still art thyself Entire, though the deep draught which Time has taken Equals thy present store—No line can reach To thy unfathomed depths. The reasoning sage Who can dissect a sunbeam, count the stars, And measure distant worlds, is here a child, And, humbled, drops his calculating pen.

  Anna Letitia Barbauld

  Art, Stars, Children

  Anna Letitia Barbauld, Lucy Aikin (1825). “The works of Anna Laetitia Barbauld: in two volumes”, p.230

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• On Sept 15th [1852] Mr Goulburn, Chancellor of the Exchequer, asked my opinion on the utility of Mr Babbage's calculating machine, and the propriety of spending further sums of money on it. I replied, entering fully into the matter, and giving my opinion that it was worthless.

  George Biddell Airy

  Giving, Machines, Entering

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• It is so natural for us to consider our presence as indispensable in the world, so long as we have much to do in it, that the wisdom of retiring wholly from employments in advanced life may be questioned. Certainly, he who does so is in danger of finding, before long, that he has only given up the occupation to which he has been accustomed, for the new business of calculating the period of his decease.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Retirement, Long, Doe

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• At a time when so many scholars in the world are calculating, is it not desirable that some, who can, dream ?

  Rene Thom

  Dream, Learning, Science

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• I think the comic that's gotten me the most feedback is actually the one about the stoplights. Noticing when the stoplights are in sync, or calculating the length of your strides between floor tiles - normal people notice that kind of stuff, but a certain kind of person will do some calculations.

  Randall Munroe

  Thinking, People, Tiles

  "Real Geek Heart Beats in Xkcd's Stick Figures" by Adrienne So, www.wired.com. November 13, 2007.

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• Ever since the Evil Empire turned out to be a collection of third-world countries, Americans aligned on the far right have tried to cast gay men and lesbians as the new enemy, calculating deviants seducing the nation's young, anti-Avon ladies selling sodomy door-to-door. This simply won't wash. Just as seeing the Russians up close and personal on television humanized them, so seeing the lesbian grandmother of two little girls wearing her gold medal with pride makes the notion of otherness, much less deviance, silly and ignorant.

  Anna Quindlen

  Girl, Country, Silly

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• One would have thought that it was even more necessary to limit population than property; and that the limit should be fixed by calculating the chances of mortality in the children, and of sterility in married persons. The neglect of this subject, which in existing states is so common, is a never-failing cause of poverty among the citizens; and poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

  Aristotle

  Children, Parent, Citizens

  Aristotle, (2014). “Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation”, p.2008, Princeton University Press

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• I recently read that it's the left brain that does all that calculating, and the right brain that does the poetry. Somehow I've veered way towards the left. I've been doing it for years. Maybe I do art to balance it out.

  Jason Mraz

  Art, Years, Brain

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• I have never been so calculating as to sing some Barry White song to get a girl. But I do think it's very romantic to cook dinner and sit around the piano at night and sing together.

  John Stamos

  Girl, Song, Night

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• A gamester, as such, is the cool, calculating, essential spirit of concentrated, avaricious selfishness.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Gambling, Selfishness, Essentials

  Henry Ward Beecher (1871). “Lectures to young men, on various important subjects”, p.160

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• God seems to have a delightful way of upsetting the things we have calculated on without taking Him into account. We get into circumstances which were not chosen by God, and suddenly we find we have been calculating without God; He has not entered in as a living factor. The one thing that keeps us from the possibility of worrying is bringing God in as the greatest factor in all our calculations.

  Oswald Chambers

  Worry, Upset, Way

  Oswald Chambers (2011). “My Utmost for His Highest Classic Edition”, p.383, Discovery House

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• Chemistry, until my childhood, not that long ago, was regarded as a calculating device. Because you couldn't reduce to physics. So it's just some way of calculating the result of experiments. The Bohr atom was treated that way.

  Noam Chomsky

  Long Ago, Childhood, Way

  "Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong". Interview with Yarden Katz, www.theatlantic.com. November 1, 2012.

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