Denominator Quotes

#1. It always amazed Vimes how Nobby got along with practically everyone. It must, he'd decided, have something to do with the common denominator. In the entire world of mathematics there could be no denominator as common as Nobby.

Terry Pratchett

#2. I've never really been very good at marriage. It's one of my failures. I've tried my best, but I do realise the common denominator is me; it's something I'm doing.

Len Goodman

#3. A common denominator among big guys like me who are trying to take care of our health is that we're not getting enough sleep.

Michael Moore

#4. The 'gallows' are not only a symbol of death, but also a symbol of cruelty, terror and irreverence for life; the common denominator of primitive savagery, medieval fanaticism and modern totalitarianism.

Arthur Koestler

#5. Often our students see nothing about religious faith except the lowest common denominator. They see nothing but TV evangelists and fools, and it doesn't occur to them that intelligent people might find this religious business worth living their lives by.

Doris Betts

#6. The lowest common denominator of the universe is both low and common.

R.A. Lafferty

#7. Is an institution always a man's shadow shortened in the sun, the lowest common denominator of everybody in it?

Randall Jarrell

#8. Because he thinks Facebook is the lowest common denominator of social discourse. Though he does like to talk about social media as a vehicle for constructing and performing identity. Whatever the hell that means.

Becky Albertalli

#9. It's all nonsense to say that the Fifteenth Century can't possibly speak to the Twentieth, because it is the Fifteenth and not the Twentieth, and because those two Centuries haven't got a Common Denominator. They have. It's Human Nature.

Frederick Rolfe

#10. English should not stoop to embrace the lowest common denominator. Rather, society should step up and grant the language the respect it deserves.

Terry Fallis

#11. If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.

Jimmy Carter

#12. For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a steadily declining path toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the 'masses' want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies want to give the masses what they want.

Steven Johnson

#13. Is there a common denominator? I wonder. You know, if there is, I should be inclined to say it is vanity.

Agatha Christie

#14. To me, elitism means a love of excellence and superiority, but America has declared war on both and developed a sick love of the lowest common denominator to make sure no-one becomes too fine for our touted democracy. We are almost at the point of regarding every virtue as elitist.

Florence King

#15. There is a brotherhood within the body of believers, and the Lord Jesus Christ is the common denominator. Friendship and fellowship are the legal tender among believers.

J. Vernon McGee

#16. We have a lowest-common-denominator Christianity being taught in so many denominations that has produced a people who simply do not know some of the most basic Christian truths.

Albert Mohler

#17. Yeah, I think the common denominator - and this is probably going to sound like Acting 101 - but the common denominator is belief in the character in the moment.

Jenna Elfman

#18. I find that when I'm struggling to think of how a six-year-old would feel about something, I just have to go right down to the common denominator, find the simplest way that you can look at an object or a problem, and not muck it up with all of the stuff that adults do and over-analyze.

Barbara Park

#19. There is an enormous pressure placed on gay novelists because they are the only spokespeople. The novelist's first obligation is to be true to his own vision, not to be some sort of common denominator or public relations man to all gay people.

Edmund White

#20. What happens in the Senate is the Republicans sink to the lowest common denominator.

Jim DeMint

#21. Inside a company, you can mandate that everyone use the same technology, which means you can go a little bit, I don't know, higher fidelity than the lowest common denominator technology.

Stewart Butterfield

#22. The common denominator all Latinos have is that we want some respect. That's what we're all fighting for.

Cristina Saralegui

#23. It seems to be a common denominator with a lot of comics, this low self-esteem thing.

Ray Romano

#24. Idiom is larger than geography it is the hot breath of a people singing, slashing, explorative. Imagery becomes the magic denominator, the language of a passage, saying the ancient unchanging particulars.

Mari Evans

#25. All the leadership positions that I have had have one common denominator: none has required that I give up my science work.

Mildred S. Dresselhaus

#26. Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.

W. H. Auden

#27. America is not a nation of separation. All our citizens are Americans. The common denominator is our language. Our language is English. The glue that binds generation after generation is both our Constitution and our English language.

James Traficant

#28. Marxian Socialism and Bolshevism are two historical phenomena which have hardly a single common denominator.

Jose Ortega Y Gasset

#29. ... the only common denominator in all of your failed relationships is you.

Richard Labonte

#30. The thing is to be brave and move the audience with you, instead of cater to the lowest common denominator, you know, slipping on a banana peel and falling on your ass. You got to move the audience a little further ahead in terms of their appreciation of what is comedy. It's complicated.

Mel Brooks

#31. Let's make really good stories that people get something out of. That's the one common denominator with everything I try to do.

Frank Spotnitz

#32. If more people would try and reach up instead of going to the lowest common denominator, I think we'd be a lot better off.

Mary Badham

#33. Through photography, both artist and scientist can find a common denominator in their search for the synthesis of modern vision in time, space and structure.

Ernst Haas

#34. Love is the common denominator that unites all people whatever religion they are.-Rumi

Ahmet Umit

#35. Here were the same long cold bare corridors, the same lowest common denominator of design and decoration, with every light source designed so as to irritate as few people as possible and to please just as few.

