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“Prime numbers are divisible only by 1 and by themselves. They hold their place in the infinite series of natural numbers, squashed, like all numbers, between two others, but one step further than the rest. They are suspicious, solitary numbers, which is why Mattia thought they were wonderful. Sometimes he thought that they had ended up in that sequence by mistake, that they'd been trapped, like pearls strung on a necklace. Other times he suspected that they too would have preferred to be like all others, just ordinary numbers, but for some reason they couldn't do it. This second thought struck him mostly at night, in the chaotic interweaving of images that comes before sleep, when the mind is too weak to tell itself lies.”
― Paolo Giordano, The Solitude of Prime Numbers

“He’d always felt he had a right to exist as a wizard in the same way that you couldn’t do proper maths without the number 0, which wasn’t a number at all but, if it went away, would leave a lot of larger numbers looking bloody stupid.”
― Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times

“Numbers still gave Astrid pleasure. That was the great thing about numbers: it required no faith to believe that two plus two equaled four. And math never, ever condemned you for your thoughts and desires.”
― Michael Grant, Fear

“If the bible be true, God commanded his chosen people to destroy men simply for the crime of defending their native land. They were not allowed to spare trembling and white-haired age, nor dimpled babes clasped in the mothers' arms. They were ordered to kill women, and to pierce, with the sword of war, the unborn child. 'Our heavenly Father' commanded the Hebrews to kill the men and women, the fathers, sons and brothers, but to preserve the girls alive. Why were not the maidens also killed? Why were they spared? Read the thirty-first chapter of Numbers, and you will find that the maidens were given to the soldiers and the priests. Is there, in all the history of war, a more infamous thing than this? Is it possible that God permitted the violets of modesty, that grow and shed their perfume in the maiden's heart, to be trampled beneath the brutal feet of lust? If this was the order of God, what, under the same circumstances, would have been the command of a devil? When, in this age of the world, a woman, a wife, a mother, reads this record, she should, with scorn and loathing, throw the book away. A general, who now should make such an order, giving over to massacre and rapine a conquered people, would be held in execration by the whole civilized world. Yet, if the bible be true, the supreme and infinite God was once a savage.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses

“Don't you know anything at all about numbers?"
"Well, I don't think they're very important," snapped Milo, too embarrassed to admit the truth.
"NOT IMPORTANT!" roared the Dodecahedron, turning red with fury. "Could you have tea for two without the two � or three blind mice without the three? Would there be four corners of the earth if there weren't a four? And how would you sail the seven seas without a seven?"
"All I meant was�" began Milo, but the Dodecahedron, overcome with emotion and shouting furiously, carried right on.
"If you had high hopes, how would you know how high they were? And did you know that narrow escapes come in all different widths? Would you travel the whole wide world without ever knowing how wide it was? And how could you do anything at long last," he concluded, waving his arms over his head, "without knowing how long the last was? Why, numbers are the most beautiful and valuable things in the world. Just follow me and I'll show you." He turned on his heel and stalked off into the cave.”
― Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

“Oh, figures!' answered Ned. 'You can make figures do whatever you want.”
― Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea

“Whenever a man can get hold of numbers, they are invaluable: if correct, they assist in informing his own mind, but they are still more useful in deluding the minds of others. Numbers are the masters of the weak, but the slaves of the strong.”
― Charles Babbage, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher

“God made the integers; all the rest is the work of Man.”
― Leopold Kronecker

“Miri took genuine comfort in studying Mathematics that day. She could sort numbers into two simple ideas: true and not true. Unlike numbers, words were rarely just one thing. They moved and changed, camouflaging and leaping out unexpectedly. Words were slippery and alive; words wrestled out of her grip and became something new. Words were dangerous.”
― Shannon Hale, Palace of Stone

“Those who think 'Science is Measurement' should search Darwin's works for numbers and equations.”
― David H. Hubel, The History of Neuroscience in Autobiography DVD Wiesel/Hubel

