Quotes about category
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Marion Nestle photo

“The category of first sentence makes sense only if it is looking forward to the development of thematic concerns it perhaps only dimly foreshadows.”

Stanley Fish (1938) American academic

Source: How To Write A Sentence And How To Read One (2011), Chapter 8, First Sentences, p. 99

Harold Lloyd photo
William H. Starbuck photo

““Organization theory,” a term that appeared in the middle of the twentieth century, has multiple meanings. When it first emerged, the term expressed faith in scientific research as a way to gain understanding of human beings and their interactions. Although scientific research had been occurring for several centuries, the idea that scientific research might enhance understanding of human behavior was considerably newer and rather few people appreciated it. Simon (1950, 1952-3, 1952) was a leading proponent for the creation of “organization theory”, which he imagined as including scientific management, industrial engineering, industrial psychology, the psychology of small groups, human-resources management, and strategy. The term “organization theory” also indicated an aspiration to state generalized, abstract propositions about a category of social systems called “organizations,” which was a very new concept. Before and during the 1800s, people had regarded armies, schools, churches, government agencies, and social clubs as belonging to distinct categories, and they had no name for the union of these categories. During the 1920s, some people began to perceive that diverse kinds of medium-sized social systems might share enough similarities to form a single, unified category. They adopted the term “organization” for this unified category.”

William H. Starbuck (1934) American academic

William H. Starbuck and Philippe Baumard (2009). "The seeds, blossoming, and scant yield of organization theory," in: Jacques Rojot et. al (eds.) Comportement organisationnel - Volume 3 De Boeck Supérieur. p. 15

Abraham Joshua Heschel photo
Allen C. Guelzo photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“If a city has a 30% Negro population, then it is logical to assume that Negroes should have at least 30% of the jobs in any particular company, and jobs in all categories rather than only in menial areas.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

from a 1968 Playboy magazine interview
1960s

Buckminster Fuller photo

“I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process — an integral function of the universe.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

I Seem to Be a Verb (1970)
1970s

Joseph Massad photo
Douglas Hofstadter photo
Gary Johnson photo
John Ralston Saul photo
Prem Rawat photo
Will Smith photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Jean Baudrillard photo
Camille Paglia photo
Frank P. Ramsey photo
Douglas MacArthur photo

“I rarely get mentioned in the same category as these other guys who have come out after me…[b]ut maybe I’m not that, maybe I’m not an Internet rapper.”

Danny! (1983) American rapper

On feeling overlooked amongst the current crop of rising hip-hop artists (Creative Loafing interview http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/don_t_sleep_on_danny_/Content?oid=793782, 2009)
Interviews

Friedrich Kellner photo
Alberto Manguel photo

“Every library is a library of preferences, and every chosen category implies an exclusion.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Ordainers of The Universe, p. 198.
A History of Reading (1996)

Émile Durkheim photo
Alain Badiou photo
Jürgen Habermas photo
Gilbert Herdt photo
Jonah Goldberg photo

“Facet analysis consists in an analysis of a subject in its entirety into a certain number of facets or categories of things; within each category, the subject headings enumerated all possess the same relationship vis-&-vis the subject in its entirety.”

Douglas John Foskett (1918–2004)

Foskett Classification and indexing in Science, p. 42; As cited in: Eric de Grolier (1962) A study of general categories applicable to classification and coding in documentation http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0002/000250/025055eo.pdf. p. 15

Grady Booch photo

“[A class category is] a collection of classes, some of which are visible to other class categories, and others of which are hidden.”

Grady Booch (1955) American software engineer

p 513
Object-oriented design: With Applications, (1991)

John Horgan (journalist) photo
Angela Davis photo
Rupert Sheldrake photo
Noam Chomsky photo

“The 19th and first half of the 20th century conceived of the world as chaos. Chaos was the oft-quoted blind play of atoms, which, in mechanistic and positivistic philosophy, appeared to represent ultimate reality, with life as an accidental product of physical processes, and mind as an epi-phenomenon. It was chaos when, in the current theory of evolution, the living world appeared as a product of chance, the outcome of random mutations and survival in the mill of natural selection. In the same sense, human personality, in the theories of behaviorism as well as of psychoanalysis, was considered a chance product of nature and nurture, of a mixture of genes and an accidental sequence of events from early childhood to maturity.
Now we are looking for another basic outlook on the world -- the world as organization. Such a conception -- if it can be substantiated -- would indeed change the basic categories upon which scientific thought rests, and profoundly influence practical attitudes.
This trend is marked by the emergence of a bundle of new disciplines such as cybernetics, information theory, general system theory, theories of games, of decisions, of queuing and others; in practical applications, systems analysis, systems engineering, operations research, etc. They are different in basic assumptions, mathematical techniques and aims, and they are often unsatisfactory and sometimes contradictory. They agree, however, in being concerned, in one way or another, with "systems," "wholes" or "organizations"; and in their totality, they herald a new approach.”

Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) austrian biologist and philosopher

Source: General System Theory (1968), 7. Some Aspects of System Theory in Biology, p. 166-167 as quoted in Lilienfeld (1978, pp. 7-8) and Alexander Laszlo and Stanley Krippner (1992) " Systems Theories: Their Origins, Foundations, and Development http://archive.syntonyquest.org/elcTree/resourcesPDFs/SystemsTheory.pdf" In: J.S. Jordan (Ed.), Systems Theories and A Priori Aspects of Perception. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 1998. Ch. 3, pp. 47-74.

“Let us begin by observing that the word "system" is almost never used by itself; it is generally accompanied by an adjective or other modifier: physical system; biological system; social system; economic system; axiom system; religious system; and even "general" system. This usage suggests that, when confronted by a system of any kind, certain of its properties are to be subsumed under the adjective, and other properties are subsumed under the "system," while still others may depend essentially on both. The adjective describes what is special or particular; i. e., it refers to the specific "thinghood" of the system; the "system" describes those properties which are independent of this specific "thinghood."
This observation immediately suggests a close parallel between the concept of a system and the development of the mathematical concept of a set. Given any specific aggregate of things; e. g., five oranges, three sticks, five fingers, there are some properties of the aggregate which depend on the specific nature of the things of which the aggregate is composed. There are others which are totally independent of this and depend only on the "set-ness" of the aggregate. The most prominent of these is what we can call the cardinality of the aggregate…
It should now be clear that system hood is related to thinghood in much the same way as set-ness is related to thinghood. Likewise, what we generally call system properties are related to systemhood in the same way as cardinality is related to set-ness. But systemhood is different from both set-ness and from thinghood; it is an independent category.”

Robert Rosen (1934–1998) American theoretical biologist

Source: "Some comments on systems and system theory," (1986), p. 1-2 as quoted in George Klir (2001) Facets of Systems Science, p. 4

Johnny Depp photo

“The real movie stars were Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Spencer Tracy, Montgomery Clift. How could I put myself in the same category as Clark Gable? Tom Cruise is a great movie star. Do I consider myself a movie star? I consider myself a guy with a good job, an interesting job.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Quoted in Bernard Weintraub, "Playboy Interview: Johnny Depp," http://www.deppimpact.com/mags/transcripts/playboy_may04.html Playboy (May 2004)

Alastair Reynolds photo
Rem Koolhaas photo
David Lloyd George photo

“If there is one thing more than another better established about the British Constitution it is this, that the Commons, and the Commons alone, have the complete control of supply and ways and means. And what our fathers established through centuries of struggles and of strife, even of bloodshed, we are not going to be traitors to. Who talks about altering and meddling with the Constitution? The Constitutional Party…As long as the Constitution gave rank and possession and power it was not to be interfered with. As long as it secured even their sports from intrusion, and made interference with them a crime; as long as the Constitution forced royalties and ground-rents and fees, premiums and fines, the black retinue of extraction; as long as it showered writs, and summonses, and injunctions, and distresses, and warrants to enforce them, then the Constitution was inviolate, it was sacred, it was something that was put in the same category as religion, that no man ought to touch, and something that the chivalry of the nation ought to range in defence of. But the moment the Constitution looks round, the moment the Constitution begins to discover that there are millions of people outside the park gates who need attention, then the Constitution is to be torn to pieces. Let them realize what they are doing. They are forcing revolution.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Newcastle (9 October 1909), quoted in The Times (11 October 1909), p. 6
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Guru Arjan photo
Jean Paul Sartre photo
Tony Benn photo
Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo
E. W. Hobson photo

