Small Numbers Quotes

Religious truth is captive in a small number of little manuscripts which guard the common treasures, instead of expanding them. Let us break the seal which binds these holy things; let us give wings to truth that it may fly with the Word, no longer prepared at vast expense, but multitudes everlastingly by a machine which never wearies to every soul which enters life. ~ Johannes Gutenberg

It seems to me that the soul, when alone with itself and speaking to itself, uses only a small number of words, none of them extraordinary. ~ Paul Valery

A very high fraction of America's economic problems come not from our difficulties with education or globalization or competition with the Chinese or whatever. But they come from the fact that a small number of wealthy and powerful people who run dangerous and/or inefficient companies are able, through the use of money in the political process, to prevent the government from regulating them properly. ~ Charles Ferguson

No matter where you are on politics, I think it is wonderful to see candidates funding campaigns not by talking to a very small number of very rich people, but by reaching out to a very large number of citizens. ~ David Brooks

Maybe it will be a great thing when the Baby Boomers finally die out. In real life, it's not a matter of the good guys or the bad guys. Rather, it's big numbers and small numbers that do the counting. ~ Jack Bowman

It is with books as with men: a very small number play a great part. ~ Voltaire

The gratification which affluence of wealth, extent of power, and eminence of reputation confer, must be always, by their own nature, confined to a very small number; and the life of the greater part of mankind must be lost in empty wishes and painful comparisons, were not the balm of philosophy shed upon us, and our discontent at the appearances of unequal distribution soothed and appeased. ~ Samuel Johnson

Basically, the body does have a vast amount of inbuilt anti-ageing machinery; it's just not 100% comprehensive, so it allows a small number of different types of molecular and cellular damage to happen and accumulate. ~ Aubrey De Grey

Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirrour of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world; by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions: they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find. His persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species. ~ Samuel Johnson

An aria in an opera - Handel's 'Ombra mai fu,' for example - gets along with an incredibly small number of words and ideas and a large amount of variation and repetition. That's the beauty of it. It's not taxing to the listener's intelligence because if you haven't heard it the first time round, it'll come around again. ~ James Fenton

Amos and I called our first joint article "Belief in the Law of Small Numbers." We explained, tongue-in-cheek, that "intuitions about random sampling appear to satisfy the law of small numbers, which asserts that the law of large numbers applies to small numbers as well." We also included a strongly worded recommendation that researchers regard their "statistical intuitions with proper suspicion and replace impression formation by computation whenever possible. ~ Daniel Kahneman

But in general, for the purposes of most novelists, the number of objects genuinely necessary for ... describing a scene will be found to be very small. ~ Elizabeth Bowen

To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself. ~ Pope Leo XIII

A city can only be reconstructed in the form of urban quarters. A large or a small city can only be reorganized as a large or a small number of urban quarters; as a federation of autonomous quarters. Each quarter must have its own center, periphery and limit. Each quarter must be a city within a city. ~ Leon Krier

I never had any frustration about writing uncredited. I always felt that the satisfaction of doing it was in the doing of it, really, and getting recognised by the small number of people that know what you did. ~ Tom Stoppard

As soon as science has emerged from its initial stages, theoretical advances are no longer achieved merely by a process of arrangement. Guided by empirical data, the investigator rather develops a system of thought which, in general, is built up logically from a small number of fundamental assumptions, the so-called axioms. We call such a system of thought a theory. The theory finds the justification for its existence in the fact that it correlates a large number of single observations, and it is just here that the 'truth' of the theory lies. ~ Albert Einstein

With God's help, you will continue to succeed in your leadership and in your duties, because Our Lord's work is accomplished not so much by the multitude of workers as by the fidelity of the small number whom He calls. ~ Vincent De Paul

Back in the 1980s, when the internet was only available to a small number of pioneers, I was often confronted by people who feared that the strange technologies I was working on, like virtual reality, might unleash the demons of human nature. For instance, would people become addicted to virtual reality as if it were a drug? Would they become trapped in it, unable to escape back to the physical world where the rest of us live? Some of the questions were silly, and others were prescient. ~ Jaron Lanier

