Quotes about difference
page 22

“Today, of course, it is customary to collapse, if not overwrite, our individual characteristics into new, but now acceptable stereotypes. It no longer matters whether one is from urban New York City or rural Georgia. It doesn't matter whether we came from a highly educated family or a barely literate one. It does not matter if you are a Roman Catholic or a Southern Baptist. All of these differences are canceled by race, and a revised set of acceptable stereotypes have been put in place.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Education, Family

“No nation which refuses to exercise forbearance and to respect the freedom and rights of others can long remain strong and retain the confidence and respect of other nations. No nation ever loses its dignity or good standing by conciliating its differences and by exercising great patience with, and consideration for, the rights of other nations.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1930s, Quarantine Speech (1937)

Exercises, Confidence, Freedom, Strong

“Despite his friendship with Adam Smith, he believed in government intervention in agriculture, as it was too important to be left to market forces and chance: ‘The husbandman maintains the nation in all its ease, its affluence and its splendour,’ he wrote. But farmers too had a responsibility for the public good. Rotation of crops, ensuring equal acreages of different crops at any given time, would help keep prices stable.”

Stephen Baxter (1957) author

Source: Ages in Chaos (2003), Chapter 10, “Assemblies of good fellows” (p. 95)

Friendship, Chance, Time, Help

“The first work I published was a poem. That was one of my most exciting moments. Afterwards, I wrote many different types of articles, including prose, novels, and even science fiction. However, I found I wasn't very qualified, because I only had a four-year primary school education. So I turned to writing fairy tales.”

Zheng Yuanjie (1955) Chiese writer

Zheng Yuanjie (2008) in: "China's Hans Christian Andersen" on CRIENGLISH.com, June 19, 2008 ( online http://english.cri.cn/4406/2008/06/19/1141@370720.htm).

Education, School, Science

“I am proud of what I have accomplished, especially while serving as chief justice, at the time I joined the court, it was marked by acrimony. When I became chief justice, we proved that good people who may differ in their opinions can come together and accomplish important things for the people we serve – and we do it amicably.”

Robert P. Young Jr.

Justice Young leaving Michigan Supreme Court for Detroit law firm job http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/03/29/justice-young-leaving-michigan-supreme-court-detroit-law-firm-job/99772568/ (March 29, 2017)

People, Justice, Time

“Naturally, when considering the whole issue of who will live in Europe, one could argue that this problem will be solved by successful integration. The reality, however, is that we’re not aware of any examples of successful integration… In countering arguments for successful integration, we must also point out that if people with diverging goals find themselves in the same system or country, it won’t lead to integration, but to chaos. It’s obvious that the culture of migrants contrasts dramatically with European culture. Opposing ideologies and values cannot be simultaneously upheld, as they are mutually exclusive. To give you the most obvious example, the European people think it desirable for men and women to be equal, while for the Muslim community this idea is unacceptable, as in their culture the relationship between men and women is seen in terms of a hierarchical order. These two concepts cannot be upheld at the same time. It’s only a question of time before one or the other prevails. Of course one could also argue that communities coming to us from different cultures can be re-educated. But we must see – and Bishop Tőkés also spoke about this – that now the Muslim communities coming to Europe see their own culture, their own faith, their own lifestyles and their own principles as stronger and more valuable than ours. So, whether we like it or not, in terms of respect for life, optimism, commitment, the subordination of individual interests and ideals, today Muslim communities are stronger than Christian communities. Why would anyone want to adopt a culture that appears to be weaker than their own strong culture? They won’t, and they never will! Therefore re-education and integration based on re-education cannot succeed.”

Viktor Orbán (1963) Hungarian politician, chairman of Fidesz

Life, Women, Men, People

“We all have that heritage, no matter what old land our fathers left. All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It's a breed — selected out by accident. And so we're overbrave and overfearful — we're kind and cruel as children. We're overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We're oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic — and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture. Can it be that our critics have not the key or the language of our culture? That's what we are, Cal — all of us. You aren't very different.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

East of Eden (1952)

Children, Color, Sense, Time

“You see, none of us saw the sandstone or the shale [of the Grand Canyon] being layed down. There's a supposed ten million year gap there, but I don't see a gap, but that might be different from what Bill Nye would see. But, you see, there's a difference between what you actually observe directly and then your interpretation in regard to the past.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

"Bill Nye Debates Ken Ham" (February 4, 2014)

Past

“[W]hen a body has experienced any changes, and when after a certain number of transformations it returns to precisely its original state, that is, to that state considered in respect to density, to temperature, to mode of aggregation—let us suppose, I say, that this body is found to contain the same quantity of heat that it contained at first, or else that the quantities of heat absorbed or set free in these different transformations are exactly compensated. This fact has never been called in question. It was first admitted without reflection, and verified afterwards in many cases by experiments with the calorimeter. To deny it would be to overthrow the whole theory of heat to which it serves as a basis. For the rest, we may say in passing, the main principles on which the theory of heat rests require the most careful examination. Many experimental facts appear almost inexplicable in the present state of this theory.”

Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1796–1832) French physicist, the "father of thermodynamics" (1796–1832)

Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat (1824)

Question, Appearance, Change

“The ultimate test on the way to establishing an ideal civilization encouraging ideal human behavior was to look bravely beyond gender, color, ethnic origin, religious difference, and class distinctions to discover and honor the value of each unique individual.”