“There is strength in numbers, yes, but even more so in collective good will. For those endeavors are supported by mighty forces unseen.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“You end up with a machine which knows that by its mildest estimate it must have terrible enemies all around and within it, but it can't find them. It therefore deduces that they are well-concealed and expert, likely professional agitators and terrorists. Thus, more stringent and probing methods are called for. Those who transgress in the slightest, or of whom even small suspicions are harboured, must be treated as terrible foes. A lot of rather ordinary people will get repeatedly investigated with increasing severity until the Government Machine either finds enemies or someone very high up indeed personally turns the tide... And these people under the microscope are in fact just taking up space in the machine's numerical model. In short, innocent people are treated as hellish fiends of ingenuity and bile because there's a gap in the numbers.”
― Nick Harkaway, The Gone-Away World

“The ingenious method of expressing every possible number using a set of ten symbols (each symbol having a place value and an absolute value) emerged in India. The idea seems so simple nowadays that its significance and profound importance is no longer appreciated ... The importance of this invention is more readily appreciated when one considers that it was beyod the two greatest men of antiquity, Archimedes and Apollonius.”
― Pierre Simon De Laplace

“He loved numbers, their patterns and secrets, the way something complex could be reduced to something simple. In mathematics, unlike life, there was always a solution, a definite answer.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Scandal in Spring

“They are simply numbers and cannot thus be right or wrong [...] What I trust that I am saying is that all numbers are by their nature correct. Well, except for Pi, of course. I can't be doing with Pi. Gives me a headache just thinking about it, going on and on and on and on and on....”
― Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“I love that she loves me a 10, on a 5-point scale. Well, I know it’s a 5-point scale, though I asked her on a 1-100 scale.
â€�”
― Dark Jar Tin Zoo, Love Quotes for the Ages. Specifically Ages 19-91.

“A glance toward her digital clock showed the numbers twitching and randomly changing on their own, as though her clock couldn’t make up its mind on what time it wanted to be.”
― Kelly Creagh, Nevermore

“You know what happens at any magic show? When the magician says ‘look here, look here,â€� the audience looks only there and nowhere else. And that’s exactly what happened at the earnings conference today.”
― Ali Sheikh, Closure of the Helpdesk â€� A Geek Tragedy

“And those who will carefully study the so-called 'Mosaic code' contained in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, will see that, though Jahveh's prohibitions of certain forms of immorality are strict and sweeping, his wrath is quite as strongly kindled against infractions of ritual ordinances. Accidental homicide may go unpunished, and reparation may be made for wilful theft. On the other hand, Nadab and Abihu, who 'offered strange fire before Jahveh, which he had not commanded them,' were swiftly devoured by Jahveh's fire; he who sacrificed anywhere except at the allotted place was to be 'cut off from his people'; so was he who ate blood; and the details of the upholstery of the Tabernacle, of the millinery of the priests' vestments, and of the cabinet work of the ark, can plead direct authority from Jahveh, no less than moral commands.”
― Thomas Henry Huxley, The Evolution Of Theology: An Anthropological Study

“The days of the digital watch are numbered.”
― Tom Stoppard

“Tan Chau lies on the Thanh Hoa canal, which sings with freedom as it flows into the Mekong River on its way to the sea. Only the wind and the water, which you cannot imprison, are truly free.”
― James D. Redwood, Love beneath the Napalm

“Anything you try to quantify can be divided into any number of "anythings," or become the thing - the unit - itself. And what is any number, itself, but just another unit of measurement? What is a 'six' but two 'threes', or three 'twos'...half a 'twelve', or just six 'ones' - which are what?

(attrib: F.L. Vanderson)”
― Mort W. Lumsden, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“If you sell, say, two thousand copies, it is the same thing as if you had sold nothing at all because two thousand is too vast—I mean, for the imagination to grasp. While thirty-seven people—perhaps thirty-seven are too many, perhaps seventeen would have been better or even seven—but still thirty-seven are still within the scope of one's imagination.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Jack's marketing books had been a part of her life for so long that she had ceased to register their presence, simply moving them from the couch to the coffee table, from the bed to the nightstand. How to Sell Everything to Anybody. Eight Great Habits of CEOs. They all seemed to involve numbers, as if you could simply count yourself to riches, like following sheep to sleep.”
― Erica Bauermeister, Joy for Beginners

“Nem sempre há segurança nos ²Ôú³¾±ð°ù´Çs, e às vezes as circunstâncias influem muitas nas ações dos homens.”
― Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, Uma Rosa do Inverno