With his continual doctrine [Bishop Hooper] adjoined due and discreet correction, not so much severe to any as to them which for abundance of riches and wealthy state thought they might do what they listed. And doubtless he spared no kind of people, but was indifferent to all men, as well rich as poor, to the great shame of no small number of men nowadays. Whereas many we see so addicted to the pleasing of great and rich men, that in the meantime they have no regard to the meaner sort of poor people, whom Christ hath bought as dearly as the other. ~ John Foxe

Little by little, I've reached the stage of using only a small number of forms and colors. It's not the first time that painting has been done with a very narrow range of colors. The frescoes of the tenth century are painted like this. For me, they are magnificent things. ~ Joan Miro

It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already. ~ Peggy McIntosh

A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person. ~ James Madison

Lovers of small numbers go benignly potty,
Believe all tales are thirteen chapters long,
Have animal doubles, carry pentagrams,
Are Millerites, Baconians, Flat-Earth-Men.

Lovers of big numbers go horribly mad,
would have the Swiss abolished, all of us
Well-purged, somatotyped, baptised, taught baseball:
They empty bars, spoil parties, run for Congress. ~ W. H. Auden

Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all ~ George Washington

The simplicity of nature is not to be measured by that of our conceptions. Infinitely varied in its effects, nature is simple only in its causes, and its economy consists in producing a great number of phenomena, often very complicated, by means of a small number of general laws. ~ Pierre-Simon Laplace

Persons of genius are, ex vi termini, more individual than any other people - less capable, consequently, of fitting themselves, without hurtful compression, into any of the small number of moulds which society provides in order to save its members the trouble of forming their character. ~ John Stuart Mill

And yet I would not freely exchange my science for those of my fellow laureates. They are forever confined in their professional discussions to the small numbers of their fellow scientists. ~ George Stigler

Geometry, like arithmetic, requires for its logical development only a small number of simple, fundamental principles. These fundamental principles are called the axioms of geometry. ~ David Hilbert

Only a very small number of the e-mails containing classified information bore markings indicating the presence of classified information. But even if information is not marked 'classified' in an e-mail, participants who know or should know that the subject matter is classified are still obligated to protect it. ~ James Comey

Every climate scientist has his or her own views on some issues that differ from the mainstream in detail. But the broad findings of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) have general support amongst scientists with relevant specialist expertise. The broad wisdom of the IPCC is strongly contested by a small number, and a small minority, of reputed climate scientists. It is not contested by the large majority of specialists, and by the leaders of the relevant learned academies in the countries of great scientific accomplishment. ~ Ross Garnaut

Success comes from hard work and the accumulation of small numbers. ~ Sean Platt

We've had risk assessments performed by Harvard University, which said that even if we did have a small number of cases in this country that the likelihood of it spreading or getting into any kind of human health problem is very, very small. ~ Ann Veneman

While reading writers of great formulatory power - Henry James, Santayana, Proust - I find I can scarcely get through a page without having to stop to record some lapidary sentence. Reading Henry James, for example, I have muttered to myself, "C'mon, Henry, turn down the brilliance a notch, so I can get some reading done." I may be one of a very small number of people who have developed writer's cramp while reading. ~ Joseph Epstein

Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether. ~ Cyril Connolly

The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter,to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens and greater sphere of country over which the latter may be extended. ~ James Madison

You are more likely to acquire power by narrowing your focus and applying your energies, like the sun's rays, to a limited range of activities in a small number of domains. ~ Jeffrey Pfeffer

For you to believe that there is no major world conspiracy which involves a small number of people manipulating humanity through a hierarchical structure of control toward a New World Order, shows you have, in actual fact, not looked genuinely into the abundance of well-researched information on world conspiracy to see if there is one! ~ David Icke

Now in those days, my brothers, the teaming up was mostly by fours and fives, these being like auto-teams, for being a comfy number for an auto, and six being the outside limit for gang-size. Sometimes gangs would gang up so as to make like malenky armies for big nightwar, but mostly it was best to roam in these like small numbers. ~ Anthony Burgess

I don't let people use me. That's why I like a small number of people in my life. The more people in my life, the more complex it becomes, so I just try to keep it at a minimum. ~ Anita Baker

It is possible - given absolute control over the media and the police - to rewrite the memories of hundreds of millions of people, if you have a generation to accomplish it in. Almost always, this is done to improve the hold that the powerful have on power, or to serve the narcissism or megalomania or paranoia of national leaders. It throws a monkey wrench into the error-correcting machinery. It works to erase public memory of profound political mistakes, and thus to guarantee their eventual repetition.