“In the third period, which lasted from the middle of the eighteenth century until late in the nineteenth century, attention was turned to critical investigations of the true nature of the number π itself, considered independently of mere analytical representations. The number was first studied in respect of its rationality or irrationality, and it was shown to be really irrational. When the discovery was made of the fundamental distinction between algebraic and transcendental numbers, i. e. between those numbers which can be, and those numbers which cannot be, roots of an algebraical equation with rational coefficients, the question arose to which of these categories the number π belongs. It was finally established by a method which involved the use of some of the most modern of analytical investigation that the number π was transcendental. When this result was combined with the results of a critical investigation of the possibilities of a Euclidean determination, the inferences could be made that the number π, being transcendental, does not admit of a construction either by a Euclidean determination, or even by a determination in which the use of other algebraic curves besides the straight line and the circle are permitted. The answer to the original question thus obtained is of a conclusive negative character; but it is one in which a clear account is given of the fundamental reasons upon which that negative answer rests.”

E. W. Hobson (1856–1933) British mathematician

Source: Squaring the Circle (1913), p. 12

Aristotle photo

“There is… something which is in energy only; and there is something which is both in energy and capacity. …of relatives, one is predicated as according to excess and defect: another according to the effective and passive, and, in short, the motive, and that which may be moved… Motion, however, has not a substance separate from things… But each of the categories subsists in a twofold manner in all things. Thus… one thing pertaining to it is form, and another privation. …So the species of motion and mutation are as many as those of being. But since in every genus of things, there is that which is in entelecheia, and that which is in capacity; motion is the entelecheia of that which is in capacity… That there is energy, therefore, and that a thing then happens to be moved, when this energy exists, and neither prior nor posterior to it, is manifest. … [N]either motion nor mutation can be placed in any other genus; nor have those who have advanced a different opinion concerning it spoken rightly. …for by some motion is said to be difference, inequality, and non-being; though it is not necessary that any of these should be moved… Neither is mutation into these, nor from these, rather than from their opposites. …The cause, however, why motion appears to be indefinite, is because it can neither be simply referred to the capacity, nor to the energy of beings. …[I]t is difficult to apprehend what motion is: for it is necessary to refer it either to privation, or to capacity, or to simple energy; but it does not appear that it can be any of these. The above-mentioned mode, therfore remains, viz. that it is a certain energy; but… difficult to be perceived, but which may have a subsistence.”

Book III, Ch. I, pp. 137-147.
Physics

R. A. Lafferty photo

“Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial, the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive.”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

Source: The Flame is Green (1971), Ch. 5 : Muerte De Boscaje
Context: Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial, the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive. Thus I will describe myself as a radical conservative liberal; but certain of the tainted red fish will swear that there can be no such fish as that. Beware of those who use words to mean their opposites. At the same time have pity on them, for usually this trick is their only stock in trade.

Simone Weil photo

“No combination of circumstances ever cancels this obligation. If there are circumstances which seem to cancel it as regards a certain man or category of men, they impose it in fact all the more imperatively.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Draft for a Statement of Human Obligation (1943)
Context: Anyone whose attention and love are really directed towards the reality outside the world recognizes at the same time that he is bound, both in public and private life, by the single and permanent obligation to remedy, according to his responsibilities and to the extent of his power, all the privations of soul and body which are liable to destroy or damage the earthly life of any human being whatsoever.
This obligation cannot legitimately be held to be limited by the insufficiency of power or the nature of the responsibilities until everything possible has been done to explain the necessity of the limitation to those who will suffer by it; the explanation must be completely truthful and must be such as to make it possible for them to acknowledge the necessity.
No combination of circumstances ever cancels this obligation. If there are circumstances which seem to cancel it as regards a certain man or category of men, they impose it in fact all the more imperatively.
The thought of this obligation is present to all men, but in very different forms and in very varying degrees of clarity. Some men are more and some are less inclined to accept — or to refuse — it as their rule of conduct.

Karl Mannheim photo

“When we attribute to one historical epoch one intellectual world and to ourselves another one, or if a certain historically determined social stratum thinks in categories other than our own, we refer not to the isolated cases of thought-content, but to fundamentally divergent thought-systems and to widely differing modes of experience and interpretation.”

Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) Hungarian sociologist

Ideology and Utopia (1929)
Context: The particular conception of "ideology" makes its analysis of ideas on a purely psychological level. If it is claimed for instance that an adversary is lying, or that he is concealing or distorting a given factual situation, it is still nevertheless assumed that both parties share common criteria of validity — it is still assumed that it is possible to refute lies and eradicate sources or error by referring to accepted criteria of objective validity common to both parties. The suspicion that one's opponent is the victim of an ideology does not go so far as to exclude him from discussion on the basis of a common theoretical frame of reference. The case is different with the total conception of ideology. When we attribute to one historical epoch one intellectual world and to ourselves another one, or if a certain historically determined social stratum thinks in categories other than our own, we refer not to the isolated cases of thought-content, but to fundamentally divergent thought-systems and to widely differing modes of experience and interpretation.

“Legally defined categories for race differ from one country to another, and they change over time depending largely on the social and political realities of a particular society or nation”

Daniel J. Fairbanks (1956) American artist

Source: Everyone is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race (2015), p. 11.
Context: Classification is real, but it is based much more on a set of social definitions than on genetic distinctions. Legally defined categories for race differ from one country to another, and they change over time depending largely on the social and political realities of a particular society or nation. The notion of discrete racial categories arose mostly as an artifact of centuries-long immigration history coupled with overriding worldviews that white superiority was inherent, a purported genetic destiny that has no basis in modern science.

“Humans belong to the category of herding animals, due to which intra-species aggression at a life-endangering level is obviated. In other words: If, for some reason or another, severe conflicts”

Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg (1929) German ethnologe, sociologe, writer

Vom Schmetterling zur Doppelaxt: Die Umwertung von Weiblichkeit in unserer Kultur (1990), p. 9, 11.
Vom Schmetterling zur Doppelaxt (1990)
Context: Humans belong to the category of herding animals, due to which intra-species aggression at a life-endangering level is obviated. In other words: If, for some reason or another, severe conflicts [... ] of the kind common since the last circa four-and-a-half millennia would have occured during the time of our hominisation, our ancestors would have completely eradicated each other and homo sapiens would have never set foot on earth. For a species that in its individuals was so weak when confronted with many predators preying after them required support from its kind in order to survive. We possess neither claws nor fangs nor the strength to successfully withstand the larger carnivores all alone, however it is as a group that we may survive together though never without sacrifice and courage. When our non-human ancestors began living in packs in order to stand together when facing hazards, they developed a behaviour that we may term 'social intelligence', which is the ability to co-operate with one's species in order to maintain the well-being of all. Modern homo sapiens still possesses this potential, however our culture has effectively damaged it.

[... ]

It must have been a peaceful world, for early settlements at large exhibited no fortifications regarding human attacks. For maybe one or two millennia [after the end of the last glacial epoch], humans obviously lived an untroubled life under these social conditions.

Peter Kropotkin photo

“The millions of laws which exist for the regulation of humanity appear upon investigation to be divided into three principal categories: protection of property, protection of persons, protection of government.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Source: Law and Authority (1886), IV
Context: The millions of laws which exist for the regulation of humanity appear upon investigation to be divided into three principal categories: protection of property, protection of persons, protection of government. And by analyzing each of these three categories, we arrive at the same logical and necessary conclusion: the uselessness and hurtfulness of law.

Donald Rumsfeld photo

“Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, or vice versa.”

Donald Rumsfeld (1932) U.S. Secretary of Defense

Department of Defense news briefing (12 February 2002)
Variant:
Now what is the message there? The message is that there are no "knowns." There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns.
:It sounds like a riddle. It isn't a riddle. It is a very serious, important matter.
:There's another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. It is basically saying the same thing in a different way. Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist. And yet almost always, when we make our threat assessments, when we look at the world, we end up basing it on the first two pieces of that puzzle, rather than all three.
:* Extending on his earlier comments in a press conference at NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium (6 June 2002) http://www.nato.int/docu/speech/2002/s020606g.htm
2000s

“Sharing is a kinsman's or a friend's obligation, and it is not in the category of a gift.”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968), p. 44

Mohamed ElBaradei photo

“A recent United Nations High-Level Panel identified five categories of threats that we face:”

Mohamed ElBaradei (1942) Egyptian law scholar and diplomat, former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Nobel …

Nobel lecture (2005)
Context: A recent United Nations High-Level Panel identified five categories of threats that we face:
1. Poverty, Infectious Disease, and Environmental Degradation;
2. Armed Conflict — both within and among states;
3. Organized Crime;
4. Terrorism; and
5. Weapons of Mass Destruction.
These are all 'threats without borders' — where traditional notions of national security have become obsolete. We cannot respond to these threats by building more walls, developing bigger weapons, or dispatching more troops. Quite to the contrary. By their very nature, these security threats require primarily multinational cooperation.

