Famous quotes containing the words smallest and/or number:
“The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics. Thus, the whole is greater than its part; reaction is equal to action; the smallest weight may be made to lift the greatest, the difference of weight being compensated by time; and many the like propositions, which have an ethical as well as physical sense. These propositions have a much more extensive and universal sense when applied to human life, than when confined to technical use.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“[The] elderly and timid single gentleman in Paris ... never drove down the Champs Elysees without expecting an accident, and commonly witnessing one; or found himself in the neighborhood of an official without calculating the chances of a bomb. So long as the rates of progress held good, these bombs would double in force and number every ten years.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (18381918)