Quotes about comparison (423 quotes, page 4)

“I have… attempted to throw some new light on the general properties of matter in other forms: and on the doctrine of heat, which is materially concerned in them; and to deduce some useful conclusions from a comparison of various experiments on the elasticity of steam, on evaporation, and on the indications of hygrometers.”

Thomas Young (scientist) (1773–1829) English polymath

Preface
A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the Mechanical Arts (1807)

Light

“Of Henryson as of Chaucer it can be said that the picturesque detail owes its effectiveness to the solidity and seriousness of what it grows from. Henryson's Fables (like La Fontaine’s – they deserve the comparison) do more than present types of human beings in animal guises and animals comically behaving like human beings; they build up a total and consistent society, both rendered and criticized.”

Robert Henryson (1425–1506) Scottish makar (poet)

Patrick Cruttwell, in Boris Ford (ed.) Medieval Literature: Chaucer and the Alliterative Tradition (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982) p. 326.
Criticism

Animals

“Most studies employing three-dimensional objects as stimuli have used simultaneous presentation whereas most studies employing two-dimensional objects have used comparison of a single visual stimulus with a memory presentation. We suspect that it is this procedural difference rather than the difference in dimensionality that is the principal determiner of rate of mental rotation.”

Roger Shepard (1929) American psychologist

Source: Mental images and their transformations. 1982, p. 178; as cited in Niall (1997)

Study , Memory

“Lawrence O'Donnell: Mr. Cain, in fact, you were in college from 1963 to 1967, at the height of the civil rights movement, exactly when the most important demonstrations and protests were going on. You could easily, as a student at Morehouse, between 1963 and 1967, actively participated in the kinds of protests that got African Americans the rights they enjoy today. You watched from that perspective at Morehouse when you were not participating in those processes. You watch black college students from around the country and white college students from around the country come to the South and be murdered fighting for the right of African Americans. Do you regret sitting on those sidelines at that time?
Herman Cain: Lawrence, your attempt to say that I sat on the sidelines is an irrelevant comparison that you are trying to deduce from that—
Lawrence O'Donnell: It's in your book. It's in your book.
Herman Cain: Now, Lawrence, I know what's in my book. Now, let me ask you a question. Did you expect every black student and every black college in America to be out there, in the middle of every fight? The answer is no. So for you to say, why was I sitting on the sidelines, I think that that is an inaccurate deduction that you are trying to make. You didn't know, Lawrence, what I was doing with the rest of my life. You didn't know what my family situation may have been. Maybe, just maybe, I had a sick relative, which is why I might not have been sitting in, or doing the Freedom Rides. So what I'm saying, Lawrence, is, with all due respect my friend, your deduction is incorrect, and it's not logical, okay?”

Herman Cain (1945) American writer, businessman and activist

referring to "This is Herman Cain!" recounting that Herman read about sit-ins and Freedom Rides, and followed his father's advice to "stay out of trouble".

Life , Books , Family , Question

“Sir,
Having long deferred to make any report relating to the observations that were taken at sea by captain Campbell, in the year 1757, which you transmitted to me by order of the lords of the admiralty, I think it necessary to acquaint you, that, upon examining those observations, I perceived that they were not in all respects accompanied with such circumstances as are requisite for forming a right judgment of the accuracy and certainty with which observations proper for finding the longitude at sea by the moon can in fact be taken; for which reason I delayed giving my opinion upon this point till I could have an opportunity of comparing a greater variety of observations, made at different times, and with different instruments: such an opportunity having lately been given me by captain Campbell, who has favoured me with a copy of several observations that were made by him in 1758 and 1759, I now beg leave to lay before their lordships the result of the comparisons which I have made.”

James Bradley (1693–1762) English astronomer; Astronomer Royal

Miscellaneous Works and Correspondence (1832), To Mr. Cleveland Secretary of the Admiralty (April 14, 1760)

Thinking , Time , Sea

“This accessible production [of Don Giovanni - ed. ] concentrates on the comic delights of the piece and rests heavily on the roguish charms of Vytautas Juozapaitis in the title role. Indeed, he's so delightfully decadent, and so charismatic a performer, that the righteous indignation of those he has harmed makes them seem priggish in comparison.”

Vytautas Juozapaitis (1963) Lithuanian opera singer

Nigel Powlson, "Womaniser's charms are hard to resist". Derby Evening Telegraph (July 23, 2004)

“The economy of a novelist is a little like that of a careful housewife who is unwilling to throw away anything that might perhaps serve its turn. Perhaps the comparison is closer to the Chinese cook who leaves hardly any part of a duck unserved.”

Graham Greene (1904–1991) English writer, playwright and literary critic

From journal kept while writing A Burnt-Out Case (1959)

Parting , Cooking

“The comments on value-free psychology are so vague as to have no teeth. I wish Sternberg had delivered on whatever point he was trying to make by pointing to some actual examples of how my values (or their lack) have led me to ‘comparisons that should not be made’ or inferences predicated on untrue assumptions. The ‘value-free’ psychology I would advocate is not free of scientific values, or humanistic moral values, or the value of social responsibility, but I do decry the infestation of psychology, or any science, by political and social ideologies. Ideological contamination of psychological research can only make suspect the claim of psychology to scientific status.”

Arthur Jensen (1923–2012) professor of educational psychology

Source: Differential Psychology: Towards Consensus (1987), p. 448

Science

“That such comparisons with non-arithmetic notions have furnished the immediate occasion for the extension of the number-concept may, in a general way, be granted (though this was certainly not the case in the introduction of complex numbers); but this surely is no sufficient ground for introducing these foreign notions into arithmetic, the science of numbers.”

Richard Dedekind (1831–1916) German mathematician

p, 125
Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen (1872)

Way , Science

“The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain — whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands. If two lists were made of the most eminent men and women in poetry, painting, sculpture, music, — comprising composition and performance, history, science, and philosophy, with half-a-dozen names under each subject, the two lists would not bear comparison. We may also infer, from the law of the deviation of averages, so well illustrated by Mr. Galton, in his work on 'Hereditary Genius,' that if men are capable of decided eminence over women in many subjects, the average standard of mental power in man must be above that of woman. … Thus man has ultimately become superior to woman.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume II, chapter XIX: "Secondary Sexual Characters of Man", pages 327-328 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=344&itemID=F937.2&viewtype=image
The Descent of Man (1871)

Women , Men , Law , Music

“Therefore, the inhabitants of other stars — of whatever sort these inhabitants might be – bear no comparative relationship to the inhabitants of the earth (istius mundi ). [That is true] even if, with respect to the goal of the universe, that entire region bears to this entire region a certain comparative relationship which is hidden to us — so that in this way the inhabitants of this earth or region bear, through the medium of the whole region, a certain mutual relationship to those other inhabitants. (By comparison, the particular parts of the fingers of a hand bear, through the medium of the hand, a comparative relationship to a food; and the particular parts of the foot [bear], through the medium of the foot, [a comparative relationship] to a hand — so that all [members] are comparatively related to the whole animal.) Hence, since the entire region is unknown to us, those inhabitants remain altogether unknown.”

Nicholas of Cusa book De Docta Ignorantia

trans. Jasper Hopkins (Minneapolis: Arthur J Banning Press, 1990), 119 – 20.
De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance) (1440)

Food , Way , Star , Universe

“Many facts have lately transpired which tend to overthrow the hypothesis that heat is itself a body, and to prove that it consists in a motion of the ultimate particles of bodies. If this be so, the general principles of mechanics may be applied to heat; this motion may be converted into work, the loss of vis viva in each particular case being proportional to the quantity of work produced.
These circumstances, of which Carnot was also well aware, and the importance of which he expressly admitted, pressingly demand a comparison between heat and work, to be undertaken with reference to the divergent assumption that the production of work is not only due to an alteration in the distribution of heat, but to an actual consumption thereof; and inversely, that by the expenditure of work, heat may be produced.”

Rudolf Clausius (1822–1888) German mathematical physicist

First Memoir.
The Mechanical Theory of Heat (1867)

Loss

“Certain management policies-stretching of credit resources, for example-may lead to great progress in good conditions; but, like the Grand Prix car in comparison with the Land Rover, they may not be robust enough to survive when the going gets tough.”

Anthony Stafford Beer (1926–2002) British theorist, consultant, and professor

Source: Management Science (1968), Chapter 3, Quantified Insight, p. 88.

