Tipping Quotes

Look at the world around you. It may seem like an immovable, implacable place. It is not. With the slightest push - in just the right place - it can be tipped.

Have you ever noticed that the waiter who takes your order is not the one who brings your food anymore? What is THAT about? And which waiter are you tipping, anyway? I think next time I go to a restaurant I'll just say, "Oh, sorry, I only eat the food. The guy who pays the bill will be along shortly."

Every day is an opportunity for a new life. Every day you stand at the tipping point of your life. And on any one day you can change the future – through the way that you feel.

Doing the little things can make a big difference.

As in the case of making a mound, if, before the very last basketful, I stop, then I shall have stopped. As in the case of leveling the ground, if, though tipping only one basketful, I am going forward, then I shall be making progress.

There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it.

I remember talking to, 40 years ago, one of the leading people in the government who was involved in arms control, pressing for arms control measures, détente, and so on. He's very high up, and we were talking about whether arms control could succeed. And only partially as a joke he said, "Well it might succeed if the high tech industry makes more profit from arms control than it can make from weapons-related research and production. If we get to that tipping point maybe arms control will work." He was partially joking but there's a truth that lies behind it.

It's not tipping I believe in. It's overtipping.

I think we could be at a tipping point

When well-qualified, upper middle-class blacks or Latinos or Asians move to predominantly white neighborhoods, there's what's called the tipping point. That tipping point is generally 15 percent; at 15 percent you begin to see white flight.

For every reader who dies today, a viewer is born, and we seem to be witnessing . . . the final tipping balance.

Objective evaluations set the foundation that moves leaders to the tipping point.

In our travels, we have come across many equations--math for understanding the universe, for making music, for mapping stars, and also for tipping, which is important. Here is our favorite equation: Us plus Them equals All of Us. It is very simple math. Try it sometime. You probably won’t even need a pencil.

The end of the world was supposed to be gradual. There was supposed to be warning. A long, slow slide. What we got was punctuated equilibrium: a stately wobbling, then a sudden tipping point. There was plenty of warning, I suppose. We just weren’t paying attention.

Is it 10 years, 20, 50 before we reach that tipping point where climate change becomes irreversible? Nobody can know. There's clearly a probability distribution. We need to ensure this planet, and we need to do it quickly.

I'm building on purpose. I'm building that tipping point. I'm building that law of diffusion of innovation.

When it comes to e-book playback devices and software, I have always thought that the emphasis on ergonomic concerns as a tipping point for the end-user population was misplaced.

We are facing a tipping point of environmental crisis unprecedented in human history and our very survival is dependent on protecting nature.

We don't know exactly where all the tipping points are in the physical world for inescapable damage, but we're clearly reaching close to some of them.

Juke glanced into her cup before tipping it down to her mouth. "Screw you!" "Now come on, sugar, you know I don't swing that way." "Whatever!

We're just at a point in regard to race relations, we're at a tipping point in America. It's a crucial time. It's sad, honestly, I think it's a place that deep down no one wants to be in. But it's something that needs to be addressed, it's something that needs to be fixed, and hopefully we can figure it out and take steps toward doing that.

It's hard to see a river all at once, especially in the mountains. Down on the plains, rivers run in their course as straightforward as time, channeled toward the sea. But up in the headwaters, a river isn't a point where you stand. In the beginnings of the river, you teeter on the edge of a hundred tiny watersheds where one drop of water is always tipping the balance from one stream to another. History changes with each tiny event, shaping an outcome that we can only fully grasp in hindsight. And that view changes as we move farther downstream.

I still shop at Costco. I just started tipping two years ago.

I am not alone in thinking that we are at a tipping point ecologically and morally and politically. Democracy cannot survive without a vibrant middle class, yet the policies of one of the parties has been committed to wiping it out for 30 years.

A book, I was taught long ago in English class, is a living and breathing document that grows richer with each new reading.

I think Ugg went out of being something that Kate Moss and Sienna Miller were wearing in high fashion circles and then they were embraced by everyone. Once something reaches that tipping point of mass popularity then suddenly the fashion world is a bit like, "Wah." As you say, you see them less kind of everywhere now so maybe it's time to bring them back.

Anthony Bridgerton leaned back in his leather chair,and then announced, "I'm thinking about getting married." Benedict Bridgerton, who had been indulging in a habit his mother detested—tipping his chair drunkenly on the back two legs—fell over. Colin Bridgerton started to choke. Luckily for Colin, Benedict regained his seat with enough time to smack him soundly on the back, sending a green olive sailing across the table. It narrowly missed Anthony's ear.

People really feel that, when they go to the gas pump now, that the oil cartel is holding them by the legs and tipping them upside down and shaking money out of their pockets.

We are reaching a tipping where the pace of settlements, during the course of my presidency has gotten so substantial that it's getting harder and harder to imagine an effective, contiguous Palestinian state. And I think it would have long-term consequences for peace and security in the region, and the United States, because of our investment in the region, and because we care so deeply about Israel, I think has a legitimate interest in saying to a friend, "This is a problem."

