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Magnitude Quotes

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Magnitude Quotes

“Incrementalism: In the first generation, the goal of the movement was wholesale social and cultural transformation. Small, incremental victories were too little given the magnitude of America's moral decay. Since 1988, the new leaders have recognized that incrementalism is the surest path to success in political competition. The current movement is committed to securing small victories now, postponing for the long-term more fundamental changes in society and politics.”

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Author:Kenneth D. Wald
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“On Earth Day I made a commitment to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2000. And I asked for a blueprint on how to achieve this goal. In concert with all other nations, we simply must halt global warming. It is a threat to our health, to our ecology, and to our economy. I know that the precise magnitude and patterns of climate change cannot be fully predicted. But global warming clearly is a growing, long-term threat with profound consequences. And make no mistake about it, it will take decades to reverse.”

KnowsYearsLongMadeEarthNationsGoalTermLevelsMistakeEconomyGrowingAchieveCommitmentConsequenceThreatProfoundClimateClimate ChangePatternsDecadesLong TermGlobal WarmingConcertsReverseEcologyPreciseEmissionsHaltMagnitudeEarth DayBlueprintsGreenhousesGreenhouse Gases
Author:William J. Clinton
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“...If peace were the goal of today's intellectuals, a failure of that magnitude -- and the evidence of unspeakable suffering on so large a scale -- would make them pause and check their statist premises. Instead, blind to everything but their hatred for capitalism, they are now asserting that 'poverty breeds wars' ... But the question is: What breeds poverty? If you look a the world of today and if you look back at history, you will see the answer: the degree of a country's freedom is the degree of its prosperity.”

IfsWorldLooksWarCountryTodaySufferingGoalAnswersPovertyDegreesEvidenceCapitalismHatredBlindProsperityScalesChecksPausesPremisesMagnitudeUnspeakable
Author:Ayn Rand
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“To allow public access to orbit, we would need breakthroughs that would lower the cost by a lot more than an order of magnitude and increase safety by a factor of 100 as compared to every launch system used since the first manned space flight. I think airborne launch will be a significant part of the safety solution.”

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Author:Burt Rutan
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“Although a man may lose a sense of his own importance when he is a mere unit among a busy throng, all utterly regardless of him, it by no means follows that he can dispossess himself, with equal facility, of a very strong sense of the importance and magnitude of his cares.”

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Book:The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby
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“A theory of personal resurrection or reincarnation of the individual is untenable when we but pause to consider the magnitude of the idea. On the contrary, I must believe that rather than the survival of all, we must look for survival only in the spirit of the good we have done in passing through.Once obsolete, an automobile is thrown to the scrap heap. Once here and gone, the human life has likewise served its purpose. If it has been a good life, it has been sufficient. There is no need for another.”

IfsNeedsBelieveHumansLooksHas BeensIdeasDoneSpiritPurposeIndividualGoneTheorySurvivalContraryPassingPassingsHuman LifeSufficientThrownGood LifeResurrectionReincarnationPausesAutomobileObsoleteMagnitudeScrapPassing Through
Author:Luther Burbank
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“It is well known, that on the Ohio, and in many parts of America further north, tusks, grinders, and skeletons of unparalleled magnitude are found in great numbers, some lying on the surface of the earth, and some a little below it ... But to whatever animal we ascribe these remains, it is certain that such a one has existed in America, and that it has been the largest of all terrestrial beings.”

WellsLittlesHas BeensEarthAmericaLyingCertainFoundAnimalNumbersKnownRemainsSurfaceWell KnownMagnitudeOhioSkeletonsPaleontologyGrinder
Author:Thomas Jefferson
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“That this subject [of imaginary magnitudes] has hitherto been considered from the wrong point of view and surrounded by a mysterious obscurity, is to be attributed largely to an ill-adapted notation. If, for example, +1, -1, and the square root of -1 had been called direct, inverse and lateral units, instead of positive, negative and imaginary (or even impossible), such an obscurity would have been out of the question.”

IfsHas BeensViewsImpossibleSubjectsExampleNegativeDirectRootsIllPoint Of ViewMysteriousSquaresImaginaryUnitsObscurityMagnitudeAdaptedInverseSquare Roots
Author:Carl Friedrich Gauss
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“The laws of thermodynamics, as empirically determined, express the approximate and probable behavior of systems of a great number of particles, or, more precisely, they express the laws of mechanics for such systems as they appear to beings who have not the fineness of perception to enable them to appreciate quantities of the order of magnitude of those which relate to single particles, and who cannot repeat their experiments often enough to obtain any but the most probable results.”

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Author:J. Willard Gibbs
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“Because the region of the Celestial World is of so great and such incredible magnitude as aforesaid, and since in what has gone before it was at least generally demonstrated that this comet continued within the limits of the space of the Aether, it seems that the complete explanation of the whole matter is not given unless we are also informed within narrower limits in what part of the widest Aether, and next to which orbs of the Planets [the comet] traces its path, and by what course it accomplishes this.”