Isaac Asimov

#36. People tend to compartmentalize themselves into IT people, and movie star people, and scientists, but when we share our perspectives about nature, we find a common denominator.

Nalini Nadkarni

#37. The art of detection is finding a common denominator for the fractions of a case.

Elsa Barker

#38. The awfulness of Monday mornings is the world's greatest common denominator. To the millionaire and the coolie it is the same, because there can be nothing worse.

Kenneth Fearing

#39. Most of the time people are aiming so low on television. They're trying to reach that common denominator, especially on network television.

Dylan McDermott

#40. The British media is sinking down, as the American news media has lowered the bar for all of humanity. British news media is definitely trying to stoop down to that level. Everyone is stooping to the lowest common denominator.

John Oliver

#41. I want people to be more open and tolerant. I want them to know that behind every stranger is a backstory that is the common denominator - for we all share in the human experience: pain, sadness, grief, lack of love, and then, with hope and help, step by step achievements.

Oprah Winfrey

#42. I don't plan ahead; each book finds me. History itself, the resonance of the past with the present, is the common denominator in all of them.

Guy Gavriel Kay

#43. For however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable I.

Joan Didion

#44. If genius has any common denominator, I would propose breadth of interest and the ability to construct fruitful analogies between fields.

Stephen Jay Gould

#45. I like to think that Junie B. looks at the world - and this isn't a negative comment on her - from the lowest common denominator. It's not all gray to her; it's all black and white.

Barbara Park

#46. Primitive, simplistic anti-Communism is all too often used as a common denominator for diverse efforts to perpetuate one's own power in a democratic system, convert opinions into dogma, and kill off all opposition, even silent.

Eugen Kogon

#47. Friendship is the underlying element, the common denominator of every relationship.

Shahla Khan

#48. I have noticed a common denominator among my smart and successful single friends, who tend to over-analyze and underestimate the opposite sex far more than their peers.

Lauren Iungerich

#49. To share a lot of ideas - not ideas - emotions, a way of looking at people, a way of looking at life. If it can be shared, it means there is a common denominator.

Agnes Varda

#50. Simply put, I believe we should not seek the lowest common denominator when it comes to wilderness and saddle a wilderness designation with exceptions, exclusions, and exemptions.

Nick Rahall

#51. Sometimes we need to look at everything going wrong in our lives and admit to ourselves, I am the only common denominator here.

Dan Pearce

#52. Love is our most unifying and empowering common spiritual denominator. The more we ignore its potential to bring greater balance and deeper meaning to human existence, the more likely we are to continue to define history as one long inglorious record of man's inhumanity to man.

Aberjhani

#53. I examine it [pain] every which way. Why do I really feel this way? What's going on here? I have to really explore it all the way out, drill it down to its lowest common denominator and go, Oh! That's what that is. I'm feeling insecure. Or, Oh! God has something better for me.

Kim Coles

#54. I don't view the fans in the way that most performers do. As a mass of people who have paid money, I know what they want. It's a very, very, very, very, very low common denominator.

Pete Townshend

#55. More than ambition, more than ability, it is rules that limit contribution; rules are the lowest common denominator of human behavior. They are a substitute for rational thought.

Hyman G. Rickover

#56. The common denominator is that we have guys who are really hungry to show what they can do.

Andre Iguodala

#57. [A] common denominator in European wars going back to the Crusades
no matter who won or lost, the one fairly reliable constant was that Jews somewhere were going to suffer.

Scott Anderson

#58. His definition of friendship had been grounded on the lowest common denominator, an absence of animosity. He

Henning Mankell

#59. Language is like money, without which specific relative values may well exist and be felt, but cannot be reduced to a common denominator.

George Santayana

#60. People with mental health problems are almost never dangerous. In fact, they are more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators. At the same time, mental illness has been the common denominator in one act of mass violence after another.

Roy Blunt

#61. Any artist, the work you do, if it's a painting or if it's a performance, you hope it translates to a common denominator with the people that they see something in their own life in there. Or they see something in somebody else's life. That's what's fun about sharing art.

Matthew McConaughey

#62. Demagoguery enters at the moment when, for want of a common denominator, the principle of equality degenerates into the principle of identity.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#63. We have almost succeeded in leveling all human activities to the common denominator of securing the necessities of life and providing for their abundance.

Hannah Arendt

#64. I've always been attracted to jerks. They range from sassy weirdos who are ultimately pretty good guys to sociopathic sex addicts, but the common denominator is a bad attitude upon first meeting and a desire to teach me a lesson.

Lena Dunham

#65. Woman reduces us all to a common denominator.

George Bernard Shaw

#66. Total commitment is the common denominator among all successful men and women.

Abdul Kalam

#67. I respect the audience's intelligence a lot, and that's why I don't try to go for the lowest common denominator.

Spike Lee

#68. Now the denominator ... why don't they just call it the bottom number? The denominator ... that sounds like a Schwarzenegger movie doesn't it? [impersonating Arnold Schwarzenegger] I am the Denominator. I'll give your leg a compound fraction!