Cars

“Torture is not tolerated by this country on the battlefield or off. Anyone who tortures or abuses a detainee tarnishes the service of every honorable student and soldier in this room today. The President has said this, and I will say it again: those who commit torture in the name of the United States government will be prosecuted. In any discussion of Guantanamo, detainees and military commissions, I think that one final fact helps put things in perspective — and that is the fact that members of al Qaeda are not merely common criminals. Some critics around the world have argued that they are “just” criminals, that their crimes somehow do not amount to war crimes. But here are the facts: al Qaeda seeks to employ weapons of mass slaughter as a means of achieving political goals against both the civilian and military capacity of the United States, Europe, and our allies throughout the world. Its members continue to fight our Armed Forces on battlefields around the world, and they will continue to do so until we stop them. Al Qaeda has committed acts on a scale that transcends mere crime, as recognized by NATO immediately after the attacks of September 11th. Their crimes are therefore nothing less than war crimes. Given the magnitude of the atrocities al Qaeda has committed, there can be no comparison between the crimes of its members and that of common civilian criminals.”

Alberto Gonzales (1955) 80th United States Attorney General

Speech regarding Civil Liberties and the War on Terrorism (November 20, 2006)

War , World , Thinking , Help

“Recovery is therefore something much more elemental. It aims at continuation of life, on a simple and primitive basis. From mere survival, in view of perhaps a hundred million people killed within a few days, to the construction of a society which adheres to the lofty ideas we cherish today is a long way. And the survivors may develop ideals so different from ours that we may not recognize the country— should we live to make the comparison, or, living, should we care to make it even if we could.”

Oskar Morgenstern (1902–1977) austrian economist

Oskar Morgenstern (1959), The Question of National Defense, p. 129.

Life , People , Way , Idea

“Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment.”

Edmund Burke A Letter to a Noble Lord

A Letter to a Noble Lord (1796)

“The right hon. Gentleman's statement was that Germany has already at this moment a military air force which is approaching equality with our own, and that by this time next year, if Germany continues to execute her programme without acceleration and if we continue to carry out the increase announced to Parliament in July last, the German military air force will be at least as strong as, and may be stronger than, our own…It is not the case that Germany is rapidly approaching equality with us…Even if we confine the comparison to the German air strength and the strength of the Royal Air Force immediately available in Europe, Germany is actively engaged in the production of service aircraft, but her real strength is not 50 per cent. of our strength in Europe to-day. As for the position this time next year, if she continues to execute her air programme without acceleration and if we continue to carry out at the present approved rate the expansion announced to Parliament in July…so far from the German military air force being at least as strong as and probably stronger than our own, we estimate that we shall still have in Europe a margin—in Europe alone—of nearly 50 per cent.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1934/nov/28/debate-on-the-address in the House of Commons (28 November 1934).
1934

Strong , Time

“I love to see two truths at the same time. Every good comparison gives the mind this advantage.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Love , Truth , Time

“She, and comparisons are odious.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

No. 8, The Comparison, line 54. Compare: "Comparisons are odious", John Fortescue, De Laudibus Leg. Angliæ, Chap. xix; "Comparisons are odorous", William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, act iii, scene v
Elegies

“The Hindu, sickened by idolatry (Islam's and Christianity's common name for Hinduism), turns to the other two religions which surround him, and inquires into their respective claims … we must be ready at hand to meet him with the proofs of our most holy faith… the comparison of the two religIOns, Christianity and Islam, cannot fail to be of essential service, under God's blessings, to lead to practical results.”

John Muir (indologist) (1810–1882) Scottish Sanskrit scholar and Indologist

Calcutta Review in 1845, Quoted from Swarup, Ram (1995). Hindu view of Christianity and Islam.

God , Faith , Religion

“Here is how I describe the concept of privilege to skeptics: Do you believe that marginalized/minority groups face discrimination and are disadvantaged as a result? If the answer is yes, then another equally valid way of describing the same situation is to say that dominant/majority groups are relatively advantaged in comparison. “Privilege” simply refers to those advantages. One of the reasons why activists frame such matters in terms of privilege is to illustrate how *all of us* are impacted by unjust hierarchies and systems, even if it is not always apparent to us.”

Julia Serano (1967) transsexual American writer, spoken-word performer, trans-bi activist, and biologist

Leftist Critiques of Identity Politics (2018)

Way

“It is this detachment, this use of comparison, his faith in the possibility of applying scientific processes of thought to the organisation of industry, which constitute Babbage's unique contribution to the advancement of management. More than half a century before Taylor was to illuminate the same point, with far greater effect because he was a practising engineer, Babbage had stumbled on the underlying truth that there are general principles applicable to the manufacture of products by machinery, and that it is an understanding of these principles rather than the technical knowledge of how to make a particular article which is of the first importance.”

Lyndall Urwick (1891–1983) British management consultant

Vol II. p. 23 as cited in: Hopf (1947).
1940s, The Making Of Scientific Management, 1945

Truth , Faith , Understanding , Knowledge

“Those who urge an alliance with Assad cite the example of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet despot who became an ally of Western democracies against Nazi Germany. I never liked historical comparisons and like this one even less. To start with, the Western democracies did not choose Stalin as an ally; he was thrusted upon them by the turn of events. When the Second World War started Stalin was an ally of Hitler thanks to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Soviet Union actively participated in the opening phase of the war by invading Poland from the east as the Germans came in from the West. Before that, Stalin had rendered Hitler a big service by eliminating thousands of Polish army officers in The Katyn massacre. Between September 1939 and June 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin was an objective ally of Hitler. Stalin switched sides when he had no choice if he wanted to save his skin. The situation in Syria today is different. There is no alliance of democracies which, thanks to Obama’s enigmatic behavior, lack any strategy in the Middle East. Unlike Stalin, Assad has not switched sides if only because there is no side to switch to. Assad regards ISIS as a tactical ally against other armed opposition groups. This is why Russia is now focusing its air strikes against non-ISIS armed groups opposed to Assad. More importantly, Assad has none of the things that Stalin had to offer the Allies. To start with Stalin could offer the vast expanse of territory controlled by the Soviet Union and capable of swallowing countless German divisions without belching. Field Marshal von Paulus’ one-million man invasion force was but a drop in the ocean of the Soviet landmass. In contrast, Assad has no territorial depth to offer. According to the Iranian General Hossein Hamadani, who was killed in Aleppo, Assad is in nominal control of around 20 percent of the country. Stalin also had an endless supply of cannon fodder, able to ship in millions from the depths of the Urals, Central Asia and Siberia. In contrast, Assad has publicly declared he is running out of soldiers, relying on Hezbollah cannon fodder sent to him by Tehran. If Assad has managed to hang on to part of Syria, it is partly because he has an air force while his opponents do not. But even that advantage has been subject to the law of diminishing returns. Four years of bombing defenseless villages and towns has not changed the balance of power in Assad’s favor. This may be why his Russian backers decided to come and do the bombing themselves. Before, the planes were Russian, the pilots Syrian. Now both planes and pilots are Russian, underlining Assad’s increasing irrelevance. Stalin’s other card, which Assad lacks, consisted of the USSR’s immense natural resources, especially the Azerbaijan oilfields which made sure the Soviet tanks could continue to roll without running out of petrol. Assad in contrast has lost control of Syria’s oilfields and is forced to buy supplies from ISIS or smugglers operating from Turkey. There are other differences between Stalin then and Assad now. Adulated as “the Father of the Nation” Stalin had the last word on all issues. Assad is not in that position. In fact, again according to the late Hamadani in his last interview published by Iranian media, what is left of the Syrian Ba’athist regime is run by a star chamber of shadowy characters who regard Assad as nothing but a figurehead.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Opinion: No, Bashar Al-Assad is no Joseph Stalin http://english.aawsat.com/2015/10/article55345413/opinion-no-bashar-al-assad-is-no-joseph-stalin, Ashraq Al-Awsat (16 Oct, 2015).

War , World , Law , Behavior

“Agriculture is the art of deriving from the earth the most valuable organic productions. He who exercises this art, seeks to obtain profit by causing to grow, and by using, its animal and vegetable productions. The more considerable the gain derived, therefore, the better is the object accomplished. The most perfect agriculture is, evidently, that which produces, by the application of labour, the largest and the most permanent profit in comparison with the means employed. Systematic agriculture ought, then, to teach us all the circumstances by means of which we may derive the most considerable profit by the practice of the art.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

Source: The Principles of Agriculture, 1844, Section I: The fundamental principles, p. 1.

Art , Exercises , Animals , Perfection

“Jesus told his disciples they were a little flock. All his comparisons tend to show that the disciples will necessarily be small in number and weak: the leaven in the dough, the salt in the soup, the sheep among wolves, and many other metaphors. Jesus does not seem to have had a vision of a triumphant and triumphal church encircling the globe. He always depicts for us a secret force that modifies things from within.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

Source: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), p. 35

Secret

“It will be seen that I look at the term species, as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, and for mere convenience sake.”

Charles Darwin book On the Origin of Species (1859)

Source: On the Origin of Species (1859), chapter II: "Variation Under Nature", page 52 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=67&itemID=F373&viewtype=image

“Comparisons are odious.”