In our time, with total fabrication of realistic stills, motion pictures, and videotapes technologically within reach, with television in every home, and with critical thinking in decline, restructuring societal memories even without much attention from the secret police seems possible. What I'm imagining here is not that each of us has a budget of memories implanted in special therapeutic sessions by state-appointed psychiatrists, but rather that small numbers of people will have so much control over news stories, history books, and deeply affecting images as to work major changes in collective attitudes. ~ Carl Sagan

During my campaign, I had come across a small number of (mostly) young men, who had strongly racist views. They told me they would only vote for a party that was willing to get rid of black and coloured people from this country. What struck me as strange is that they weren't bothered about the thousands of white Europeans arriving from Central and Eastern Europe. ~ Andrea Leadsom

We live in a scientific age, yet we assume that knowledge of science is the prerogative of only a small number of human beings, isolated and priestlike in their laboratories. This is not true. The materials of science are the materials of life itself. Science is part of the reality of living; it is the way, the how and the why for everything in our experience. ~ Rachel Carson

The history of atomism is one of reductionism – the effort to reduce all the operations of nature to a small number of laws governing a small number of primordial objects. ~ Leon M. Lederman

A small number of peasants - brave peasants - shot down two Apaches ~ Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

Taste is the best judge. It is rare. Art only addresses itself to an excessively small number of individuals. ~ Paul Cezanne

Notes are part of life for any composer for hire. There's no way around it. I think anyone who has done even a small number of films as a professional composer gets used to that idea pretty quickly. ~ Christophe Beck

Let us thank God for having called us to His holy faith. It is a great gift, and the number of those who thank God for it is small. ~ Alphonsus Liguori

I like being able to just turn the microscope on a small number of people, get to know them, drop into their lives for a period of time. ~ Lynn Shelton

Six degrees of separation doesn't mean that everyone is linked to everyone else in just six steps. It means that a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special few. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

A very small number of non-Christians, including those with radical anti-Christian agendas, have been able to control and manipulate the civil politics of America with little or no opposition. ~ Rick Scarborough

The control of large numbers is possible, and like unto that of small numbers, if we subdivide them. ~ Sun Tzu

Human beings cannot comprehend very large or very small numbers. It would be useful for us to acknowledge that fact. ~ Daniel Kahneman

It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country ... We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society ... In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind. ~ Edward L. Bernays

A State divided into a small number of rich and a large number of poor will always develop a government manipulated by the rich to protect the amenities represented by their property. ~ Harold Laski

There are no small number of people in this world who, solitary by nature, always try to go back into their shell like a hermit crab or a snail. ~ Anton Chekhov

I am troubled by the lack of common sense regarding carbon dioxide emissions. Our greatest greenhouse gas is water. Atmospheric spectroscopy reveals why water has a 95 percent and CO2 a 3.6 percent contribution to the 'greenhouse effect.' Carbon dioxide emissions worldwide each year total 3.2 billion tons. That equals about 0.0168 percent of the atmosphere's CO2 concentration of about 19 trillion tons. This results in a 0.00064 percent increase in the absorption of the sun's radiation. This is an insignificantly small number. ~ Michael Myers

Clearly, we were hoping to get some competitive proposals, but the reality is there are only a small number of firms that would be interested and have the wherewithal to bid. ~ Michael Perrin

However, in the twenty-first century the majority of both men and women might lose their military and economic value. Gone is the mass conscription of the two world wars. The most advanced armies of the twenty-first century rely far more on cutting-edge technology. Instead of limitless cannon fodder, countries now need only small numbers of highly trained soldiers, even smaller numbers of special forces super-warriors and a handful of experts who know how to produce and use sophisticated technology. Hi-tech forces 'manned' by pilotless drones and cyber-worms are replacing the mass armies of the twentieth century, and generals delegate more and more critical decisions to algorithms. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

In 1955 flying was much more dangerous than it is now, but there was a party atmosphere aboard long flights and everyone enjoyed the ever-flowing drinks and food. Smoking was the norm and it didn't take long before the cabin was full of smoke. The stewardesses were friendly and I can remember some that were very friendly.

