Rankings Quotes

My expectations from the university were perhaps too idealistic. I had dreams of learning things about innovation and discovery in the field of technology, but all of it hit the ground hard, when I faced with the pathetic reality of the so-called higher education system. To my surprise, I found myself stuck behind the walls of meaningless facts, figures and rankings. It occurred to me that, it was not actually a place for education, rather it was a place where you go to get your head filled with useless undigested information, that you'd probably never use throughout your entire life. It was not education, and moreover, it was definitely not science. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The reason I didn't take the baseball route is because they don't have rankings for baseball players. ~ Jim Courier

Sports contained the truth, I decided, the unspoken truth (how quickly we damn ourselves when we start to talk, how small and inglorious we always sound), and it seemed hard to believe that I had never understood this before. They rewarded effortlessness and unself-consciousness; they confirmed that yes, there are rankings of skill and value and that everyone knows what they are (seeing those guys who were subbed with two seconds left before the end of a quarter, I'd think how girls' coaches were never that heartless); they showed that the best things in the world to be were young and strong and fast. To play a great game of high school basketball-it was something I myself had never done, but I could tell-made you know what it was to be alive. How much in an adult life can compare to that? Granted, there are margaritas, or there's no homework, but there are also puffy white bagels under neon lights in the conference room, there's waiting for the plumber, making small talk with your boring neighbor. ~ Curtis Sittenfeld

In Sweden they have a very different approach. There, preschool children are encouraged to play and relax without any structured learning for the first six years of their lives. They go for nature walks every day, even in the bitter Scandinavian winter. They are not taught to read until they are seven years of age, yet by the age of ten, Swedish children consistently lead European literacy rankings. ~ Goldie Hawn

We're constantly judging and grading other parents, just to make sure that they aren't any better than us. I'm as guilty as anyone. I see some lady hand her kid a Nintendo DS at the supermarket and I instantly downgrade that lady to Shitty Parent status. I feel pressure to live up to a parental ideal that no one probably has ever achieved. I feel pressure to raise a group of human beings that will help America kick the shit out of Finland and South Korea in the world math rankings. I feel pressure to shield my kids from the trillion pages of hentai donkey porn out there on the Internet. I feel pressure to make the insane amounts of money needed for a supposedly 'middle-class' upbringing for the kids, an upbringing that includes a house and college tuition and health care and so many other expenses that you have to be a multimillionaire to afford it. PRESSURE PRESSURE PRESSURE. ~ Drew Magary

When Yelp first took off, our rankings on Google would fluctuate wildly. ~ Jeremy Stoppelman

The collective benefits of higher education will not be asserted unless the public can be engaged in defining them. A student's future returns on his or her personal investment of time and money will seem more critical than the public benefits to be derived from ensuring that all students become people of character as well as of competence. An institution's prowess in potentially lucrative lines of scientific research will seem more essential to its mission than its participation in the development of an aesthetically engaged and broadly humane society. Unless there is public discussion that can help support the balancing of public and private priorities, colleges and universities will dance only to the private ambitions that ensure continuing high levels of enrollment and high ratings in the various surveys of satisfaction that give institutions a boost in national rankings. ~ Ellen Condliffe Lagemann

Never before has the seductive market way of life held such sway in nearly every sphere of American life. This marketing way of life promotes addictions to stimulation and obsessions with comfort and convenience ... centered primarily around bodily pleasures and status rankings ... The common denominator is a rugged and ragged individualism and rapacious hedonism in quest of a perennial "high" in body and mind. ~ Cornel West

In 1973, 29 percent of all U.S. jobs required postsecondary education. In 1992, 52 percent did. And in 2018, a projected 62 percent of all jobs will require postsecondary education. At the same time, many students and their families came to believe that a college's cost directly reflected the quality of the education it offered and the long-term value of the degrees it granted. Rankings like those in U.S. News & World Report reflected this biased perception and encouraged the public to think that way as well. ~ Thomas Snyder

Be a Student of the Game. Like most cliches of sport, this is profound. You can be shaped, or you can be broken. There is not much in between. Try to learn. Be coachable. Try to learn from everybody, especially those who fail. This is hard. Peers who fizzle or blow up or fall down, run away, disappear from the monthly rankings, drop off the circuit. ~ David Foster Wallace

Every nutritious sexual recipe calls for at least a pinch of love, and the fucks that rate four-star rankings from both gourmets and health-food nuts used cupfuls. Not that sex should be regarded as therapeutic or to be taken for medicinal purposes - only a dullard would hang such a millstone around the nibbled neck of a lay - but to approach sex carelessly, shallowly, with detachment and without warmth is to dine night after night in erotic greasy spoons. In time, one's palate will become insensitive, one will suffer (without knowing it) emotional malnutrition, the skin of the soul will fester with scurvy, the teeth of the heart will decay. Neither duration nor proclamation of commitment is necessarily the measure - there are ephemeral explosions of passion between strangers that make more erotic sense than many lengthy marriages, there are one-night stands in Jersey City more glorious than six-months affairs in Paris - but finally there is a commitment, however brief; a purity, however threatened; a vulnerability, however concealed; a generosity of spirit, however marbled with need; an honest caring, however singed by lust, that must be present if couplings are to be salubrious and not slow poison. ~ Tom Robbins

I was elected by the Democrats to be chair of the Veterans Committee, which I'm very proud of. And now am the rankings member on the Budget Committee, leader of the Democrats in opposition to the majority Republicans. ~ Bernie Sanders

In the complete overall history of tennis, I figure I'll be worth a sentence or two ... That's why my place in the all-time rankings means so very little to me, because I know I won't be anybody's number one, and it's that same old thing: if you're not number one, then what does it really matter? ~ Billie Jean King

Missouri remains a low tax, efficiently run state, according to all prominent national rankings. ~ Bob Holden

It's time to declare a cease-fire in the education arms race. We have far more to gain from collaborating to solve our common problems than competing for higher rankings. ~ Wendy Kopp

I had set a goal with my team to try and get back to the top of the rankings, but I never thought with the depth in the game this year that I would have been able to get it back so quickly. ~ Roger Federer

I take a seat behind my new desk for the first time since I've returned home.