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) English dramatist, poet and translator

Lust's Dominion (c. 1600), Act iii. scene 4. The first edition attributed the authorship of this play to Marlowe, though this attribution has been recognized as spurious by critics and scholars for nearly two centuries. See Logan and Smith, Predecessors of Shakespeare, p. 32. But compare: "Comparisons are odious", John Fortescue, De Laudibus Leg. Angliæ, Chapter xix.
Misattributed

“It is important to recognise that comparison is not a method or even an academic technique; rather, it is a discursive strategy. There are a few important points to bear in mind when one wants to make a comparison. First of all, one has to decide, in any given work, whether one is mainly after similarities or differences. It is very difficult, for example, to say, let alone prove, that Japan and China or Korea are basically similar or basically different. Either case could be made, depending on one’s angle of vision, one’s framework, and the conclusions towards which one intends to move. (In the jingoist years on the eve of the First World War, when Germans and Frenchmen were encouraged to hate each other, the great Austro-Marxist theoretician Otto Bauer enjoyed baiting both sides by saying that contemporary Parisians and Berliners had far more in common than either had with their respective medieval ancestors.) Here I have tried, as perhaps offering a useful example, to show how the comparative works I wrote between the early 1970s and the 2000s reflected, in their real difference, changing perspectives, framings and (political) intentions.”

Benedict Anderson (1936–2015) American political scientist

Benedict Anderson, " Frameworks of Comparison: Benedict Anderson reflects on his intellectual formation http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n02/benedict-anderson/frameworks-of-comparison," London Review of Books, Vol. 38, No. 2. 21 January 2016, p. 15-18

Hate , War , World , Change

“No one is "the next" anyone, especially if that person is still here, doing their thing, as she [Mariah] clearly is. The comparisons people have made to me are so flattering, but I think it's insensitive to the people I'm compared to.”

Leona Lewis (1985) British singer-songwriter

Rolling Stone magazine, May 2008
On being proclaimed the new Mariah

People , Thinking , Personality

“In those days, a man at least as boring as I, Pierre Reverdy, was writing: 'The image is a pure creation of the mind. It cannot be born from a comparison but from a juxtaposition of two more or less distant realities. The more the relationship between the two juxtaposed realities is distant and true, the stronger the image will be – the greater its emotional power and poetic reality..' (in the 'Nord-Sud', March 1918). These words, however sibylline for the uninitiated, were extremely revealing, and I pondered them for a long time.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism; 1924)

Reality , Distant , Time

“There is no comparison between the suicidal terrorism of the desperate and the reasoned terrorism of an overarmed state.”

Ilan Halevi (1943–2013) Jewish Palestinian journalist, politician

A History of the Jews (1987).

Suicide

“The average person appreciates a value only “in the course of, and through comparison” with the possessions, condition, plight or quality of other persons. … The awareness that the acquisition and enjoyment of that value is beyond the person’s capacity … triggers two mutually opposite, but equally vigorous reactions: an overwhelming desire (all the more tormenting because of the suspicion that it might be impossible to fulfill); and ressentiment—a rancor caused by a desperate urge to ward off self-deprecation and self-contempt by demeaning, deriding and degrading the value in question, together with its possessors.”

Zygmunt Bauman (1925–2017) Polish philosopher and sociologist

Source: The Art of Life (2008), pp. 24-25 [Quote is from Max Scheler, “Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen”]

Question , Personality

“Why do comparisons of words and tone poems (poetry and music) never take into consideration that the word is a mere signifier, but that the sound, aside from being a signifier, is also an object?”

Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872) austrian dramatic and writer

Notebooks and Diaries (1820).

Music

“I love to read the dedications of old books written in monarchies—for they invariably honor some (usually insignificant) knight or duke with fulsome words of sycophantic insincerity, praising him as the light of the universe (in hopes, no doubt, for a few ducats to support future work); this old practice makes me feel like such an honest and upright man, by comparison, when I put a positive spin, perhaps ever so slightly exaggerated, on a grant proposal.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Dinosaur in a Haystack

"The Razumovsky Duet", p. 263
Dinosaur in a Haystack (1995)

Love , Books , Hope , Feeling

“I have generally made it a rule to parry the inquiries and comparisons which the Americans are so apt to thrust at an Englishman. On one or two occasions, when the party has been numerous and worth powder and shot, I have, however, on being hard pressed, and finding my British blood up, found the only mode of allaying their inordinate vanity to be by resorting to this mode of argument:—"I admit all that you or any other person can, could, may, or might advance in praise of the past career of the people of America. Nay, more, I will myself assert that no nation ever did, and in my opinion none ever will, achieve such a title to respect, wonder, and gratitude in so short a period; and further still, I venture to allege that the imagination of statesmen never dreamed of a country that should in half a century make such prodigious advances in civilization and real greatness as yours has done. And now I must add, and I am sure you, as intelligent, reasonable men, will go with me, that fifty years are too short a period in the existence of nations to entitle them to the palm of history. No, wait the ordeal of wars, distresses, and prosperity (the most dangerous of all), which centuries of duration are sure to bring to your country. These are the test, and if, many ages hence, your descendants shall be able only to say of their country as much as I am entitled to say of mine now, that for seven hundred years we have existed as a nation constantly advancing in liberty, wealth, and refinement; holding out the lights of philosophy and true religion to all the world; presenting mankind with the greatest of human institutions in the trial by jury; and that we are the only modern people that for so long a time withstood the attacks of enemies so heroically that a foreign foe never put foot in our capital except as a prisoner (this last is a poser);—if many centuries hence your descendants will be entitled to say something equivalent to this, then, and not till then, will you be entitled to that crown of fame which the historian of centuries is entitled to award."”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to F. Cobden (5 July 1835) during his visit to the United States, quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), pp. 33-34.
1830s

Men , War , People , Age

“As you study science, and really try to understand what is happening behind the curtain, not just reading the predigested press releases but actually talking to scientists or reading technical papers, you realize that … it's always more complicated than you think. … No measurement is simple. … The way you make the comparison will address different issues.”

Steven Novella (1964) American neurologist, skepticist

SGU, Podcast #528, August 22nd, 2015 http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu/528
The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, Podcast, 2010s

Way , Understanding , Thinking , Study

“Thy letter hath been perused. Were the truth of this Revelation to be fully demonstrated with elaborate proofs, all the scrolls that exist in the heaven and on the earth would be insufficient to contain them.
However, the substance and essence of the subject is this, that there can be no doubt that from everlasting God hath been invested with the independent sovereignty of His exalted Being, and unto everlasting He will remain inaccessible in the transcendent majesty of His holy Essence. No creature hath ever recognized Him as befitteth His recognition, nor hath any created being ever praised Him as is worthy of His praise. He is exalted above every name, and is sanctified from every comparison. Through Him all things are made known, while too lofty is His reality to be known through anyone but Him. The process of His creation hath had no beginning and can have no end, otherwise it would necessitate the cessation of His celestial grace. God hath raised up Prophets and revealed Books as numerous as the creatures of the world, and will continue to do so to everlasting.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Dalá’Il-I-Sab‘ih

God , Truth , Books , World

“And we learn this truth from His sight: That all we taste, in comparison with that which remains out of our reach, Is no more than a single drop of water compared with the whole sea…. We hunger for God’s Infinity, which we cannot devour, And we aspire to His Eternity, which we cannot attain…. In this storm of love, our activity is above reason and is in no wise. Love desires that which is impossible to her; And reason teaches that love is within her rights, but can neither counsel nor persuade her.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Sparkling Stone (c. 1340)

Love , Hunger , God , Truth

“[T]he new line that the Taehan minguk was not founded in August 1948, but instead came into existence when a provisional government was formed in Shanghai in 1919. I don't need to remind anyone of the internationally accepted criteria for statehood. The Blue House seems more interested in downgrading the republic that fought the North than in making a serious case for the statehood of something else. The original modest budget for the 70th anniversary of the ROK's founding has already been cut. The joint North-South commemoration of the March 1st uprising's 100th anniversary next year is likely to make the festivities this August 15 look subdued in comparison.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Confederation Again (July 2018)

Housing

“For though the sweet manhood of Christ might suffer but once, the goodness in Him may never cease of proffer: every day He is ready to the same, if it might be. For if He said He would for my love make new Heavens and new Earth, it were but little in comparison; for this might be done every day if He would, without any travail. But to die for my love so often that the number passeth creature’s reason, it is the highest proffer that our Lord God might make to man’s soul, as to my sight. Then meaneth He thus: How should it not be that I should not do for thy love all that I might of deeds which grieve me not, sith I would, for thy love, die so often, having no regard to my hard pains?”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Ninth Revelation, Chapter 22

