Quote

The number of people on whose cooperative efforts your eventual existence depends has risen to approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, which is several thousand times the total number of people who have ever lived.

Bill Bryson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Bill Bryson
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: December 8
Author
Autobiographer
Journalist
Science Communicator
Science Writer
Travel Writer
Writer
Des Moines
Iowa
William Bryson
William Bill McGuire Bryson
William McGuire Bryson
Numbers
Efforts
Effort
Several
Existence
Total
Times
Lived
Eventual
Ever
Number
Cooperative
People
Whose
Cooperatives
Depends
Approximately
Thousand
Risen

More quotes by Bill Bryson

Image
In terms of adaptability, humans are pretty amazingly useless.
Bill Bryson
Image
I hadn't realized quite how extraordinary Charles Lindbergh's achievement was in flying the Atlantic alone. He had never flown over open water before, but he flew straight to Dingle Bay in Ireland and then on to Paris, exactly as planned.
Bill Bryson
Image
The best that can be said for Norwegian television is that it gives you the sensation of a coma without the worry and inconvenience.
Bill Bryson
Image
I don't know whether I'm misanthropic. It seems to me I'm constantly disappointed. I'm very easily disappointed.
Bill Bryson
Image
Physicists are atoms' way of thinking about atoms.
Bill Bryson
Image
I mused for a few moments on the question of which was worse, to lead a life so boring that you are easily enchanted, or a life so full of stimulus that you are easily bored.
Bill Bryson
Image
Taking a scenic route in Southeast Iowa is like talking about a good Barry Manilow album. You have to make certain allowances.
Bill Bryson
Image
Cheapness is a great virtue.
Bill Bryson
Image
I just use my life story as a kind of device on which to hang comic observations. It's not my interest or instinct to tell the world anything pertinent about myself or my family.
Bill Bryson
Image
England was full of words I'd never heard before - streaky bacon, short back and sides, Belisha beacon, serviettes, high tea, ice-cream cornet.
Bill Bryson
Image
You may find that your parents are the most delightful people, but you don't want to live with them.
Bill Bryson
Image
I became quietly seized with that nostalgia that overcomes you when you have reached the middle of your life and your father has recently died and it dawns on you that when he went he took some of you with him.
Bill Bryson
Image
I wanted to quit and to do this forever, sleep in a bed and in a tent, see what was over the next hill and never see a hill again. All of this all at once, every moment, on the trail or off.
Bill Bryson
Image
And before long there will be no more milk in bottles delivered to the doorstep or sleepy rural pubs, and the countryside will be mostly shopping centers and theme parks. Forgive me. I don't mean to get upset. But you are taking my world away from me, piece by little piece, and sometimes it just pisses me off. Sorry.
Bill Bryson
Image
There are things you just can't do in life. You can't beat the phone company, you can't make a waiter see you until he's ready to see you, and you can't go home again.
Bill Bryson
Image
Nearly a quarter of American men were in the Armed forces. The rest were in school, in prison, or were George W. Bush.
Bill Bryson
Image
I sat on a toilet watching the water run thinking what an odd thing tourism is. You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning all the comforts of home and then expend vast quantities of time and money in a largely futile effort to recapture the comforts you wouldn’t have lost if you hadn’t left home in the first place.
Bill Bryson
Image
There is more difference between a zebra and a horse, or between a dolphin and a porpoise, than there is between you and the furry creatures your distant ancestors left behind when they set out to take over the world.
Bill Bryson
Image
I come Des Moines. Somebody had to.
Bill Bryson
Image
Eating in Sweden is really just a series of heartbreaks.
Bill Bryson