Quotes About Numbers

Visual understanding is the essential and only true means of teaching how to judge things correctly," Pestalozzi wrote, and "the learning of numbers and language must be definitely subordinated." 58

T]he Normans, with the usual policy of conquerors, were jealous of permitting to the vanquished Saxons the possession or the use of swords and spears. These circumstances rendered the assistance of the Saxons far from being so formidable to the besieged as the strength of the men themselves, their superior numbers, and the animation inspired by a just cause, might otherwise well have made them.

We are suspicious of those CEOs who regularly claim they do know the future—and we become downright incredulous if they consistently reach their declared targets. Managers that always promise to "make the numbers" will at some point be tempted to make up the numbers.

Accounting numbers, of course, are the language of business and as such are of enormous help to anyone evaluating the worth of a business and tracking its progress. Charlie and I would be lost without these numbers: they invariably are the starting point for us in evaluating our own businesses and those of others. Managers and owners need to remember, however, that accounting is but an aid to business thinking, never a substitute for it.

My direct experience (limited, thankfully) with CEOs who have played with a company's numbers indicates that they were more often prompted by ego than by a desire for financial gain.

If you want to get people to believe something really, really stupid, just stick a number on it.

It's easy to lie with statistics, but it's hard to tell the truth without them.

Wars, conflict, it's all business. One murder makes a villain; millions a hero. Numbers sanctify.

I tried marriage. I'm 0 for 3 with the marriage thing. So, being a ballplayer - I believe in numbers. I'm not going 0 for 4. I'm not wearing a golden sombrero.

I'd never had a mind for math. I simply couldn't hold the formulas and numbers in my head. It was a logic that made little sense to me. In my perception, the world wasn't a graph or formula or an equation. It was a story.

98% of all statistics are made up.

Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable.

Statistics are just a way for the mathematician to evangelize his faith.

Advertising is only another form of statistics.

That's the trouble with us. We number everything. Take women, for example. I think they deserve to have more than twelve years between the ages of twenty-eight and forty.

Strength of numbers is the delight of the timid. The Valiant in spirit glory in fighting alone.

Two, four, six, eight—Welfare rations come too late. Three, five, seven, nine—Medicare is still behind.

Advertising is only another form of statistics.

In earlier times they had no statistics and so they had to fall back on lies.

If infinities are signs of missing unification, a unified theory will have none. It will be what we call a finite theory, a theory that answers every question in terms of sensible finite numbers.

Triplets are when four babies are born at the same time, and there are only two Quagmires.

Polly Partial handed me a piece of paper printed on all sides with confusing times and locations. It looked like a herd of numbers having a square dance. I would rather have reread her book [To Kill a Mockingbird] than Stain'd-by-the-Sea's confusing train schedule, but just barely.

I know a rancher," says Grace. "When he was in his field with his cows, he counted one hundred and ninety-six. But when he rounded them up, he had two hundred.

her spirits wanted the solitude and silence which only numbers could give.