Love , God , Pain , Soul

“He [ Aristotle ] refers to many examples of changes now constantly going on, and insists emphatically on the great results which they must produce in the lapse of ages. He instances particular cases of lakes that had dried up, and deserts that had at length become watered by rivers and fertilized. He points to the growth of the Nilotic delta since the time of Homer, to the shallowing of the Palus Maeotis within sixty years from his own time… He alludes,… to the upheaving of one of the Eolian islands, previous to a volcanic eruption. The changes of the earth, he says, are so slow in comparison to the duration of our lives, that they are overlooked; and the migrations of people after great catastrophes, and their removal to other regions, cause the event to be forgotten…. He says [twelfth chapter of his Meteorics] 'the distribution of land and sea in particular regions does not endure throughout all time, but it becomes sea in those parts where it was land, and again it becomes land where it was sea, and there is reason for thinking that these changes take place according to a certain system, and within a certain period.' The concluding observation is as follows: 'As time never fails, and the universe is eternal, neither the Tanais, nor the Nile, can have flowed for ever. The places where they rise were once dry, and there is a limit to their operations, but there is none to time. So also of all other rivers; they spring up and they perish; and the sea also continually deserts some lands and invades others The same tracts, therefore, of the earth are not some always sea, and others always continents, but every thing changes in the course of time.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.2, p. 17
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

People , Age , Spring , Thinking

“The term closed loop-learning process refers to the idea that one learns by determining what s desired and comparing what is actually taking place as measured at the process and feedback for comparison. The difference between what is desired and what is taking place provides an error indication which is used to develop a signal to the process being controlled.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Harold Chestnut (1984) in: Lawrence P. Grayson, Joseph M. Biedenbach eds. Engineering--images for the future": proceedings, 1983 Annual Conference. p. 923

Error , Idea , Learning

“Beauty … is a relation, and the apprehension of it a comparison.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

"On the Origin of Beauty: A Platonic Dialogue"
Letters, etc

Beauty

“Between sessions at a physics conference, I asked a number of attendees: Who is the smartest physicist of them all? …the name mentioned most often was Witten's. He seemed to evoke a special kind of awe, as though he belonged to a category unto himself. He is often likened to Einstein; one colleague reached even further back for a comparison, suggesting that Witten possessed the greatest mathematical mind since Newton.”

John Horgan (journalist) (1953) American science journalist

Source: The End of Science (1996), p. 60

Mathematics

“What a scandal to hear nature deprecated in comparison to Greek statues by one who knows neither one nor the other without acknowledging that the smallest part of Nature confounds and amazes those who know most. What statue or cast of it might there be that is not copied from divine nature?”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

In a report in 1792 - Goya wrote to the Academy of San Fernando, on 'teaching art'; as quoted in Francisco Goya y Licientis, Janis Tomlinson, Phaodon 1999, p. 70
1790s

Nature , Parting

“.. the thinking man is no longer the center of the universe, but the universe is the center of the man [referring to collaborations between artists, in which Klein was involved several times]. We shall then know 'prestige' in comparison to the 'vertigo' of before. Thus we shall become men of the air, we shall know the upward force of attraction, towards space, towards nowhere and everywhere at once; having thus mastered the earthly force of attraction we shall literally levitate in complete physical and spiritual freedom.”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

Quote in: "Discours pronounce a l'occasion de l'exposition Tinguely a Düsseldorf", Jan. 1959; as quoted in Dali and Me, Catherine Millet, (translated by Trista Selous), Scheidegger & Spiess AG, 8001 Zurich Switzerland, p. 127
before 1960

Men , Thinking , Freedom , Universe

“We have been created in order to return to God through love, through his own love. In us it must be ardent, pure and unceasingly active, so that we expend all our energies and are consumed by it. Actually, we shall never be able to do or give anything that can sufficiently recompense him who is infinite Love. Before him every creature is deceitful, and in comparison with him, man is nothing. p. 140”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From Prayer, Aspiration, and Contemplation

Love , God

“For I consider that the sufferings of the present time do not amount to anything in comparison with the glory that is going to be revealed in us. For the creation is waiting with eager expectation for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will, but through the one who subjected it, on the basis of hope that the creation itself will also be set free from enslavement to corruption and have the glorious freedom of the children of God. For we know that all creation keeps on groaning together and being in pain together until now.”

Paul of Tarsus book Epistle to the Romans

Romans 8:18-22 http://www.jw.org/en/publications/bible/nwt/books/romans/8/, NWT
Epistle to the Romans

God , Pain , Children , Hope

“Comparative theology is a two-edged weapon, and has so proved itself. But the Christian advocates, unabashed by evidence, force comparison in the serenest way; Christian legends and dogmas, they say, do somewhat resemble the heathen, it is true; but see, while the one teaches us the existence, powers, and attributes of an all-wise, all-good Father-God, Brahmanism gives us a multitude of minor gods, and Buddhism none whatever; one is fetishism and polytheism, the other bald atheism. Jehovah is the one true God, and the Pope and Martin Luther are His prophets! This is one edge of the sword, and this the other: Despite missions, despite armies, despite enforced commercial intercourse, the "heathen" find nothing in the teachings of Jesus — sublime though some are — that Christna and Gautama had not taught them before. And so, to gain over any new converts, and keep the few already won by centuries of cunning, the Christians give the "heathen" dogmas more absurd than their own, and cheat them by adopting the habit of their native priests, and practicing the very "idolatry and fetishism" which they so disparage in the "heathens."”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Comparative theology works both ways.
Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume II, Chapter XI

God , Way , Cheating

“There is no true understanding without a certain range of comparison.”

Marc Bloch (1886–1944) French historian, medievalist, and historiographer

The Historian's Craft, pg.42

Understanding

“Out upon the folly which, in estimating human misery, allows aught to bear comparison with the agony of the poor! I use the word poor relatively; I call not those poor to whom honesty brings self-respect, whose habits and whose means have gone together, and whose industry is its own support. But those are the poor whose exertion supplies not their wants—to whom cold, hunger, and weariness, are common feelings; who have known better days—to whom the past furnishes contrast, and the future fear.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Hunger , Fear , Feeling , Support

“There was a plea from honourable Members relating to the need for formal Gross National Product figures. Such figures are very inexact even in the most sophisticated countries I think they do not have a great deal of meaning, even as a basis of comparison between economies. That other countries make use of them is not, I think, necessarily a good reason to suppose that we need them. But, although I am not entirely clear what practical purpose they would serve in Hong Kong, I am sure they would be of interest. I suspect myself, however, that the need arises in other countries because high taxation and more or less detailed Government intervention in the economy have made it essential to be able to judge (or to hope to be able to judge) the effect of policies, and of changes in policies, on the economy. One of the honourable Members who spoke on this subject, said outright, as a confirmed planner, that he thought that they were desirable for the planning of our future economic policy. But we are in the happy position, happier at least for the Financial Secretary where the leverage exercised by Government on the economy is so small that it is not necessary, nor even of any particular value, to have these figures available for the formulation of policy. We might indeed be right to be apprehensive lest the availability of such figures might lead, by a reversal of cause and effect, to policies designed to have a direct effect on the economy. I would myself deplore this.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

March 25, 1970, page 495.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

Hope , Exercises , Thinking , Change

“I should be writing a third paper on the Nerves, but I cannot proceed without making some experiments, which are so unpleasant to make that I defer them. You may think me silly, but I cannot perfectly convince myself that I am authorised in nature, or religion, to do these cruelties—for what?—for anything else than a little egotism or self-aggrandisement; and yet, what are my experiments in comparison with those which are daily done? and are done daily for nothing. So my employment is, correcting the press of my new edition of the Anatomy, and writing notes for my Physiology, which I mean to make an additional volume to the Anatomy.”

Charles Bell (1774–1842) Scottish surgeon and artist (1774-1842)

Letter to his brother on 1 July 1822; in Letters of Sir Charles Bell, K.H., F.R.S.L. & E. Selected from his Correspondence with his Brother, George Joseph Bell, London: John Murray, 1870, pp. 275 https://books.google.it/books?id=UZ1cAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA275-276.

Religion , Nature , Thinking

“This I know, that between finite and infinite there is no comparison; so that the difference between God and the greatest and most excellent created thing is no less than the difference between God and the least created thing.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Letter to Hugo Boxel (October 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58 (54).

God

“It is the character of the British people, or at least of the higher and middle classes who pass muster for the British people, that to induce them to approve of any change, it is necessary that they should look upon it as a middle course: they think every proposal extreme and violent unless they hear of some other proposal going still farther, upon which their antipathy to extreme views may discharge itself. So it proved in the present instance; my proposal was condemned, but any scheme of Irish Land reform, short of mine, came to be thought moderate by comparison.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/294/mode/1up pp. 294-295

Change , Thinking , People

“Complete accountability is established and enforced throughout; and if there there is any error committed, it will be discovered on a comparison with the books and can be traced to its source.”

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (1918–2007) American historian

Source: The Visible Hand (1977), p. 74; Cited in: Michael H. Best (1990) The New Competition: Institutions of Industrial Restructuring. p. 36.

