# Small

Smallness is when something lacks the magnitude or dimensions of a thing, such as as length, width, height, diameter, perimeter, area, volume, or mass, in contrast to another thing with more of those attributes, which is bigger.

## Quotes

* All things were together, infinite both in number and in smallness; for the small too was infinite.
** Anaxagoras, Frag. B 1 from Early Greek Philosophy, Chapter 6, John Burnet (1920).
* In Sorbière's day, European thinkers and intellectuals of widely divergent religious and political affiliations campaigned tirelessly to stamp out the doctrine of indivisibles and to eliminate it from philosophical and scientific consideration. In the very years that Hobbes was fighting Wallis over the indivisible line in England, the Society of Jesus was leading its own campaign against the infinitely small in Catholic lands. In France, Hobbes's acquaintance René Descartes, who had initially shown considerable interest in infinitesimals, changed his mind and banned the concept.. Even as late as the 1730s... George Berkeley mocked mathematicians for their use of infinitesimals... Lined up against these naysayers were some of the most prominent mathematicians and philosophers of that era, who championed the use of the infinitesimally small. These included, in addition to Wallis: Galileo and his followers, Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, and Isaac Newton.
** Amir Alexander, Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World (2014)
* Miniaturization doesn't actually make sense unless you miniaturize the very atoms of which matter is composed. Otherwise a tiny brain in a man the size of an insect, composed of normal atoms, is composed of too few atoms for the miniaturized man to be any more intelligent than the ant. Also, miniaturizing atoms is impossible according to the rules of quantum mechanics.
** Isaac Asimov Peary, D ed. (1984). Omni's Screen Flights, Screen Fantasies Doubleday
* Yoda: Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes. Even between the land and the ship.
** Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan, The Empire Strikes Back, (1980)
* Well, I'll eat it,' said Alice, 'and if it makes me grow larger, I can reach the key; and if it makes me grow smaller, I can creep under the door; so either way I'll get into the garden, and I don't care which happens!'
** Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, (1865)
* You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft; and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away, provided that the ground is fairly soft. A rat is killed, a man is broken, a horse splashes.
** J.B.S. Haldane, On Being the Right Size, (1923)
* On a recent Sunday evening, Theo came up with an aphorism: the bigger you think, the crappier it looks. Asked to explain he said, "When we go on about the big things, the political situation, global warming, world poverty, it all looks really terrible, with nothing getting better, nothing to look forward to. But when I think small, closer in – you know, a girl I've just met, or this song we're going to do with Chas, or snowboarding next month, then it looks great. So this is going to be my motto – think small."
** Ian McEwan, Saturday (2005), at page 34
* A very small event in the microbial community can have an enormous impact on the environment.
   * Daniel RothmanThe Great Dying Was Earths Colossal Extinction Event Caused By Microbes
* Frank the Pug: You humans, when're you gonna learn that size doesn't matter? Just 'cause something's important, doesn't mean it's not very, very small.
** Ed Solomon, Men in Black (1997)
* Abraham Van Helsing: Nothing is too small. I counsel you, put down in record even your doubts and surmises. Hereafter it may be of interest to you to see how true you guess. We learn from failure, not from success!
** Bram Stoker, Dracula, (1897)
* Power can be held in the smallest of things...
** Frances Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (film) (2001)