I don't remember much about my time in Lisbon because, before I knew it, we were in the air again heading south across the ocean to the vastness of the North African desert. The light yellow sand under us in Morocco and the Spanish Sahara was endless. The fine sand went from the barren coastal surf and endless miles of beautiful beaches, inland as far as the eye could see.

After a time I saw what I believed, at the time, to be a radio relay station located out on a desolate sand spit near Villa Bens. It was only later that I found out that it was Castelo de Tarfaya, a small fortification on the North African coast. Tarfaya was occupied by the British in 1882, when they established a trading post called Casa del Mar. This forgotten part of the world is now in the southern part of Morocco. ~ Captain Hank Bracker, "Seawater Two...."

So there are no ill effects?" I asked.
"Well, as I said, you could die."
I looked him in the eye, my one good eye flicking back and forth between the two of his.
"So, if you had to give me odds for living another forty years, say until I was seventy, what would the odds be?"
"I'm not very good at that sort of thing."
"Ten to one? One hundred to one?"
"I've never really understood what that means," he said.
"Just give me the odds."
"Of you living till you're seventy?" he said. "I'd say it's thirty-five, seventy-five."
I shook my head. Dr. Owen and his nineteenth-century frame, blunt disregard for my need to be reassured and fucked-up math was too much. This man was making my world small. I imagined he was a moon who had just eclipsed me.
- "Bicycle Kick ~ Jonathan Messinger

I love New York, but am happy to be away from it. I really like small towns, with welcoming barbecue restaurants. ~ David Burnett

But the moon came slowly up in all her gentle glory, and the stars looked out, and through the small compass of the grated window, as through the narrow crevice of one good deed in a murky life of guilt, the face of Heaven shone bright and merciful. He raised his head; gazed upward at the quiet sky, which seemed to smile upon the earth in sadness, as if the night, more thoughtful than the day, looked down in sorrow on the sufferings and evil deeds of men; and felt its peace sink deep into his heart. ~ Charles Dickens

Whatever comes, let's be content withal; Among God's blessings there is not one small. ~ Robert Herrick

The concentration of a small child at play is analogous to the concentration of the artist of any discipline. In real play, which is real concentration, the child is not only outside time, he is outside himself. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

There are no small churches, just small people. ~ Edwin Louis Cole

The idea is to go from numbers to information to understanding. ~ Hans Rosling

When I write something I usually think it is very important and that I am a very fine writer. I think this happens to everyone. But there is one corner of my mind in which I know very well what I am, which is a small, a very small writer. I swear I know it. But that doesn't matter much to me. Only, I don't want to think about names: I can see that if I am asked 'a small writer like who?' it would sadden me to think of the names of other small writers. I prefer to think that no one has ever been like me, however small, however much a mosquito or a flea of a writer I may be. The important thing is to be convinced that this really is your vocation, your profession, something you will do all your life. ~ Natalia Ginzburg

But as in the sphere of man's experimental knowledge one who sincerely inquires how he is to live cannot be satisfied with the reply
"Study in endless space the mutations, infinite in time and in complexity, of innumerable atoms, and then you will understand your life"
so also a sincere man cannot be satisfied with the reply: "Study the whole life of humanity of which we cannot know either the beginning or the end, of which we do not even know a small part, and then you will understand your own life." And like the experimental semi-sciences, so these other semi-sciences are the more filled with obscurities, inexactitudes, stupidities, and contradictions, the further they diverge from the real problems. ~ Leo Tolstoy

A large number of people to begin crawling through those tunnels and caves looking for the bad folks. ~ Donald Rumsfeld

I remember everyone in my nursery school class getting a carton of milk before the day started. Only, I got mine about 20 minutes later than everyone else because it had to be kept on the radiator for a short while. I liked warm milk when I was small. ~ Luke Pasqualino

God is so big He can cover the whole world with His love, and so small He can curl up inside your heart. ~ June Masters Bacher

The reverence accorded to the composer's score suggests that it is a sacred object, which is not to be tampered with, whose authority over the actions of all the musicians playing here tonight is absolute, which commands absolute stillness and silence from those devotees who have assembled to hear it performed. ~ Christopher Small