Books , Error

“As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”

Mike Godwin (1956) American attorney and author

Meme, Counter-meme, Wired, October 1994; Volume 2, Number 10 http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.10/godwin.if.html, Popularly known as Godwin's Law.

“In comparison with 2006, the death rate has decreased by two times, and it is the lowest since the formation of the army. But we can not say this is a good result, because even one death is a loss for us.”

Mikael Harutyunyan (1946) Armenian general

Quoted in 2008 article. [about the death of soldiers, January 2008]

Death , Loss , Time

“The late Sifu Wong Shun Leung, of “Hong Kong” wing chun fame, in his seminars around the world over the years, liked to make a comparison with the modern combat sport of Western boxing, which he observed had changed quite dramatically over just the last sixty or so years, from the crouching-like postures of boxers like Joe Louis in the 30s and 40s, to the flashy footwork of the likes of Muhammad Ali in the 60s and 70s, through to the more upright and flat-footed approach of recent champions such as Mike Tyson.”

Wong Shun Leung (1935–1997) martial artist

Boxing
Source: WING CHUN HISTORY, An alternative viewpoint, by David Peterson http://wslwingchun.resolvedesign.com/wing_chun_history_an_alternative_viewpoint_by_david_peterson.htm

World , Sport , Change , Box

“I am a great enemy of critical writing as all I see in these interpretations and comparisons with Kafka and others is just an opportunity to open up the floodgates of words which, overall, amounts to Carrouges or at times a translation of Carrouges – very free to makes his ideas look good. Obviously any work of art or literature, in the public domain, is automatically the subject of the victim of such transformations – and this is not just confined to the case of Carrouges. Every fifty years, El Greco is revised and adapted to the taste of the day, either overrated or underrated. The same goes for all surviving works of art. And this leads me to say that a work of art is made entirely by those who look at it or read it and make it survive by their acclaim or even their condemnation.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

Quote from Duchamp's letter to Jean Mayoux (a Surrealist artist), New York, 8 March 1956; as cited in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 p. 169
1951 - 1968

Art , Literature , Idea , Time

“And here one may note a curious comparison which can be made between this [ascidian] life-history and that of many a respectable pinnacle and gargoyle on the social fabric. Every respectable citizen of the professional classes passes through a period of activity and imagination, of "liveliness and eccentricity," of "Sturm und Drang." He shocks his aunts. Presently, however, he realizes the sober aspect of things. He becomes dull; he enters a profession; suckers appear on his head; and he studies. Finally, by virtue of these he settles down—he marries. All his wild ambitions and subtle æsthetic perceptions atrophy as needless in the presence of calm domesticity. He secretes a house, or "establishment," round himself, of inorganic and servile material. His Bohemian tail is discarded. Henceforth his life is a passive receptivity to what chance and the drift of his profession bring along; he lives an almost entirely vegetative excrescence on the side of a street, and in the tranquillity of his calling finds that colourless contentment that replaces happiness.”

H. G. Wells book Zoological Retrogression

Zoological Retrogression (1891)

Life , Secret , Imagination , History

“Mr. Malthus says, " It has been justly observed by Adam Smith that no equal quantity of productive labour employed in manufactures can ever occasion so great a reproduction as in agriculture. " If Adam Smith speaks of value, he is correct; but if he speaks of riches, which is the important point, he is mistaken; for he has himself defined riches to consist of the necessaries, conveniences, and enjoyments of human life. One set of necessaries and conveniences admits of no comparison with another set; value in use cannot be measured by any known standard; it is differently estimated by different persons.”

David Ricardo (1772–1823) British political economist, broker and politician

Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter XXXII, Malthus on Rent, p. 292

Life , Personality

“He demonstrated that many fossil teeth found in Tuscany belonged to a species of shark; and he dissected, for the purpose of comparison, one of these fish recently taken from the Mediterranean. That the remains of shells and marine animals found petrified were not of animal origin was still a favorite dogma of many, who were unwilling to believe that the earth could have been inhabited by living beings long before many of the mountains were formed.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 31
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1
Context: The most remarkable work of that period was published by Steno... The treatise bears the quaint title of 'De Solido intra Solidum contento naturaliter (1669,)' by which the author intended to express 'On Gems, Crystals, and organic Petrifactions enclosed within solid Rocks.'... Steno had compared the fossil shells with their recent analogues, and traced the various gradations from the state of mere calcification, when their natural gluten only was lost, to the perfect substitution of stony matter. He demonstrated that many fossil teeth found in Tuscany belonged to a species of shark; and he dissected, for the purpose of comparison, one of these fish recently taken from the Mediterranean. That the remains of shells and marine animals found petrified were not of animal origin was still a favorite dogma of many, who were unwilling to believe that the earth could have been inhabited by living beings long before many of the mountains were formed.

Mountain , Fish , Animals

“Murder rarely goes unpunished in Britain or France; here the reverse is true. The same survey reports many times as many burglaries in parts of America as in all England; and, whereas a very high percent of burglars in England are caught and punished, in parts of our country only a very low percent are finally punished. The comparison can not fail to be disturbing.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)
Context: When the local government unit evades its responsibility in one direction, it is started in the vicious way of disregard of law and laxity of living. The police force which is administered on the assumption that the violation of some laws may be ignored has started toward demoralization. The community which approves such administration is making dangerous concessions. There is no use disguising the fact that as a nation our attitude toward the prevention and punishment of crime needs more serious attention. I read the other day a survey which showed that in proportion to population we have eight times as many murders as Great Britain, and five times as many as France. Murder rarely goes unpunished in Britain or France; here the reverse is true. The same survey reports many times as many burglaries in parts of America as in all England; and, whereas a very high percent of burglars in England are caught and punished, in parts of our country only a very low percent are finally punished. The comparison can not fail to be disturbing. The conclusion is inescapable that laxity of administration reacts upon public opinion, causing cynicism and loss of confidence in both law and its enforcement and therefore in its observance. The failure of local government has a demoralizing effect in every direction.

Time , Parting , Country

“I am a little to the right of … Why is the Attila comparison used? Fifth-century Hunnish depredations on the Roman Empire were the work of an overpowerful executive pursuing a policy of economic redistribution in an atmosphere of permissive social mores. I am a little to the right of Rush Limbaugh. I'm so conservative that I approve of San Francisco City Hall marriages, adoption by same-sex couples, and New Hampshire's recently ordained Episcopal bishop. Gays want to get married, have children, and go to church. Next they'll be advocating school vouchers, boycotting HBO, and voting Republican.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

"I Agree With Me" (July/August 2004)

Marriage , Children , School , Sex

“Never before has the idea that peace is indivisible been so true as it is now.
Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Nobel Address (1991)
Context: Today, peace means the ascent from simple coexistence to cooperation and common creativity among countries and nations.
Peace is movement towards globality and universality of civilization. Never before has the idea that peace is indivisible been so true as it is now.
Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences.
And, ideally, peace means the absence of violence. It is an ethical value.

Peace , Idea

“I do not say that a world without aggression or threats of war would be an easy world. It will bring new problems, new challenges from the Communists, new dangers of relaxing our vigilance or of mistaking their intent. But those dangers pale in comparison to those of the spiraling arms race and a collision course towards war. Since the beginning of history, war has been mankind’s constant companion.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty speech
Context: I do not say that a world without aggression or threats of war would be an easy world. It will bring new problems, new challenges from the Communists, new dangers of relaxing our vigilance or of mistaking their intent. But those dangers pale in comparison to those of the spiraling arms race and a collision course towards war. Since the beginning of history, war has been mankind’s constant companion. It has been the rule, not the exception. Even a nation as young and as peace-loving as our own has fought through eight wars.

War , World , History , Problem

“But these comparisons are idle. I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect an early success.”

William T. Sherman (1820–1891) American General, businessman, educator, and author.

1860s, 1864, Letter to the City of Atlanta (September 1864)
Context: You have heretofore read public sentiment in your newspapers, that live by falsehood and excitement; and the quicker you seek for truth in other quarters, the better. I repeat then that, by the original compact of government, the United States had certain rights in Georgia, which have never been relinquished and never will be; that the South began the war by seizing forts, arsenals, mints, custom-houses, etc., etc., long before Mr. Lincoln was installed, and before the South had one jot or tittle of provocation. I myself have seen in Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, hundreds and thousands of women and children fleeing from your armies and desperadoes, hungry and with bleeding feet. In Memphis, Vicksburg, and Mississippi, we fed thousands and thousands of the families of rebel soldiers left on our hands, and whom we could not see starve. Now that war comes to you, you feel very different. You deprecate its horrors, but did not feel them when you sent car-loads of soldiers and ammunition, and moulded shells and shot, to carry war into Kentucky and Tennessee, to desolate the homes of hundreds and thousands of good people who only asked to live in peace at their old homes, and under the Government of their inheritance. But these comparisons are idle. I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect an early success.

