Quantity Quotes - Page 8

• It is from this absolute indifference and tranquillity of the mind, that mathematical speculations derive some of the most considerable advantages; because there is nothing to interest the imagination; because the judgment sits free and unbiased to examine the point. All proportions, every arrangement of quantity, is alike to the understanding, because the same truths result to it from all; from greater from lesser, from equality and inequality.

  Edmund Burke

  Imagination, Understanding, Mind

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• Pepper is small in quantity and great in virtue.

  Plato

  Food, Cooking, Peppers

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• Everyone is looking for the sure thing. They are looking to hedge their bet. They think the way to do that is to go with a proven quantity, a remake of something you have already seen. That is their mindset.

  Leonard Maltin

  Thinking, Way, Mindset

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• There is a strong tendency in explanatory prose to invoke quantities of tension, energy, and whatnot to explain the genesis of pattern. I believe that all such explanations are inappropriate or wrong.

  Gregory Bateson

  Strong, Believe, Energy

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• Number is different from quantity. This difference is basic for any sort of theorizing in behavioral science, any sort of imagining of what goes on between organisms or inside organisms as part of their processes of thought.

  Gregory Bateson

  Numbers, Different

  "Number is Different from Quantity". CoEvolution Quarterly, www.oikos.org. Spring 1978.

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• This required abandoning the idea that there is a universal quantity called time that all clocks measure. Instead, everyone would have his own personal time. The clocks of two people would agree if they were at rest with respect to each other but not if they were moving. This has been confirmed by a number of experiments, including one in which an extremely accurate timepiece was flown around the world and then compared with one that had stayed in place. If you wanted to live longer, you could keep flying to the east so the speed of the plane added to the earth

  Stephen Hawking

  Time, Moving, Two

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• The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to keep horses and cows alive through the winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was unknown to the Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval Europe. Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages.

  Freeman Dyson

  Horse, Dark, Winter

  "Infinite in All Directions" by Freeman Dyson, Ch. 8, (p. 135), 1988.

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• A good reliable set of bowels is worth more to a man than any quantity of brains.

  Josh Billings

  Men, Intellectual, Brain

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• A novel is based on evidence, + or -x, the unknown quantity being the temperament of the novelist, and the unknown quantity always modifies the effect of the evidence, and sometimes transforms it entirely.

  E. M. Forster

  Novelists, Fiction, Sometimes

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• Remember, it’s the quality of your ideas not the quantity that will result in the big money.

  Joel Greenblatt

  Ideas, Quality, Remember

  Joel Greenblatt (2010). “You Can Be a Stock Market Genius: Uncover the Secret Hiding Places of Stock Market P”, p.245, Simon and Schuster

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• I shall content myself with merely declaring my firm conviction that, for the seeker who would live in fear of God and who would see Him face to face, restraint in diet both as to quantity and quality is as essential as restraint in thought and speech.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Food, Quality, Essentials

  Mahatma Gandhi (2005). “All Men Are Brothers”, p.21, A&C Black

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• Parliament will train you to talk; and above all things to hear, with patience, unlimited quantities of foolish talk.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Patience, Foolish, Parliament

  Thomas Carlyle (2014). “The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.619, Lulu.com

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• A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality. The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business.

  Walter Bagehot

  Art, Thinking, Government

  Walter Bagehot (1867). “The English Constitution”, p.237

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• To say that most of us today are purely expansive is only another way of saying that most of us continue to be more concerned with the quantity than with the quality of our democracy.

  Irving Babbitt

  Democracy, Quality, Today

  Irving Babbitt (2005). “On Literature, Cultures, and Religion”, p.110, Transaction Publishers

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• Given any new technology for transmitting information, we seem bound to use it for great quantities of small talk. We are only saved by music from being overwhelmed by nonsense.

  Lewis Thomas

  Technology, Use, Information

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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• Neither the true nor the false roots are always real; sometimes they are imaginary; that is, while we can always imagine as many roots for each equation as I have assigned, yet there is not always a definite quantity corresponding to each root we have imagined.

  Rene Descartes

  Real, Roots, Ontology

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• Complete knowledge of the nature of an analytic function must also include insight into its behavior for imaginary values of the arguments. Often the latter is indispensable even for a proper appreciation of the behavior of the function for real arguments. It is therefore essential that the original determination of the function concept be broadened to a domain of magnitudes which includes both the real and the imaginary quantities, on an equal footing, under the single designation complex numbers.

  Carl Friedrich Gauss

  Appreciation, Determination, Real

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• There are times when quantity is at least as important as quality in learning an art.

  Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Art, Writing, Quality

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• LEAD, n. A heavy blue-gray metal much used ... as a counterpoise to an argument of such weight that it turns the scale of debate the wrong way. An interesting fact in the chemistry of international controversy is that at the point of contact of two patriotisms lead is precipitated in great quantities.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Science, Blue, Two

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2446, Delphi Classics

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• Quality, not quantity, is my measure.

  Douglas William Jerrold

  Quality Not Quantity, Quality

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• Rate the intensive above the extensive. The perfect does not lie in quantity, but in quality.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Lying, Perfect, Quality

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• A greater Quantity of some things may be eaten than of others, some being of lighter Digestion than others.

  Benjamin Franklin

  May, Digestion, Lighters

  Benjamin Franklin (1839). “Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin”, p.39

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• In an atmosphere of uniform density the most distant things seen through it, such as the mountains, in consequence of the great quantity of atmosphere which is between your eye and them, will appear blue. Therefore you should make the building... wall which is more distant less defined and bluer... five times as far away, make five times as blue.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Wall, Eye, Blue

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• The most basic inherent constraint is that neither time nor wisdom are free goods available in unlimited quantity. This means that in social processes, as in economic processes, it is not only impossible to attain perfection but irrational to seek perfection- or even to seek the best possible result in each separate instance.

  Thomas Sowell

  Mean, Perfection, Impossible

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• We're breaking all of the rules, even our own rules, and how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.

  John Cage

  Leaving, Rooms, Plenty

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