What is billion?

Famous quotes containing the word billion:

“Night’s brittle song, silver-thin
Shatters into a billion fragments
Of quiet shadows
At the blaring jazz
Of a morning sun.”
—Frank Marshall Davis (b. 1905)

“... men and women are not yet free.... The slavery of greed endures. Little child workers, the hope of the future, are sacrificed to industry. Young men are sent out by the billion to die for profits.... We must destroy industrial slavery and build industrial democracy.... The people everywhere must come into possession of the earth [second, third, and fourth ellipses in source].”
—Sara Bard Field (1882–1974)

“SING a song of ‘sistence
Pocket full of Eye
Two billion Turtle-doves
Mourning in a sty”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)