War , Peace , Success , Perfection

“In every sphere, we seem to have lost the very elements of intelligence: the ideas of limit, measure, degree, proportion, relation, comparison, contingency, interdependence, interrelation of means and ends.”

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

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Power of Words (1937), p. 222
Context: There is no area in our minds reserved for superstition, such as the Greeks had in their mythology; and superstition, under cover of an abstract vocabulary, has revenged itself by invading the entire realm of thought. Our science is like a store filled with the most subtle intellectual devices for solving the most complex problems, and yet we are almost incapable of applying the elementary principles of rational thought. In every sphere, we seem to have lost the very elements of intelligence: the ideas of limit, measure, degree, proportion, relation, comparison, contingency, interdependence, interrelation of means and ends. To keep to the social level, our political universe is peopled exclusively by myths and monsters; all it contains is absolutes and abstract entities. This is illustrated by all the words of our political and social vocabulary: nation, security, capitalism, communism, fascism, order, authority, property, democracy. We never use them in phrases such as: There is democracy to the extent that... or: There is capitalism in so far as... The use of expressions like "to the extent that" is beyond our intellectual capacity. Each of these words seems to represent for us an absolute reality, unaffected by conditions, or an absolute objective, independent of methods of action, or an absolute evil; and at the same time we make all these words mean, successively or simultaneously, anything whatsoever. Our lives are lived, in actual fact, among changing, varying realities, subject to the casual play of external necessities, and modifying themselves according to specific conditions within specific limits; and yet we act and strive and sacrifice ourselves and others by reference to fixed and isolated abstractions which cannot possibly be related either to one another or to any concrete facts. In this so-called age of technicians, the only battles we know how to fight are battles against windmills.

Intelligence , Idea

“When possessed by the Judge, we live in a world of comparisons, competition, and punishment, constantly rate ourselves and others, feel jealousy and guilt.”

Starhawk (1951) American author, activist and Neopagan

The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Goddess (1979)
Context: The Judge, whose core issue is our sense of worth and value, splits us into Judge and Subject to be Judged. When possessed by the Judge, we live in a world of comparisons, competition, and punishment, constantly rate ourselves and others, feel jealousy and guilt. The Judge seduces us with the false promise that we can gain value if we obey, perform, produce. <!-- p. 238

World , Jealousy , Feeling

“The risks inherent in disarmament pale in comparison to the risks inherent in an unlimited arms race.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1961, UN speech
Context: For fifteen years this organization has sought the reduction and destruction of arms. Now that goal is no longer a dream — it is a practical matter of life or death. The risks inherent in disarmament pale in comparison to the risks inherent in an unlimited arms race.
In short, general and complete disarmament must no longer be a slogan, used to resist the first steps. It is no longer to be a goal without means of achieving it, without means of verifying its progress, without means of keeping the peace. It is now a realistic plan, and a test — a test of those only willing to talk and a test of those willing to act.
Such a plan would not bring a world free from conflict and greed — but it would bring a world free from the terrors of mass destruction. It would not usher in the era of the super state — but it would usher in an era in which no state could annihilate or be annihilated by another.
But to halt the spread of these terrible weapons, to halt the contamination of the air, to halt the spiraling nuclear arms race, we remain ready to seek new avenues of agreement, our new Disarmament Program thus includes the following proposals:

“We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them and see them in the light of exterior and objective values which make them trivial by comparison.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Thoughts in Solitude (1956)
Context: Contradictions have always existed in the soul of [individuals]. But it is only when we prefer analysis to silence that they become a constant and insoluble problem. We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them and see them in the light of exterior and objective values which make them trivial by comparison.

Light

“Beginning to understand what I am is far more fascinating, far more interesting; it goes beyond all this stupid comparison.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Talks & Dialogues, Saanen (9 July1967) http://www.jkrishnamurti.com/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=41&chid=1, p. 86
1960s
Context: Throughout life, from childhood, from school until we die, we are taught to compare ourselves with another; yet when I compare myself with another I am destroying myself. In a school, in an ordinary school where there are a lot of boys, when one boy is compared with another who is very clever, who is the head of the class, what is actually taking place? You are destroying the boy. That’s what we are doing throughout life. Now, can I live without comparison — without comparison with anybody? This means there is no high, no low — there is not the one who is superior and the other who is inferior. You are actually what you are and to understand what you are, this process of comparison must come to an end. If I am always comparing myself with some saint or some teacher, some businessman, writer, poet, and all the rest, what has happened to me — what have I done? I only compare in order to gain, in order to achieve, in order to become — but when I don’t compare I am beginning to understand what I am. Beginning to understand what I am is far more fascinating, far more interesting; it goes beyond all this stupid comparison.

Stupidity , Understanding

“Newton saw the truth of many propositions of geometry without reading the demonstrations, but not, we may be sure, without their flashing through his mind. A truth, or supposed truth, which is really the result of a very rapid inference, may seem to be apprehended intuitively. It has long been agreed by thinkers of the most opposite schools, that this mistake is actually made in so familiar an instance as that of the eyesight. There is nothing of which we appear to ourselves to be more directly conscious, than the distance of an object from us. Yet it has long been ascertained, that what is perceived by the eye, is at most nothing more than a variously coloured surface; that when we fancy we see distance, all we really see is certain variations of apparent size, and degrees of faintness of colour; and that our estimate of the object's distance from us is the result of a comparison (made with so much rapidity that we are unconscious of making it) between the size and colour of the object as they appear at the time, and the size and colour of the same or of similar objects as they appeared when close at hand, or when their degree of remoteness was known by other evidence.”

John Stuart Mill book A System of Logic

Source: A System of Logic (1843), p. 4
Context: [W]e may fancy that we see or feel what we in reality infer. Newton saw the truth of many propositions of geometry without reading the demonstrations, but not, we may be sure, without their flashing through his mind. A truth, or supposed truth, which is really the result of a very rapid inference, may seem to be apprehended intuitively. It has long been agreed by thinkers of the most opposite schools, that this mistake is actually made in so familiar an instance as that of the eyesight. There is nothing of which we appear to ourselves to be more directly conscious, than the distance of an object from us. Yet it has long been ascertained, that what is perceived by the eye, is at most nothing more than a variously coloured surface; that when we fancy we see distance, all we really see is certain variations of apparent size, and degrees of faintness of colour; and that our estimate of the object's distance from us is the result of a comparison (made with so much rapidity that we are unconscious of making it) between the size and colour of the object as they appear at the time, and the size and colour of the same or of similar objects as they appeared when close at hand, or when their degree of remoteness was known by other evidence. The perception of distance by the eye, which seems so like intuition, is thus, in reality, an inference grounded on experience; an inference, too, which we learn to make; and which we make with more and more correctness as our experience increases; though in familiar cases it takes place, so rapidly as to appear exactly on a par with those perceptions of sight which are really intuitive, our perceptions of colour.

Truth , School , Appearance , Time

“Charles Lindbergh, in life as in my novel, may have been a genuine racist and an anti-Semite and a white supremacist sympathetic to Fascism, but he was also — because of the extraordinary feat of his solo trans-Atlantic flight at the age of 25 — an authentic American hero 13 years before I have him winning the presidency. … Trump, by comparison, is a massive fraud, the evil sum of his deficiencies, devoid of everything but the hollow ideology of a megalomaniac.”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

Comparing Charles Lindbergh's leadership of an "America First" movement with that of Donald Trump, in responses to being asked about foreseeing an America such as now exists in his earlier writings, including his alternate-history novel The Plot Against America (2004) where Lindbergh defeated FDR for the presidency in 1940, as quoted in "No Longer Writing, Philip Roth Still Has Plenty to Say" by Charles Mcgrath, in The New York Times (16 January 2018) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/16/books/review/philip-roth-interview.html
Context: No one I know of has foreseen an America like the one we live in today. No one (except perhaps the acidic H. L. Mencken, who famously described American democracy as “the worship of jackals by jackasses”) could have imagined that the 21st-century catastrophe to befall the U. S. A., the most debasing of disasters, would appear not, say, in the terrifying guise of an Orwellian Big Brother but in the ominously ridiculous commedia dell’arte figure of the boastful buffoon. How naïve I was in 1960 to think that I was an American living in preposterous times! How quaint! But then what could I know in 1960 of 1963 or 1968 or 1974 or 2001 or 2016? … However prescient The Plot Against America might seem to you, there is surely one enormous difference between the political circumstances I invent there for the U. S. in 1940 and the political calamity that dismays us so today. It’s the difference in stature between a President Lindbergh and a President Trump. Charles Lindbergh, in life as in my novel, may have been a genuine racist and an anti-Semite and a white supremacist sympathetic to Fascism, but he was also — because of the extraordinary feat of his solo trans-Atlantic flight at the age of 25 — an authentic American hero 13 years before I have him winning the presidency. … Trump, by comparison, is a massive fraud, the evil sum of his deficiencies, devoid of everything but the hollow ideology of a megalomaniac.