The real improvements then must come, to a considerable extent, from the local communities themselves. We need local revision of our methods of land use and production. We need to study and work together to reduce scale, reduce overhead, reduce industrial dependencies; we need to market and process local products locally; we need to bring local economies into harmony with local ecosystems so that we can live and work with pleasure in the same places indefinitely; we need to substitute ourselves, our neighborhoods, our local resources, for expensive imported goods and services; we need to increase cooperation among all local economic entities: households, farms, factories, banks, consumers, and suppliers. If. we are serious about reducing government and the burdens of government, then we need to do so by returning economic self-determination to the people. And we must not do this by inviting destructive industries to provide "jobs" to the community; we must do it by fostering economic democracy. For example, as much as possible the food that is consumed locally ought to be locally produced on small farms, and then processed in small, non- polluting plants that are locally owned. We must do everything possible to provide to ordinary citizens the opportunity to own a small, usable share of the country. In that way, we will put local capital to work locally, not to exploit and destroy the land but to use it well. This is not work just for the privileged, the well-positioned, the ~ Wendell Berry

The rich were getting richer, the poor were getting poorer, small farmers were being squeezed out, workingmen were working twelve hours a day for a bare living; profits were for the rich, the law was for the rich, the cops were for the rich; ~ John Dos Passos

Perhaps the mere idea of receiving a nasty missive will allow animal researchers to empathize with their victims for the first time in their lousy careers. I find it small wonder that the laboratories aren't all burning to the ground. If I had more guts, I'd light a match. ~ Ingrid Newkirk

Nature is flexible and resilient. Nature likes redundancy and dispersion. It is approximate and deals in gradients. All boundaries are permeable. Nature nests small systems like molecules within larger systems like cells, which in turn are nested in systems called organs, organisms, ecosystems. We grew from ancient one-celled ancestors. Nature likes mergers: we contain multitudes of other life forms within us. We stand at the crest of four billion years, bacteria molded into wondrous form, burning with a slow fire and about to take the next step. ~ Robert Frenay

Those who were adept and brave fellows I have made military commanders. Those who were quick and nimble I have made herders of horses. Those who were not adept I have given a small whip and sent to be shepherds ~ Genghis Khan

Two dots an inch apart, as small and tidy as punctuation marks at the end of a sentence none of us could read. The sentence would have started somewhere just above her heart. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

We talk to each other in code. We said that 420 was a special number. It was a time. It was a date. It was a symbol for what we did for passive resistance. ~ Rick Cusick

At the bakery it's just me. It's a small place. Just me and the raspberry horns and the tourtiere pies and my cigarette going in the ashtray near the black sink. Every once in a while a car passes through the dark street outside the storefont windows, but that's pretty much all I see of people while I'm there, until the end of my shift at eight when Monica shows up to open the store for the day. A solid twelve hours by myself, nothing but the radio to keep me company, and I like it just fine, being alone. It's even better in the winter, during a storm, when the snow piles up outside and no cars come by at all. Inside the bakery it's warm and there's plenty to keep my hands busy. Times like that, for all I can tell I'm the only person left on earth. I could go on making pies and watching the snow pile up until the end of time, so long as there was enough coffee on hand. I don't need company like some people seem to. ~ Ron Currie Jr.

I've been fortunate to play many different types of characters thus far. However, I really enjoy playing roles that are different than who I am personally. You can have these small fantasy worlds where you can be people you would otherwise never get to be: a doctor, a lawyer, a ruthless business woman. ~ Gina Holden

But in the deep red event behind the stove's glass window the filament of time was never tangled, nothing had a name or a reason, everything was itself, and the things she would always know, even if you took her head away, even if you killed her, were confirmed: It catches, then burns, then blazes; it rages and sings, it wanes, it shifts and flares, it burns a little longer and then weakens, whatever it is, and goes out. But if you lay the small wood across it in the morning, it all begins again. ~ Denis Johnson

Dear Sixpence,
I saved them all, you know. Every letter you ever sent, even those to which I never replied. I'm sorry for so many things, my love: that I left
you; that I never came home; that it took me so long to realize that you were my home and that, with you by my side, none of the rest
mattered.
But in the darkest hours, on the coldest nights, when I felt I'd lost everything, I still had your letters. And through them, in some small way,
I still had you.
I loved you then, my darling Penelope, more than I could imagine - just as I love you now, more than you can know.
Michael
Hell House, February 1831 ~ Sarah MacLean

