Numbers

Famous quotes containing the word numbers:

    The barriers of conventionality have been raised so high, and so strangely cemented by long existence, that the only hope of overthrowing them exists in the union of numbers linked together by common opinion and effort ... the united watchword of thousands would strike at the foundation of the false system and annihilate it.
    Mme. Ellen Louise Demorest 1824–1898, U.S. women’s magazine editor and woman’s club movement pioneer. Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly and Mirror of Fashions, p. 203 (January 1870)

    All experience teaches that, whenever there is a great national establishment, employing large numbers of officials, the public must be reconciled to support many incompetent men; for such is the favoritism and nepotism always prevailing in the purlieus of these establishments, that some incompetent persons are always admitted, to the exclusion of many of the worthy.
    Herman Melville (1819–1891)

    Publishers are notoriously slothful about numbers, unless they’re attached to dollar signs—unlike journalists, quarterbacks, and felony criminal defendents who tend to be keenly aware of numbers at all times.
    Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)