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Author:Tycho Brahe
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“I dare not think that any supercelestial heaven, or whatsoever else ... was increate and eternal. And as for the place of God before the world created, the finite wisdom of mortal men hath no perception of it; neither can it limit the seat of infinite power, no more than infinite power itself can be limited; for his place is in himself, whom no magnitude else can contain.”

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Book:The History of the World in Five Books
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“The States then being the parties to the constitutional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity, that there can be no tribunal above their authority, to decide in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated; and consequently that as the parties to it, they must themselves decide in the last resort, such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition.”

MayMadeStatesLastsPartyAuthorityCapacitySufficientSovereignResortsMagnitudeCompactTribunalsNullification
Book:1829-1836
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“In geometry I find certain imperfections which I hold to be the reason why this science, apart from transition into analytics, can as yet make no advance from that state in which it came to us from Euclid. As belonging to these imperfections, I consider the obscurity in the fundamental concepts of the geometrical magnitudes and in the manner and method of representing the measuring of these magnitudes, and finally the momentous gap in the theory of parallels, to fill which all efforts of mathematicians have so far been in vain.”

StatesReasonCertainEffortTheoryConceptsMethodFundamentalsVainReason WhyBelongingGapsTransitionImperfectionMathematicianParallelsGeometryObscurityRepresentingMagnitudeMeasuringAnalyticsEuclid
Author:Nikolai Lobachevsky
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“The most important thing I can teach my kids is that you can't put your value in looks. Presence is based upon magnitude. You can pretend to have an air about you but it is quickly deflated, you cannot deflate presence. Presence walks into a room and surrounds and fills anything that's in that room without trying to demand it, it takes over. It can come from a smile. Like I said, love makes you beautiful. What is beautiful radiates.”

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Author:Terrence Howard
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“Although population and consumption are societal issues, technology is the business of business. If economic activity must increase tenfold over what it is today to support a population nearly double its current size, then technology will have to reduce its impact twenty-fold merely to keep the planet at its current levels of environmental impact. For example, to stabilize the climate we may have to reduce real carbon emissions by as much as 80 percent, while simultaneously growing the world economy by an order of magnitude.”

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Book:Capitalism at the Crossroads: Next Generation Business Strategies for a Post-Crisis World
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“We can break the mountains apart; we can drain the rivers and flood the valleys. We can turn the most luxuriant forests into throw-away paper products. We can tear apart the great grass cover of the western plains and pour toxic chemicals into the soil and pesticides onto the fields until the soil is dead and blows away in the wind. We can pollute the air with acids, the rivers with sewage, the seas with oil - all this in a kind of intoxication with our power for devastation at an order of magnitude beyond all reckoning.”

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Author:Thomas Berry
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“To attain peace among the nations in any dynamic or enduring form requires not simply political negotiation but a new mode of consciousness. The magnitude of this change is in the order of religious conversion or of spiritual rebirth rather than of treaty processes or even of inter-cultural understanding. Simply to recognize the basic nature and dimension of the issues we face is already an advance.”

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Author:Thomas Berry
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“No one can sense his own weakness is at least a small temptation is not allowed to afflict either his body or his soul. Then, comparing his weakness to the help of God, a man comes to know its magnitude. But whoever does not know that he needs God's help, let him make many prayers. Insofar as he multiplies them, in that measure will he be humbled.”

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Author:Isaac of Nineveh
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“Therefore the solid body of the earth is reasonably considered as being the largest relative to those moving against it and as remaining unmoved in any direction by the force of the very small weights, and as it were absorbing their fall. And if it had some one common movement, the same as that of the other weights, it would clearly leave them all behind because of its much greater magnitude. And the animals and other weights would be left hanging in the air, and the earth would very quickly fallout of the heavens. Merely to conceive such things makes them appear ridiculous.”

IfsBodyWould BeEarthMovingScienceFallLeftForceHeavenAnimalCommonBehindsGreaterAirMovementWeightRidiculousRelativeGravityMagnitudeAbsorbingFalloutsLeft Hanging
Author:Ptolemy
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“Real greatness has nothing to do with a man’s sphere. It does not lie in the magnitude of his outward agency, in the extent of the effects which he produces. The greatest men may do comparatively little.”

MenMayLittlesDoeRealLyingEffectsGreatnessProduceAgencySpheresMagnitudeGreatest Man
Book:Self-Culture. An address introductory to the Franklin lectures, delivered at Boston. 1838
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“Sometimes people stumble over this vastness in relation to the apparent insignificance of man. It does seem to make us infinitesimally small. But the meaning of this magnitude is not mainly about us. It’s about God… The reason for ‘wasting’ so much space on a universe to house a speck of humanity is to make a point about our maker, not us.”

PeopleMenDoeSometimesReasonSeemsHumanityUniverseHouseSpaceRelationMakersMagnitudeVastnessSpecksInsignificance
Author:John Piper
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