Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Source: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
"The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton" Ch. 4
Scenes of Clerical Life (1858)
Context: Nice distinctions are troublesome. It is so much easier to say that a thing is black, than to discriminate the particular shade of brown, blue, or green, to which it really belongs. It is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbour is good for nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to modify that opinion.
Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Source: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998) German sociologist, administration expert, and social systems theorist
Source: Art As a Social System (2000), p. 54 as cited in: Pamela M. Lee (2004) Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960's. p. 66.
G. Spencer-Brown (1923–2016) British mathematician
Source: Laws of Form, (1969), p. 1, cited in Niklas Luhmann, Risk: A Sociological Theory, Walter de Gruyter, 1993 p. 223.
African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher
Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 50.
“Distinction without a difference.”
Henry Fielding (1707–1754) English novelist and dramatist
Book VI, Ch. 13
The History of Tom Jones (1749)
“It was a distinction without a difference.”
Avram Davidson (1923–1993) novelist
Vergil in Averno (1987)
Allan Bloom (1930–1992) American philosopher, classicist, and academician
“Commerce and Culture,” p. 281.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)
Garrett Hongo (1951) Pulitzer-nominated fourth-generation Japanese American academic and poet
The River of Heaven: Poems