Lawrence Lessig photo

“That means the world was divided into three camps, not two: Unregulated uses, regulated uses that were fair use, and the quintessential copyright world. Three categories.”

Lawrence Lessig (1961) American academic, political activist.

OSCON 2002
Context: Here's a simple copyright lesson: Law regulates copies. What's that mean? Well, before the Internet, think of this as a world of all possible uses of a copyrighted work. Most of them are unregulated. Talking about fair use, this is not fair use; this is unregulated use. To read is not a fair use; it's an unregulated use. To give it to someone is not a fair use; it's unregulated. To sell it, to sleep on top of it, to do any of these things with this text is unregulated. Now, in the center of this unregulated use, there is a small bit of stuff regulated by the copyright law; for example, publishing the book — that's regulated. And then within this small range of things regulated by copyright law, there's this tiny band before the Internet of stuff we call fair use: Uses that otherwise would be regulated but that the law says you can engage in without the permission of anybody else. For example, quoting a text in another text — that's a copy, but it's a still fair use. That means the world was divided into three camps, not two: Unregulated uses, regulated uses that were fair use, and the quintessential copyright world. Three categories.
Enter the Internet. Every act is a copy, which means all of these unregulated uses disappear. Presumptively, everything you do on your machine on the network is a regulated use. And now it forces us into this tiny little category of arguing about, "What about the fair uses? What about the fair uses?" I will say the word: To hell with the fair uses. What about the unregulated uses we had of culture before this massive expansion of control?

Martin Amis photo

“Terror always has its roots in hysteria and psychotic insecurity; still, we should know our enemy. The firefighters were not afraid to die for an idea. But the suicide killers belong in a different psychic category, and their battle effectiveness has, on our side, no equivalent. Clearly, they have contempt for life. Equally clearly, they have contempt for death.
Their aim was to torture tens of thousands, and to terrify hundreds of millions. In this, they have succeeded.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

"Fear and loathing" (2001)
Context: The bringers of Tuesday's terror were morally "barbaric", inexpiably so, but they brought a demented sophistication to their work. They took these great American artefacts and pestled them together. Nor is it at all helpful to describe the attacks as "cowardly". Terror always has its roots in hysteria and psychotic insecurity; still, we should know our enemy. The firefighters were not afraid to die for an idea. But the suicide killers belong in a different psychic category, and their battle effectiveness has, on our side, no equivalent. Clearly, they have contempt for life. Equally clearly, they have contempt for death.
Their aim was to torture tens of thousands, and to terrify hundreds of millions. In this, they have succeeded.

Anatole France photo
Charles Sanders Peirce photo

“The first category, then, is Quality of Feeling, or whatever is such as it is positively and regardless of aught else.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

Lecture II : The Universal Categories, § 1 : Presentness, CP 5.44
Pragmatism and Pragmaticism (1903)
Context: The quality of feeling is the true psychical representative of the first category of the immediate as it is in its immediacy, of the present in its direct positive presentness. Qualities of feeling show myriad-fold variety, far beyond what the psychologists admit. This variety however is in them only insofar as they are compared and gathered into collections. But as they are in their presentness, each is sole and unique; and all the others are absolute nothingness to it — or rather much less than nothingness, for not even a recognition as absent things or as fictions is accorded to them. The first category, then, is Quality of Feeling, or whatever is such as it is positively and regardless of aught else.

Gerald James Whitrow photo

“Galileo had raised the concepts of space and time to the status of fundamental categories by directing attention to the mathematical description of motion.”

Gerald James Whitrow (1912–2000) British mathematician

The Structure of the Universe: An Introduction to Cosmology (1949)
Context: Galileo had raised the concepts of space and time to the status of fundamental categories by directing attention to the mathematical description of motion. The midiaevel qualitative method had made these concepts relatively unimportant, but in the new mathematical philosophy the external world became a world of bodies moving in space and time. In the Timaeus Plato had expounded a theory that outside the universe, which he regarded as bounded and spherical, there was an infinite empty space. The ideas of Plato were much discussed in the middle of the seventeenth century by the Cambridge Platonists, and Newton's views were greatly influenced thereby. He regarded space as the 'sensorium of God' and hence endowed it with objective existence, although he confessed that it could not be observed. Similarly, he believed that time had an objective existence independent of the particular processes which can be used for measuring it.<!--p.46