Life , Age , Fraud , Evil

“If you plot the movement of the molecule through time and space, those features governed by the higher properties of the plane as a whole make those controlled at the level of the molecule insignificant by comparison. The higher properties control the lower, not by direct intervention, but by supervention.”

Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913–1994) American neuroscientist

New Mindset on Consciousness (1987)
Context: Science traditionally takes the reductionist approach, saying that the collective properties of molecules, or the fundamental units of whatever system you're talking about, are enough to account for all of the system's activity. But this standard approach leaves out one very important additional factor, and that's the spacing and timing of activity — its pattern or form. The components of any system are linked up in different ways, and these possible relationships, especially at the higher levels, are not completely covered by the physical laws for the elementary interactions between atoms and molecules. At some point, the higher properties of the whole begin to take over and govern the fate of its constituents.
A simple way to illustrate this idea is to imagine a molecule in an airplane flying from L. A. to New York. The molecule may be jostled somewhat or held in position by its neighbors, but these lower-level actions are trivial compared to its movement as the plane flies across the continent. If you plot the movement of the molecule through time and space, those features governed by the higher properties of the plane as a whole make those controlled at the level of the molecule insignificant by comparison. The higher properties control the lower, not by direct intervention, but by supervention.

Time

“We see the world as it is now, after these defeats of the League, and we can compare it with what it was six or seven years ago. The comparison is certainly depressing; the contrast is terrible.”

Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood (1864–1958) lawyer, politician and diplomat in the United Kingdom

The Future of Civilization (1938)
Context: We see the world as it is now, after these defeats of the League, and we can compare it with what it was six or seven years ago. The comparison is certainly depressing; the contrast is terrible. And we have not yet reached a time when we can estimate the full material losses and human suffering which have been the direct result of the ambitions of one set of powers and the weakness of the others. Nor is there any purpose in attempting to do so. Let us, rather, examine where we now stand and what steps we ought to take in order to strengthen the international system and thrust back again the forces of reaction.
In the first place, let us admit that the first ten years of the League were in a sense unnatural. The horror of war to which I have already alluded was necessarily far more vivid than it can be expected long to remain. That tremendous argument for peace, the horror of war, was a diminishing asset. Most of us, at that time, were, I think, quite well aware that unless we could get the international system into solidly effective working order in the first ten years, we were likely to have great difficulties in the succeeding period, and so it has proved.

World

“He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison.”

Albert Einstein book The Evolution of Physics

The Evolution of Physics (1938) (co-written with Leopold Infeld) 
1930s
Context: Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison. But he certainly believes that, as his knowledge increases, his picture of reality will become simpler and simpler and will explain a wider and wider range of his sensuous impressions. He may also believe in the existence of the ideal limit of knowledge and that it is approached by the human mind. He may call this ideal limit the objective truth.

Imagination

“While the heart beats, bruise it — it is your only opportunity; while the eye can still turn towards you with moist, timid entreaty, freeze it with an icy unanswering gaze; while the ear, that delicate messenger to the inmost sanctuary of the soul, can still take in the tones of kindness, put it off with hard civility, or sneering compliment, or envious affectation of indifference; while the creative brain can still throb with the sense of injustice, with the yearning for brotherly recognition — make haste — oppress it with your ill-considered judgements, your trivial comparisons, your careless misrepresentations.”

George Eliot book The Lifted Veil

The Lifted Veil (1859); Eliot here quotes the Latin epitaph of Jonathan Swift, translated as "Where savage indignation can lacerate his heart no more" · The Lifted Veil online at Wikisource
Context: I wish to use my last hours of ease and strength in telling the strange story of my experience. I have never fully unbosomed myself to any human being; I have never been encouraged to trust much in the sympathy of my fellow-men. But we have all a chance of meeting with some pity, some tenderness, some charity, when we are dead: it is the living only who cannot be forgiven — the living only from whom men's indulgence and reverence are held off, like the rain by the hard east wind. While the heart beats, bruise it — it is your only opportunity; while the eye can still turn towards you with moist, timid entreaty, freeze it with an icy unanswering gaze; while the ear, that delicate messenger to the inmost sanctuary of the soul, can still take in the tones of kindness, put it off with hard civility, or sneering compliment, or envious affectation of indifference; while the creative brain can still throb with the sense of injustice, with the yearning for brotherly recognition — make haste — oppress it with your ill-considered judgements, your trivial comparisons, your careless misrepresentations. The heart will by and by be still — "ubi saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit" the eye will cease to entreat; the ear will be deaf; the brain will have ceased from all wants as well as from all work. Then your charitable speeches may find vent; then you may remember and pity the toil and the struggle and the failure; then you may give due honour to the work achieved; then you may find extenuation for errors, and may consent to bury them.

Soul , Sense , Heart , Indifference

“But in writing this book I found myself sadly hampered by the impossibility of drawing such diagrams as were necessary for my purpose… my life was under a cloud. All pleasures palled upon me; all sights tantalized and tempted me to outspoken treason, because I could not but compare what I saw in Two Dimensions with what it really was if seen in Three, and could hardly refrain from making my comparisons aloud.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART II: OTHER WORLDS, Chapter 22. How I Then Tried to Diffuse the Theory of Three Dimensions by Other Means, and of the Result
Context: I devoted several months in privacy to the composition of a treatise on the mysteries of Three Dimensions. Only, with the view of evading the Law, if possible, I spoke not of a physical Dimension, but of a Thoughtland whence, in theory, a Figure could look down upon Flatland and see simultaneously the insides of all things, and where it was possible that there might be supposed to exist a Figure environed, as it were, with six Squares, and containing eight terminal Points. But in writing this book I found myself sadly hampered by the impossibility of drawing such diagrams as were necessary for my purpose... my life was under a cloud. All pleasures palled upon me; all sights tantalized and tempted me to outspoken treason, because I could not but compare what I saw in Two Dimensions with what it really was if seen in Three, and could hardly refrain from making my comparisons aloud.' I neglected my clients and my own business to give myself to the contemplation of the mysteries which I had once beheld, yet which I could impart to no one, and found daily more difficult to reproduce even before my own mental vision.

Life , Pleasure , Books , Drawing

“People often complain that music is too ambiguous, that what they should think when they hear it is so unclear, whereas everyone understands words. With me, it is exactly the opposite, and not only with regard to an entire speech but also with individual words. These, too, seem to me so ambiguous, so vague, so easily misunderstood in comparison to genuine music, which fills the soul with a thousand things better than words. The thoughts which are expressed to me by music that I love are not too indefinite to be put into words, but on the contrary, too definite.”

Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) German composer, pianist and conductor

Die Leute beklagen sich gewöhnlich, die Musik sei so vieldeutig; es sei so zweifelhaft, was sie sich dabei zu denken hätten, und die Worte verstände doch ein Jeder. Mir geht es aber gerade umgekehrt. Und nicht blos mit ganzen Reden, auch mit einzelnen Worten, auch die scheinen mir so vieldeutig, so unbestimmt, so mißverständlich im Vergleich zu einer rechten Musik, die einem die Seele erfüllt mit tausend besseren Dingen als Worten. Das, was mir eine Musik ausspricht, die ich liebe, sind mir nicht zu unbestimmte Gedanken, um sie in Worte zu fassen, sondern zu bestimmte.
Letter to Marc-André Souchay, October 15, 1842, cited from Briefe aus den Jahren 1830 bis 1847 (Leipzig: Hermann Mendelssohn, 1878) p. 221; translation from Felix Mendelssohn (ed. Gisella Selden-Goth) Letters (New York: Pantheon, 1945) pp. 313-14.

Love , People , Music , Soul

“We cannot preclude the possibility that we are living through a political disruption that will in time bear comparison with the collapse of Communism a generation ago.”

Francis Fukuyama (1952) American political scientist, political economist, and author

Communication , Time

“Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Passion , Fight , Happiness

“It is only through contact and comparison that the relative value or worthlessness of the various cultural elements can be clearly and critically seen and understood. What is sacred among one people may be ridiculous in another; and what is despised or rejected by one cultural group, may in a sdifferent environment become the cornerstone for a great edifice of strange grandeur and beauty.”

Hu Shih (1891–1962) Chinese philosopher, essayist and diplomat

The Chinese Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934), p. 46

Beauty , People

“What relation has the life of the individual to the life of the universe? ...The former is absolutely subordinate, inconceivably infinitesimal compared with the latter. The becoming of the latter bears not the slightest apparent reference to the becoming of the former. ...The one seems finite, limited, temporal, the other by comparison infinite, boundless, eternal. This disparity has forced itself upon the attention of man ever since his first childlike attempts at thought.”