"Shera doesn't really know my taste in decor as well as I'd hoped she would," I say as I look around, taking in my underwhelming office.

Isiah glares at the door when someone knocks.

"I've been trying to speak to you all day. You need to adjust the beta rankings on paper, because Shera was left in charge by the outdated documentation, regardless of your wishes for me to take control until your return."

"I heard you did quite well, even without the adequate authority," I state dismissively, peering into one of the drawers full of pencils. "Now why would I need a bunch of sharpened pencils?"

Shera walks in, shutting the door behind her when she grows tired of waiting for an invitation. "It was fun sharpening all of them, and that drawer looked empty."

When I open the next drawer, I find it also full of sharpened pencils.

I give her a wry look.

She shrugs unapologetically. "It was empty too."

"So you got me a desk full of pencils," I say with a roll of my eyes. ~ Kristy Cunning

At KaBOOM! we are crowd-sourcing a nationwide Map of Play that uses GIS data and user rankings to identify where the engaging playgrounds are located, but more importantly, where they are not. ~ Darell Hammond

There are excellent public interest grounds to have a search engine whose rankings are transparent. ~ Mitch Kapor

I would not say that Harvard possesses any sort of absolute dominance. And I personally do not take the rankings of schools all that seriously. However, I think that Harvard's global visibility increased significantly in the 1930s and 1940s and that the new commitment to excellence at Harvard spread to other institutions. ~ Henry Rosovsky

We have reached the point where we can lose a game or two and not drop out of sight in the rankings. I've been asked if it bothers me that BYU hasn't received the recognition it deserves. Well, BYU's gotten a lot of recognition over the years; I've never felt slighted. I honestly believed that we didn't deserve to be ranked any higher last year. ~ LaVell Edwards

I have known many true connoisseurs, with excellent tastes that range across the humanities and the culinary arts
and they never fail to have a fatal effect on my self-esteem. When I find myself sitting at dinner next to someone who knows just as much about novels as I do but has somehow also found the mental space to adore and be knowledgeable about the opera, have strong opinions about the relative rankings of Renaissance painters, an encyclopedic knowledge of the English civil war, of French wines
I feel an anxiety that nudges beyond the envious into the existential. How did she find the time? ~ Zadie Smith

Two years ago, of course, I was just a rookie and listened to everybody. In a way I am still a rookie. I'm only 23 and I'll be surrounded by great players who have played in a lot more Ryder Cups than myself. But the rankings say I am the best player at the moment and so that brings a responsibility. ~ Rory McIlroy

The more games I will play, the faster I will be back on a top spot in the world rankings. ~ Jan Timman

We have to edge them out of the rankings. That will damage their futures. Permanently. ~ Veronica Roth

It met its target, a remarkable accomplishment, but here's the thing. According to the 2014 Times Higher Education world rankings (which are generally held to be the most exacting of their type), the University of Virginia ranks 130th among the world's universities. Eighteen much more modestly funded British universities rank higher. On the world stage, according to the Times Higher, Virginia is about level with Britain's Lancaster University, which has an endowment fund one-thousandth the size of Virginia's. That is pretty extraordinary. And ~ Bill Bryson

There's this index that tallies up how much your movies have made, and if they haven't grossed a certain amount, then you're not bankable. I know I'm not Will Smith but, you know, my ranking's pretty low. The only studio picture I've done is 'Zodiac,' and that didn't perform that well. ~ Chloe Sevigny

See, far above arrogance and selfishness on the rankings of undesirable Lifestyle traits, topping the lengthy list of carnal sins, occupying its very own stratosphere of unforgivable
reprehensibility, is lying. Without question, fibbing is the fastest way to secure a one-way trip to blackball status in the swing community. So assured is a liar's exile from the Lifestyle that should a perjurer come clean about a material untruth and still secure playtime, that individual will have rewritten the entire swing rulebook. And no matter how enticing it may be to rewrite history, I do not recommend attempting it. Not unless you're lusting after a celibate existence. ~ Daniel Stern

As Trick points out, sports leagues aren't concerned with determining the rankings as quickly and expeditiously as possible. Instead, sports calendars are explicitly designed to maintain tension throughout the season, something that has rarely been a concern of sorting theory. For ~ Brian Christian

If they had rankings in baseball, maybe I would have been able to do the math and figure out my chances of being a professional baseball player versus a tennis player. But that was the decision-maker for me, I just thought I was better in tennis. ~ Jim Courier

The qualifying system helps the top guys like Sergio Garcia, who play most of their golf in the U.S. They can rely on the world rankings and just play their four extra events [with the four majors and three World Golf Championship events counting as seven European events]. But for the other guys it's tough, and I don't know if that can be changed. It is a tricky situation. ~ Luke Donald

When I release something, I'm like, "OK, I want it to be the best." When I release my fragrance, I want it to be the number one fragrance. I don't want it to be like, "Oh yeah, you got ninth on the rankings." ~ Justin Bieber