Roger Ebert photo

“I don’t want to provide a category that people can apply to me. Those who say that “believer” and “atheist” are concrete categories do violence to the mystery we must be humble enough to confess. I would not want my convictions reduced to a word.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Source: Life Itself : A Memoir (2011), Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God
Context: Over the high school years, my belief in the likelihood of a God disappeared. I kept this to myself. I never discussed it with my parents. My father in any event was a nonpracticing Lutheran, until a deathbed conversion that rather disappointed me. I’m sure he agreed to it for my mother’s sake. Did I start calling myself an agnostic or an atheist? No, and I still don’t. I avoid that because I don’t want to provide a category that people can apply to me. Those who say that “believer” and “atheist” are concrete categories do violence to the mystery we must be humble enough to confess. I would not want my convictions reduced to a word.

Patrick Modiano photo

“Then again, the term “Jew” meant nothing to the fourteen-year-old Dora. When it came down to it, what did people understand by the term “Jew”? For himself, he never gave it a thought. He was used to being put into this or that category by the authorities. Unskilled labourer. Ex –Austrian. French legionnaire. Non- suspect. Ex-serviceman 100% disabled. Foreign statute labourer. Jew.”

Patrick Modiano (1945) French writer

Source: The Search Warrant (2000), p. 43
Context: Then again, the term “Jew” meant nothing to the fourteen-year-old Dora. When it came down to it, what did people understand by the term “Jew”? For himself, he never gave it a thought. He was used to being put into this or that category by the authorities. Unskilled labourer. Ex –Austrian. French legionnaire. Non- suspect. Ex-serviceman 100% disabled. Foreign statute labourer. Jew.

Jesse Ventura photo

“Another of the religious right's scams is marching into public school science classes and trying to mandate teaching of "creation science," as opposed to evolution. Somehow, they put evolutionism and creationism in the same category—believing that one makes the other impossible.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

Source: Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! (2008), Ch. 10 (p. 186)
Context: Another of the religious right's scams is marching into public school science classes and trying to mandate teaching of "creation science," as opposed to evolution. Somehow, they put evolutionism and creationism in the same category—believing that one makes the other impossible. But aren't these two separate systems of knowledge? One is a scientific theory, the other is a religious doctrine. It's kind of like comparing the law of gravity to the Sermon on the Mount. Evolution doesn't pretend to disprove the Bible's version of creation, or the belief in an all-powerful being as "prime mover" of the universe. Science only deals with what's observable, definable, and measurable. It's open to all possibilities, unlike creationism, which is a closed book. So leave evolution to the science teachers, and creation to the Sunday school of the parents' choosing.

Derek Parfit photo
Karl Popper photo
Kwame Nkrumah photo
Aldous Huxley photo

“The really important facts were that spatial relationships had ceased to matter very much and that my mind was perceiving the world in terms of other than spatial categories. At ordinary times the eye concerns itself with such problems as where? — how far?”

how situated in relation to what? In the mescaline experience the implied questions to which the eye responds are of another order. Place and distance cease to be of much interest. The mind does its perceiving in terms of intensity of existence, profundity of significance, relationships within a pattern."
The Doors of Perception (1954)

Pete Buttigieg photo

“If anything I think my story might help illustrate why categories aren’t as important as we think. I’m a church-going, gay, millennial, Red State mayor. I’m also a left-handed Maltese American. I also spent Thanksgiving in a deer blind with my partner’s father. So am I supposed to be a Republican or a Democrat?”

Pete Buttigieg (1982) American politician

5 January 2017
Pete Buttigieg: meet the Indiana mayor Barack Obama says could be the future of the Democratic Party
The Telegraph
David Lawler
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/31/pete-buttigieg-meet-indiana-mayor-barack-obama-says-could-future/
2017

Anders Behring Breivik photo
Ryū Murakami photo
Thiago Silva photo

“He is already in the category of Baresi, Sammer and anyone else you want to name. Ultimately what he wins will decide where he ranks, but his qualities make him stronger than all of them.”