Tim Allen

#69. Some people say Larry the Cable Guy's only successful because he's pandering to the lowest common denominator, blatantly and not ironically exploiting people's racist and homophobic tendencies. Don't listen to these people, Larry. They're just bitter and jealous and right.

Greg Giraldo

#70. The common denominator is that we all need help.

Judah Smith

#71. It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-called civilization fear remains the one common denominator of mankind

H.L. Mencken

#72. Each person has the potential to be good and productive, yet I also know that many people never begin to tap their true potential. It is human nature to surrender to the lowest common denominator. We must purposely strive to move ahead and achieve.

John Patrick Hickey

#73. I think horror can and should be classy. I enjoy seeing it raised up not lowered down to the lowest common denominator.
There's prejudice against the horror genre and I think sometimes that's the fault of the authors involved.

Carole Gill

#74. The single common denominator of men and women who achieve great things is a sense of destiny.

Brian Tracy

#75. If I look over my life, every single step of maturing for me, every single one, has had the exact same common denominator: accepting what was true over what I wished were true.

Julia Sweeney

#76. As God took me through the journey that became the Bible study 'Breaking Free', He taught me to look for a common denominator among the things that triggered my destructive habits.

Beth Moore

#77. What can we do better than any other company in the world, that fits our economic denominator and that we have passion for?

James C. Collins

#78. I spent most of my adult life in relationships some good, some bad. It took years for me to realize that I was the common denominator in all of these relationships and I needed to love me first.

Sanjo Jendayi

#79. I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony; but chaos, hostility and murder.

Werner Herzog

#80. He dropped his pile of papers onto the desk and indicated the sheet on top. "Here is the common I nominate in all the fires, Carl." "You what?" "The common I nominate." "Common denominator, Assad. A compound noun. What common denominator?

Jussi Adler-Olsen

#81. If you look at the common denominator of all the comics who have had big success, it's being true to their nature ... that's what takes a long time to learn.

Ron White

#82. I prefer to regard myself as one who has the ability and the mental and nervous equipment to make his own laws and act according to them rather than accept the laws that suit the lowest common denominator of the people.

Ian Fleming

#83. If anything, 'Fifty Shades of Grey' is a generic romance cynically engineered to appeal to the lowest common denominator of female fantasy.

Meghan Daum

#84. I don't think that brutality and idealism are mutually exclusive. It's a common denominator in my work - rabid idealism.

Richard Grossman

#85. To me, religion is the Walmart of spirituality ... I mean it's prepackaged. Lowest common denominator. People just have to follow the present motions and rituals and rules. The don't have to think about how the words reconcile with their own hearts. Their own experience.

Bill Konigsberg

#86. Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.

Soren Kierkegaard

#87. If you keep finding yourself in the same situations, the Universe is prompting you to confront self! YOU are the common denominator.

Sanjo Jendayi

#88. If we must withhold all ribbing in the name of protecting everyone's feelings, then we truly are a toothless society. We will reach what I call the lowest common denominator of butthurt.

George Takei

#89. A treatment method or an educational method that will work for one child may not work for another child. The one common denominator for all of the young children is that early intervention does work, and it seems to improve the prognosis.

Temple Grandin

#90. Facts, when combined with ideas, constitute the greatest force in the world. They are greater than armaments, greater than finance, greater than science, business and law because they constitute the common denominator of all of them.

Carl W. Ackerman

#91. The ability to make big leaps of thought is a common denominator among the originators of breakthrough ideas.

Nicholas Negroponte

#92. When you go to standup, there seems to be a common denominator of some form of need or want for validation from the audience that maybe you were lacking as a kid.

Ray Romano

#93. Segregation or separation is thus a basic principle of Biblical Law with respect to religion and morality. Every attempt to destroy this principle is an effort to reduce society to its lowest common denominator.

R.J. Rushdoony

#94. No matter how comfortable I felt at SymboGen, I needed to remember how good they were at taking things and reducing them to their lowest common denominator.

Mira Grant

#95. What happened to fantasy for me is what also happened to rock and roll. It found a common denominator for making maximum money. As a result, it lost its tensions, its anger, its edginess and turned into one big cup of cocoa.

Michael Moorcock

#96. There is something powerful in the whispering of obscenities, about those in power. There's something delightful about it, something naughty, secretive, forbidden, thrilling. It's like a spell, of sorts. It deflates them, reduces them to the common denominator where they can be dealt.

Margaret Atwood

#97. I think faith is the one common denominator between everything that goes on at the race track - a faith in Christ.

Kyle Petty

#98. Remember: You are the common denominator in all your relationship problems. Wherever you go, your pesky repeated issues go - until you shed a blazing light of insight upon them.

Karen Salmansohn

#99. Be mindful of your social environment. By nature, the group you hang-out with will develop a common behavior and mindset. This behavior usually gravitates towards the lowest common denominator. Choose your group wisely.

Steve Maraboli

#100. Photography appears to be an easy activity; in fact it is a varied and ambiguous process in which the only common denominator among its practitioners is in the instrument.

Henri Cartier-Bresson