Measurement Quotes - Page 6

• I am learning to live close to the lives of my friends without ever seeing them. No miles of any measurement can separate your soul from mine.

  John Muir

  Real, Soul, Miles

  John Muir, Terry Gifford (1996). “John Muir: His Life and Letters and Other Writings”, p.171, The Mountaineers Books

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• A game of great charm in the adoption of mathematical measurements to the timing of human movements, the exactitudes and adjustments of physical ability to hazardous chance. The speed of the legs, the dexterity of the body, the grace of the swing, the elusiveness of the slide - these are the features that make Americans everywhere forget the last syllable of a man's last name or the pigmentation of his skin.

  Branch Rickey

  Baseball, Men, Swings

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• Clearly, many branches of science need an exquisite precision of timekeeping and the infinitesimal decimals of calibration, so space launches, for example, are not scheduled for leap-second dates. But society as a whole neither needs that obsessive time measurement nor is well served by it.

  Jay Griffiths

  Space, Example, Needs

  " The 'leap second' is a timely reminder" by Jay Griffiths, www.theguardian.com. June 29, 2012.

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• Earth Day is the first holy day which transcends all national borders, yet preserves all geographical integrities, spans mountains and oceans and time belts, and yet brings people all over the world into one resonating accord, is devoted to the preservation of the harmony in nature and yet draws upon the triumphs of technology, the measurement of time, and instantaneous communication through space.

  Margaret Mead

  Integrity, Ocean, Communication

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• My father had to flee from what is today Pakistan when he was a child, and he became a manager at IBM, and any item of consumption he would acquire was a direct measurement of his success in life. But that same equation wasn't going to work for me - I was quite clear about that in my early teens.

  Tino Sehgal

  Children, Father, Pakistan

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• Can a physicist visualize an electron? The electron is materially inconceivable and yet, it is so perfectly known through its effects that we use it to illuminate our cities, guide our airlines through the night skies and take the most accurate measurements. What strange rationale makes some physicists accept the inconceivable electrons as real while refusing to accept the reality of a Designer on the ground that they cannot conceive Him?

  Wernher von Braun

  God, Real, Airplane

  Letter to California State board of Education, September 14, 1972.

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• No effect that requires more than 10 percent accuracy in measurement is worth investigating.

  Walther Nernst

  Science, Engineering, Accuracy

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• It is true that we do not recognize greatness among us. Our measurements of importance are generally faulty and speak mainly to the superficialities of life, e.g., where one lives, the type of clothing one wears, the cars one drives, to the number of bodyguards that one employs to carry bags and open and close doors.

  Haki R. Madhubuti

  Greatness, Doors, Numbers

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• If any of you would bring judgment the unfaithful wife, let him also weight the heart of her husband in scales, and measure his soul with measurements.

  Khalil Gibran

  Husband, Heart, Wife

  Khalil Gibran (2007). “Kahlil Gibran: Masterpieces”

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• As I considered the matter carefully it gradually came to light that all those matters only were referred to mathematics in which order and measurements are investigated, and that it makes no difference whether it be in numbers, figures, stars, sounds or any other object that the question of measurement arises. I saw consequently that there must be some general science to explain that element as a whole which gives rise to problems about order and measurement, restricted as these are to no special subject matter. This, I perceived was called 'universal mathematics'.

  Rene Descartes

  Stars, Science, Light

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• Learning is the measurement of knowledge before and after.

  Eben Pagan

  Learning, Before And After

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• Measurement is like laundry. It piles up the longer you wait to do it.

  Amber Naslund

  Motivational, Waiting, Marketing

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• If it is possible to have a linear unit that depends on no other quantity, it would seem natural to prefer it. Moreover, a mensural unit taken from the earth itself offers another advantage, that of being perfectly analogous to all the real measurements that in ordinary usage are also made upon the earth, such as the distance between two places or the area of some tract, for example. It is far more natural in practice to refer geographical distances to a quadrant of a great circle than to the length of a pendulum.

  Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet

  Distance, Real, Taken

  "Science and Polity in France: The End of the Old Regime". Book by Charles Coulston Gillispie, p. 240, January 10, 2009.

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• We had learned how to invent things, and the question of why we invent things receded in importance. The idea that if something could be done it should be done was born in the nineteenth century. And along with it, there developed a profound belief in all the principles through which invention succeeds: objectivity, efficiency, expertise, standardization, measurement, and progress. It also came to be believed that the engine of technological progress worked most efficiently when people are conceived of not as children of God or even as citizens but as consumers-that is to say, as markets.

  Neil Postman

  Children, Objectivity, Ideas

  Neil Postman (2011). “Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology”, p.61, Vintage

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• Expect Nature to answer to your human values as to come into your house and sit in a chair. The economy of nature, its checks and balances, its measurements of competing life - all this is its great marvel and has an ethic of its own.

  Henry Beston

  Nature, House, Balance

  Henry Beston (1956). “The Outermost House”

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• Science is a kind of glorified tailoring enterprise, a method for taking measurements that describe something ? reality ? that may not be understood at all.

  Michael Crichton

  Reality, May, Kind

  "Travels". Book by Michael Crichton, Postscript, 1988.

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• Kinship among nations is not determined in such measurements as proximity of size and age. Rather we should turn to those inner things - call them what you will - I mean those intangibles that are the real treasures free men possess.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Real, Mean, Men

  Speech at Guildhall, London, on June 12, 1945. "At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends". Book by Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1967.

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• In the middle of life, death comes to take your measurements. The visit is forgotten and life goes on. But the suit is being sewn on the sly.

  Tomas Transtromer

  Goes On, Suits, Forgotten

  Tomas Transtromer (2014). “The Deleted World: Poems”, p.31, Macmillan

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• Clock measurement is not time itself. In fact, so opposed are they that one could argue the clock is not a synonym, but the opposite of time.

  Jay Griffiths

  Opposites, Facts, Arguing

  "The 'leap second' is a timely reminder" by Jay Griffiths, www.theguardian.com. June 29, 2012.

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• To understand God's thoughts, one must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose.

  Florence Nightingale

  God, Nursing, Science

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• It can happen to but few philosophers, and but at distant intervals, to snatch a science, like Dalton, from the chaos of indefinite combination, and binding it in the chains of number, to exalt it to rank amongst the exact. Triumphs like these are necessarily 'few and far between.'

  Charles Babbage

  Science, Discovery, Numbers

  Charles Babbage (1970). “Reflections on the Decline of Science in England: And on Some of Its Causes”, Augustus m Kelley Pubs

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• ...the geometrician teaches me how to work out the size of my estates rather than how to work out how much a man needs in order to have enough....You geometers can calculate the area of circles, can reduce any given shape to a square, can state the distances separating starts. Nothing's outside your scope when it comes to measurement. Well, if you're such an expert, measure a man's soul; tell me how large or how small that is. You can define a straight line; what use is that to you if you've no idea what straightness means in life?

  Seneca the Younger

  Distance, Teaching, Mean

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• One may even suspect that there is more to reality than measurements will ever reveal.

  Michael Crichton

  Reality, May, Suspects

  "Travels". Book by Michael Crichton, 1988.

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• The first time someone said, 'What are your measurements?' I answered, '37, 24, 38 - but not necessarily in that order.'

  Carol Burnett

  Funny, Order, Firsts

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• For complex reasons, our culture allows "economy" to mean only "money economy." It equates success and even goodness with monetary profit because it lacks any other standard of measurement. I am no economist, but I venture to suggest that one of the laws of such an economy is that a farmer is worth more dead than alive. A second law is that anything diseased is more profitable than anything that is healthy. What is wrong with us contributes more to the "gross national product" than what is right with us.

  Wendell Berry

  Success, Mean, Law

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