Thiago Silva (1984) Brazilian footballer

Laurent Blanc (PSG), 2013 http://www.leparisien.fr/psg-foot-paris-saint-germain/laurent-blanc-il-n-a-aucune-faille-05-04-2013-2698813.php
From coaches and club directors

Bhimsen Joshi photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Richard Dawkins photo

“I don't withdraw a word of my initial statement. But I do now think it may have been incomplete. There is perhaps a fifth category, which may belong under "insane" but which can be more sympathetically characterized by a word like tormented, bullied, or brainwashed.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Sincere people who are not ignorant, not stupid, and not wicked can be cruelly torn, almost in two, between the massive evidence of science on the one hand, and their understanding of what their holy book tells them on the other. I think this is one of the truly bad things religion can do to a human mind. There is wickedness here, but it is the wickedness of the institution and what it does to a believing victim, not wickedness on the part of the victim himself.
2001
Summer
Ignorance Is No Crime
Free Inquiry
21
3
0272-0701
http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=dawkins_21_3
Regarding his 1989 statement "It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)." (see above)

Tracey Thorn photo
Dana Arnold photo
Glenn Greenwald photo

“News outlets correct lies. Slimy political operations deliberately use lies to advance their agenda and smear their adversaries. MSNBC has proven over and over again that they are decisively in the latter category. This is just the latest but by no means the only or even worst example.”

Glenn Greenwald (1967) American journalist, lawyer and writer

"MSNBC Yet Again Broadcasts Blatant Lies, This Time About Bernie Sanders’s Opening Speech, and Refuses to Correct Them" (3 March 2019)

Roberta Flack photo

“I didn’t try to be a soul singer, a jazz singer, a blues singer – no category…My music is my expression of what I feel and believe in a moment.”

Roberta Flack (1937) American singer

On her career trajectory in “Roberta Flack: 'My music is my expression of what I feel in a moment'” https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jan/21/roberta-flack-interview-music-grammys in The Guardian (2020 Jan 21)

Elif Shafak photo

“Many women are asking: why do some women choose to cover their heads? We have to understand this and other questions. This is one of the biggest challenges for feminism today. What is worrying is that when women are divided into categories it is the status quo – the patriarchy – that benefits.…”

Elif Shafak (1971) Turkish writer

On having a female character wear a veil out of protest in “Elif Shafak: ‘When women are divided it is the male status quo that benefits’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/05/elif-shafak-turkey-three-daughters-of-eve-interview in The Guardian (2017 Feb 5)

Asaf Ali Asghar Fyzee photo

“‘It closes the Gate of Interpretation. It lays down that legists and jurisconsults are to be divided into certain categories and no freedom of thought is allowed.’”

Asaf Ali Asghar Fyzee (1899–1981) Indian educator, jurist, author, diplomat, and Islamic scholar

Arun Shourie - The World of Fatwas Or The Sharia in Action (2012, Harper Collins)

Ian Urbina photo

“… Wage theft, the intentional dumping of oil, shark finning—in each of those categories you’ll find people who are the culprits, but if you really try to understand what makes them tick, you’ll see that they’re pretty desperate characters who are victims themselves of a larger, screwed-up system…”

Ian Urbina (1972) American journalist

On trying to distinguish predator from prey in The Outlaw Ocean in “Wage Theft, Slavery, and Climate Change on the Outlaw Ocean” https://civileats.com/2019/09/27/wage-theft-slavery-and-climate-change-on-the-outlaw-ocean/ (Civil Eats; 2019 Sep 27)

Ibram X. Kendi photo

“Part of the reason so many Americans are so defensive is because we’ve been led to believe that racist is a fixed category, that it’s a tattoo, it’s a label. Of course they’re going to say, I’m not a racist, I’m not a bad person.”

Ibram X. Kendi (1982) American author and historian

But racist is describing what you’re saying in the moment.

On why racist is a crucial descriptive term in “How to Be an Antiracist Author Ibram X. Kendi on What We Get Wrong About Racism” https://time.com/5647303/how-to-be-antiracist-author-interview/ in Time Magazine (2019 Aug 8)

Michel Henry photo
Dorothy Thompson photo

“It is intolerable that a whole race should be indicted and banned— each individual, good, bad and indifferent, lumped into one category—as the Jews are in Germany. It is intolerable that we should accept the principle that there is a permanent, irreconcilable and even necessary hostility between workers and the men who employ them—as is positively implied in this country, in the National Labor Relations Act.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

As quoted in "The best quotes from Ralph Klein’s colourful public life" http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-best-quotes-from-ralph-kleins-colourful-public-life/article10577310/, The Globe and Mail
p. 95
Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)

Benjamin Creme photo
Frithjof Schuon photo