lucky numbers bring no good luck
 
many people believe that some numbers are lucky numbers and some are bad numbers. they claim that lucky numbers can bring good luck while bad numbers can bring disasters. that is why we can see the number 8 on most price tags in our country. some people pay much more money
for their telephone numbers or car plate  numbers with an 8 or 18 in them. do the so?called lucky numbers bring good luck? actually numbers have nothing to do with luck. people believe 8 is lucky number only because the sound of eight happens to be identical to that of that word for
“make a fortune” in cantonese. this very coincidence may not exist in other languages. but similar coincidences do occur in different languages. words in nature are only arbitrary symbols used for communication. for the very same referent
 
 whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.
 凡是值得做的事就值得做好。
 
 or idea, different languages may use different sounds. shakespeare said, “if we  call a rose by any other name, it would smell sweet as well.” this means that there is no intrinsic connection between sound and sense. in our culture, on certain occasions, even numbers symbolize¹ auspice while odd numbers are somehow associated with the opposite.  in a word, numbers are only numbers that stand for nothing but quantity. therefore, it is unreasonable² to believe in lucky numbers.