I owe you a small thanks, for you have made me far more sure of my own position by letting me see the case for free choice put forward with all the energy of so distinguished and powerful a mind, but with no other effect than to make things worse than before. ~ Martin Luther

No man discovers anything big if he does not make himself small. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

We do not believe in oversupplying the market. When you are a large company, you can afford to do it. When you are a small player, your flexibility gets reduced. ~ Lakshmi Mittal

Near the top of the market, investors are extraordinarily optimistic because they've seen mostly higher prices for a year or two. The sell-offs witnessed during that span were usually brief. Even when they were severe, the market bounced back quickly and always rose to loftier levels. At the top, optimism is king, speculation is running wild, stocks carry high price/earnings ratios, and liquidity has evaporated. A small rise in interest rates can easily be the catalyst for triggering a bear market at that point. ~ Martin Zweig

Life is just one small piece of light between two eternal darknesses. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

large numbers of reporters and ~ Harry Truman

Dead souls dream only of death. Small dreams for small men. It is life that expands to fill worlds. Life is your master, or death is ~ Laini Taylor

Uneven numbers are the gods' delight. ~ Virgil

Ephraim lifted the top of the trunk. Neatly stacked were mementoes from what seemed like hundreds of journeys. Right on top was an etching of the Eiffel tower next to an African mask that looked at him with surprised eyes. He reached in a little deeper and unearthed a small teapot decorated with blue drawings just like the kind his grandmother collected and kept in a locked china cabinet. ~ Megan Frazer Blakemore

I know not how I seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with while the vast ocean of undiscovered truth lay before me. ~ Isaac Newton

I griped about it at lunch one day to Bill Weist and Dr. Leslie Squier, our visiting psychologists from Reed College. I'd been trying to train one otter to stand on a box, I told them. No problem getting the behavior; as soon as I put the box in the enclosure, the otter rushed over and climbed on top of it. She quickly understood that getting on the box earned her a bite of fish, But. As soon as she got the picture, she began testing the parameters. 'Would you like me lying down on the box? What if I just put three feet on the box? Suppose I hang upside down from the edge of the box? Suppose I stand on it and look under it at the same time? How about if I put my front paws on it and bark?' For twenty minutes she offered me everything imaginable except just getting on the box and standing there. It was infuriating, and strangely exhausting. The otter would eat her fish and then run back to the box and present some new, fantastic variation and look at me expectantly (spitefully, even, I thought) while I struggled once more to decide if what she was doing fit my criteria or not.

My psychologist friends flatly refused to believe me; no animal acts like that. If you reinforce a response, you strengthen the chance that the animal will repeat what it was doing when it was reinforced; you don't precipitate some kind of guessing game.

So I showed them. We all went down to the otter tank, and I took the other otter and attempted to get it to swim through a small ~ Karen Pryor

Whooping cough is not a mild disease. Whooping cough, before the vaccination, could make you very, very sick. First of all, there was a chance you could die from it - small chance, not a big chance. You would be coughing and coughing. It wouldn't last for a few days, like a cold. ~ Anthony Fauci

Don't forget the small things, above all, don't forget the small things - the smaller the trace, the more important it sometimes is. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Sure. I'll make small talk. Chit chat.
Discuss the ins and outs of a "typical" day.
Pass the time lightly. Say tiny things.
I'm happy to tread surfaces with a smile,
and will. Sometimes.

Yet- when I look at you,
I know there are layers.
Dimensions. Collections of ancient wisdom.
Roads. Stories on stories on stories.
Core needs.

There is humanness.

This is where I light up.
This is where I thrive.

You can't be caged in a pool for long.
Not when you're someone
who wants oceans. ~ Victoria Erickson

We often fear that the Revolution needed is too big for what we can give.
Too much change is required inside, outside.
And we are too small.
But all that is required is that you step into the truth of your life.
And speak it, write it, paint it, dance it.
That you shine your light on your truth, for the world to see.
And as hundreds, then thousands, then millions do this – each sparking the courage of yet more –
Suddenly we have a world alight with truth. ~ Lucy H. Pearce

Happiness and joy comes to you when it moves through you. There is no other pathway
and that's the miracle. You will have a number of opportunities in the days just ahead to be a vehicle of happiness and joy for another. Step right into that. Be the source of that. As you bring others to a smile, so, too, will you bring yourself. The method is foolproof. ~ Neale Donald Walsch