Scientists are telling us that 350 parts per million [of carbon] in the atmosphere is the upper limit. We're at 387 parts per million now, and we're up in that zone where the risk of going past irrevocable tipping points is elevated. It's no different than going to a doctor and learning your cholesterol is too high, and you're at risk for a heart attack. You have to work to lower your cholesterol and hope to get there before the heart attack comes.

We have to, in the next ten years, begin to decrease the rate of carbon dioxide emissions and then flatten it out. If that doesn't happen in ten years, we're going to be passing certain tipping points. If the ice sheets begin to disintegrate, what can you do about it? You can't tie a rope around an ice sheet.

The pace of global warming is accelerating and the scale of the impact is devastating. The time for action is limited - we are approaching a tipping point beyond which the opportunity to reverse the damage of CO2 emissions will disappear.

The world beyond 450 ppm atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, the world that crosses carbon cycle tipping points that quickly take us to 1000 ppm, is a world not merely of endless regional resource wars around the globe. It is a world with dozens of Darfurs. It is a world of a hundred Katrinas, of countless environmental refugees

Tipping generally changes depending on where you are in the world. In Britain you don't always have to tip, but I always make sure I do. I have a lot of respect for waiters and waitresses - it can't be an easy job and they often don't get paid huge amounts, so I think it's important to reward them and let them know if they are giving great service.

The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea, and the idea is very simple. It is that the best way to understand the emergence of fashion trends, the ebb and flow of crime waves, or, for that matter, the transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth, or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.

Women can do anything men can do. Except math, chess, running, jumping, lifting stuff, fixing things, making money, hockey, surfing, driving, making decisions, being tall, taking out the garbage, tipping, fishing, being funny (on purpose), reading a map, listening to good bands, writing, running the country, inventing anything important, or being fun to hang out with.

Being near her was like balancing on a tipping world, trying to keep your footing as the ground wanted to roll you forward, hurl you into a spiral from which there was no recovery, only impact, and it was a longed-for impact, a sweet and beckoning collision.

Feeling prosperous means paying your utility bills on time and with a smile on your face. Prosperity means not only giving to the homeless person, but having a smile on your face when you do it. Prosperity also means buying fresh produce with a smile on your face instead of buying day-old bread or bargain overripe fruit with a scowl on your face. Still more, being prosperous means tipping generously with a smile on your face when the waiter has given you great service instead of trying to stiff him with a mere percent, or worse, no tip at all.

The sky is falling. No, I'm tipping over backwards.

There’s no tipping point where you become what you are. Character development starts when you’re growing up. Your socioeconomic background contributes. The attitude that gets you through some communities doesn’t work in corporate America. It’s not an excuse, but it does help explain

We're putting 70 million tonnes of pollution into the atmosphere every day, trapping an enormous amount of extra heat from the sun inside the earth's atmosphere. It's threatening to push the planet past a tipping point beyond which climate change would be difficult to stop

I also feel like motherhood, especially, is seen usually in movies with this saintly veil over it. There's something about tipping that and showing what's actually going on. Or the wish fulfillment of probably most moms, which is really exciting. It's an area that's unexplored.

As people's access to the internet grows we're seeing the sharing economy boom - I think our obsession with ownership is at a tipping point and the sharing economy is part of the antidote for that.

There was another time when Mike was really foul mood and we had to make a pit stop so he could use a porta potty. Mike went to use the porta potty and we were waiting inside the RV. It was joe’s idea, but we all got out and started to rock the thing back and forth. We didn’t mean to, but we ended up tipping the porta potty over while Mike was in it! Then we attacked him with air freshener

The middle class in America is at a tipping point. It will not last another generation if we don't boldly change course now.

Certain miracles that I beheld there have haunted my memory ever since: a gray April morning of sirocco, when the almond blossoms, the flaming tulips, the young green of the vines, hung as if painted on the motionless air; a summer night when the roses had an unearthly pallor under a half-eaten moon, whose ghostliness was somehow one with their perfume and with the phosphorescence of dew tipping their petals; a day when the trees stood part submerged in fog, into which leaves dropped slowly, slowly, one after another, and sank out of sight.

It's part of the reason I decided to speak out now. This was the tipping point for me. If it's O.K. for [David Petraeus ] to campaign for a job in the administration, then I'm going to campaign to get back out there, too.

Small mistakes, the lack of care, little accidents, and somewhere a tipping point is passed and things go badly wrong. Expedition history brims with tragedies built out of incremental missteps.

Deep, dark unearthly black. I hadn't told anyone yet, but the color kept streaking across my mind at the oddest moments. When it did, my skin shivered pleasantly, and it was as if I could feel the color tracing a finger tenderly along my jaw, tipping my chin up to face it directly. I knew it was absurd to think a color would come to life, but once or twice, I was sure I'd caught a flash of something more substantial behind the color. A pair of eyes. The way they studied me cut to the heart.

The South was at the point where the scale was tipping against slavery. It was slowly dawning on the plantation owners that slave labor was not economic, besides being morally wrong. Slavery was destined to be abolished, whether for economic reasons or moral reasons matters not, but the international intriguers were not going to wait for voluntary abolition to rob them of their trump card.