Number Quotes (page 43)
Apart from the agglomeration of huge masses in which the individual disappears anyway, one of the chief factors responsible for psychological mass-mindedness is scientific rationalism, which robs the individual of his foundations and his dignity. As a social unit he has lost his individuality and become a mere abstract number in the bureau of statistics. He can only play the role of an interchangeable unit of infinitesimal importance. Looked at rationally and from outside, that is exactly...
Carl Jung
For the entire course of evolution leading from our primitive mammalian forebears of a hundred million years ago to the single lineage that threaded its way to become the first Homo sapiens, the total number of individuals it required might have been one hundred billion. Unknowingly, they all lived and died for us. (21)
E. O. Wilson
It is the modern literature of the educated, not of the uneducated, which is avowedly and aggressively criminal..The vast mass of humanity, with their vast mass of idle books and idle words, have never doubted and never will doubt that courage is splendid, that fidelity is noble, that distressed ladies should be rescued, and vanquished enemies spared. There are a large number of cultivated persons who doubt these maxims of daily life.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
Because menare killing the foreststhe fairy tales are running away. The spindle doesn't knowwhom to prick, the little girl's handsthat her father has chopped off, haven't a single tree to catch hold of, the third wish remains unspoken. King Thrushbeard no longer owns one thing. Children can no longer get lost. The number seven means no more than exactly seven. Because men have killed the forests, the fairy tales are trotting off to the citiesand end badly.
Gunter Grass