Karl Pearson (1857–1936) English mathematician and biometrician

The Ethic of Freethought (Mar 6, 1883)

Universe , Life , Relation ships

“Take awl the prophecys that hav cum tew pass, and awl that hav caught on the center, and failed tew cum tew time, and make them up in an average, and yer will find, that buying stock, on the Codfish Bank ov Nufoundland, at 50 per cent, for a rise, iz, in comparison, a good spekulatiff bizziness.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

Time , Making love

“Compressing 13,000 years of history on all continents into a 400-page book works out to an average of about one page per continent per 150 years, making brevity and simplification inevitable. Yet the compression brings a compensating benefit: long-term comparisons of regions yield insights that cannot be won from short-term studies of single societies.”

Jared Diamond book Guns, Germs, and Steel

Source: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997), p. 408

Study , Books , History , Making love

“What the US government, through Vice President Mike Pence, has done is to give the order to carry out a fascist coup d’état… Never before has a high-level official said that the opposition should overthrow the government… this has no historic comparison in the 200 years of US-Venezuela relations…”

Nicolás Maduro (1962) 53rd President of Venezuela

Relation ships

“In the face of all this, many of the standard ideas of science fiction seem to me to pale by comparison. I see the relative absence of these things and the distortions of scientific thinking often encountered in science fiction as terrible wasted opportunities. Real science is as amenable to exciting and engrossing fiction as fake science, and I think it is important to exploit every opportunity to convey scientific ideas in a civilization which is both based upon science and does almost nothing to ensure that science is understood.”

Carl Sagan book Broca's Brain

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 9, “Science Fiction—A Personal View” (p. 166)

Idea , Science , Thinking

“Taking a close look at what is around us, there is some sort of a harmony. It is the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder. And we in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle, we in comparison to that enormous articulation, we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid suburban novel, a cheap novel. And we have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication, overwhelming growth, and overwhelming lack of order. Even the stars up here in the sky look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe. We have to get acquainted to this idea that there is no harmony as we have conceived it. But when I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It is not that I hate it, I love it, I love it very much, but I love it against my better judgment.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Burden of Dreams (1982)

Hate , Star , Universe , Stupidity

“You have performed wonders in the past. You are still capable of repeating the history. You are not lacking in the great qualities and virtues in comparison with the other nations. Only you have to be fully conscious of that fact and to act with courage, faith and unity.”

Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) Founder and 1st Governor General of Pakistan

Message on Pakistan Day, issued from Delhi (23 March 1943)

Courage , Faith , Past , History

“Let the Nuns therefore tarry still in their convents and cloisters, and in their brothel houses of Satan: yea I put the case they were not whores as they are, yea and worse than that, vile and shameful Sodomites, committing such heinous and abominable acts, that it is horrible to think of, I put the case I say, there were none of all these villainies, yet all the chastity they pretend is nothing before God, in comparison of that that he hath appointed, that is to say, that albeit it seem but a vile thing, and a matter of none account, for a woman to take pains about housewifery, to make clean her children when they be arrayed, to kill fleas, and other such like, although this be a thing despised, yea and such, that many will not vouchsafe to look upon it, yet are they sacrifices which GOD accepteth & receiveth, as if they were things of great price and honourable.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Que donc les nonnains demeurent en leurs convents et en leurs cloistres, et en leurs bourdeaux de Satan: ie di mesmes encores qu’elles ne fussent point putains comme elles sont, comme il y a encores pis de ces abominations de Sodome, faisans des choses si enormes et si abominables que c’est une horreur: encores, di-ie, que toutes ces vilenies-là n'y fussent point, si est-ce que toute la chasteté qu'elles pretendent, n'est rien envers Dieu, au prix de ce qu'il a ordonné, c'est asçavoir que combien que ce soyent choses contemptibles, et qui semblent estre de nulle valeur, qu'une femme ait peine d'adresser son mesnage, de nettoyer les ordures de ses enfans, de tuer les poux et autres choses semblables, que tout cela sera mesprisé, qu’on ne le daignera pas mesmes regarder, ce sont toutesfois sacrifices que Dieu reçoit et qu'il accepte, comme si c'estoyent choses precieuses et honorables.
A Sermon of Master John Caluine, vpon the first Epistle of Paul, to Timothie..., London: G. Bishop and T. Woodcoke, 1579 http://www.truecovenanter.com/calvin/calvin_19_on_Timothy.html (ch. 2:13-15).
Sermons of M. John Calvin, on the Epistles of S. Paule to Timothie and Titus, Laurence Tomson, trans., Printed for G. Bishop and T. Woodcoke, 1579, p. 231. http://books.google.com/books?id=g2WDtwAACAAJ&dq=Sermons+of+M.+John+Calvin+on+the+Epistles+of+S.+Paule+to+Timothie+and+Titus&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XY8oUZXGJoq68wS494D4Dg&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAQ (Facsimile reprint in Jean Calvin, Sermons on Timothy and Titus (16th-17th century facsimile editions), Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1983. ISBN 0851513743 ISBN 9780851513744, p. 231. "Let the Nunnes therefore..." http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=%22let+the+nunnes%22&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbo=u&tbm=bks&source=og&sa=N&tab=wp&ei=CYsoUcvQNoak8AS86oCoCQ&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&bvm=bv.42768644,d.eWU&fp=2dddfa4c5c79d088&biw=1086&bih=740
Sermons Sur la Premiere Epitre a Timothee (Sermons on the First Epistle to Timothy), Sermon 19 ("Dixneuvieme Sermon") in the Corpus Reformatorum, 1895, vol. 81 (Opera 31) p. 228. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&hs=PBY&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=%22Que%20donc%20les%20nonnains%20demeurent%20en%20leurs%20convents%20et%20en%20leurs%20cloistres%22&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbo=u&tbs=bks:1&source=og&sa=N&tab=wp http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&num=10&lr=&ft=i&cr=&safe=images&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbo=u&tbs=bks:1&source=og&q=%22comme%20il%20y%20a%20encores%20pis%20de%20ces%20abominations%20de%20Sodome%22&sa=N&tab=wp http://books.google.com/books?ei=Ts4vTMDbF4WBlAeG3fieCQ&ct=result&id=EcU8AAAAYAAJ&dq=%22volumen+lxxxi%22+reformatorum&q=convents#search_anchor.

God , Pain , Housing , Whore

“When you say Spinoza, however, besides being too flattering, the comparison is not biographically so true. My Spinozism is in the Life of Reason, less obviously, perhaps, yet more dominantly, than in Realms of Being.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

These, as you know, are not at all like Spinoza's attributes. They are not aspects or forms of the same reality, absolutely parallel and coextensive. My realms are layers: more as in Plotinus; and my moral or “spiritual” philosophy is again less Spinozistic than in the humanistic period. Spinoza's moral sentiments were plebeian, Dutch, and Jewish: perfectly happy in his corner, polishing his lenses, and saying, Great is Allah. No art, no high politics, no sympathy with greatness, no understanding of courage or of despair.
George Santayana, in his letter to Daniel MacGhie Cory, 25 January 1937
S - Z, George Santayana

Life

“Spinoza is the clear and luminous side of Modern philosophy. He is the negation of bourgeois mediation and of all the logical, metaphysical, and juridical fictions that organize its expansion. He is the attempt to determine the continuity of the revolutionary project of humanism. With Spinoza, philosophy succeeds for the first time in negating itself as a science of mediation. In Spinoza there is the sense of a great anticipation of the future centuries; there is the intuition of such a radical truth of future philosophy that it not only keeps him from being flattened onto seventeenth-century thought but also, it often seems, denies any confrontation, any comparison. Really, none of his contemporaries understands him or refutes him.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Antonio Negri, The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991). Translated from the Italian by Michael Hardt. Originally published as L'anomalia selvaggia. Saggio su potere e potenza in Baruch Spinoza (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1981)
M - R

Time , Understanding , Future , Truth

“Now, if instituting comparisons in both directions, we place the lowest and most ape-like men (the Austral Negroes, Bushmen, and Andamans, etc.), on the one hand, together with the most highly developed animals, for instance, with apes, dogs, and elephants, and on the other hand, with the most highly developed men—Aristotle, Newton, Spinoza, Kant, Lamarck, or Goethe—we can then no longer consider the assertion, that the mental life of the higher mammals has gradually developed up to that of man, as in any way exaggerated. If one must draw a sharp boundary between them, it has to be drawn between the most highly developed and civilized man on the one hand, and the rudest savages on the other, and the latter have to be classed with the animals.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Ernst Haeckel, The History of Creation: Or the Development of the Earth and its Inhabitants by the Action of Natural Causes [2 vols.]. Translated from the German by E. Ray Lankester. (New York: D. Appleton, 1876)
G - L

Drawing , Dogs , Animals , Way