Aberjhani (1957) author

(Civilization and Human Nature, p. 4).
Book Sources, The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois (2003)

Color, Way, Behavior

“For the first time, we saw everything they could bring to the battle. And it was… nothing. Not even a fizzle. All they can say is "thief, we have our rights, we want our rights, nothing must change, we want more money, thief, thief, thief". And shove some poor artists in front of them to deliver the message. Whereas we are talking about scarcity vs. abundance, monopolies, the nature of property, 500-year historical perspectives on culture and knowledge, incentive structures, economic theory, disruptive technologies, etc. The difference in intellectual levels between the sides is astounding.”

Rickard Falkvinge (1972) former head of the Swedish Pirate Party

P2P Consortium Interview http://www.p2pconsortium.com/index.php?showtopic=15274 (January 12, 2008)

Money, Nature, Knowledge, Change

“What I am saying is that it is not so much what man is that counts as it is what he ventures to make of himself. To make the leap he must do more than disclose himself; he must risk a certain amount of confusion. Then, as soon as he does catch a glimpse of a different kind of life, he needs to find some way of overcoming the paralyzing moment of threat, for this is the instant when he wonders who he really is - whether he is what he just was or is what he is about to be. Adam must have experienced such a moment.”

George Kelly (psychologist) (1905–1967) American psychologist and therapist

Variant: What I am saying is that it is not so much what man is that counts as it is what he ventures to make of himself. To make the leap he must do more than disclose himself; he must risk a certain amount of confusion. Then, as soon as he does catch a glimpse of a different kind of life, he needs to find some way of overcoming the paralyzing moment of threat, for this is the instant when he wonders who he really is - whether he is what he just was or is what he is about to be. Adam must have experienced such a moment.
Source: The Language of Hypothesis, 1964, p. 158

Life, Way

“Locke supposes that a person acquainted sensibly with the colours which compose a rainbow, can by the names of such colours in a verbal description, be made visually acquainted with a rainbow. The verbal description will give such a person's intellect a good verbal definition of the word rainbow, but it cannot communicate the sight to the extent that it differs, in any manner from the sights he already knows.”

Alexander Bryan Johnson (1786–1867) United States philosopher and banker

Part II. Of the Extent of Sensible Knowledge.
The Physiology of the Senses: Or, How and what We See, Hear, Taste, Feel and Smell (1856)

Communication, Personality

“Men always say they didn't mean it that way. You would think they spoke a different language.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Nynaeve al'Meara
(15 October 1994)

Men, Way, Thinking

“Three grossly different types of stigma may be mentioned. First there are abominations of the body - the various physical deformities. Next there are blemishes of individual character perceived as weak will, domineering or unnatural passions, treacherous and rigid beliefs, and dishonesty, these being inferred from a known record of, for example, mental disorder, imprisonment, addiction, alcoholism, homosexuality, unemployment, suicidal attempts, and radical political behaviour. Finally there are the tribal stigma of race, nation, and religion, these being stigma that can be transmitted through lineages and equally contaminate all members of a family.”

Erving Goffman book Stigma

Source: 1950s-1960s, Stigma, 1963, p. 13

Alcohol, Family, Religion, Suicide

“Recently I was traveling in the Far East and met some Buddhist monks from China. I said to them: 'Buddhism came to China from outside. But you had ancient religions of your own. You had Confucianism. You had Taoism. Did Buddhism come in conflict with Confucianism, or Taoism?' They said: 'No, never.' There was not a single instance of conflict because Confucianism also came from the same deepest source of the spirit, because Taoism also came from the same source from which Sanatana Dharma springs, from which Jainism springs, from which Vaishnavism springs. All these are different names of the same spiritual message for mankind. I also talked to some people in Japan in order to find out if Buddhism came in conflict with Shintoism which is their ancient religion. They also said, no, the two religions never came into conflict. The two religions are co-existing in mutual harmony till today. I met a taxi driver who was quite an intelligent man. He said: 'I am both a Shintoist and a Buddhist.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

So also in ancient Greece, in ancient Rome, in the whole ancient world, all over Asia and Europe.
The Emerging National Vision, 4 December 1983, Calcutta.

People, World, Religion, Travel

“I introduced what I called "outside-in problem solving," which nowadays is called "top-clown." But I prefer outside-in because outside-in allows you to have many different viewpoints instead of a single top that you stupidly try to get to the bottom of, and things of that sort. came out of that.”

Douglas T. Ross (1929–2007) American computer scientist

Source: Retrospectives : The Early Years in Computer Graphics at at MIT, Lincoln Lab and Harvard (1989), p. 25.

Problem

“The geometry of Tlön comprises two somewhat different disciplines: the visual and the tactile. The latter corresponds to our own geometry and is subordinated to the first.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940)

“We look upon economic theory as a sequence of conceptual models that seek to express in simplified form different aspects of an always more complicated reality.”

Tjalling Koopmans (1910–1985) Dutch American economist

Source: Three Essays (1957), p. 142

Reality

“I had some good opportunities. I was lucky to have had the chance to do things differently. Architecture is about surprise.”

Oscar Niemeyer (1907–2012) Brazilian architect

Quoted in "Architect of Optimism," Angel Gurria-Quintana, Financial Times (2007-04-13).

Chance

“In repudiating extremism, we need to recommit ourselves to a few common-sense principles that should transcend partisan differences.
First, we cannot enhance our own security if we place in jeopardy what is most precious to us, namely the centrality of human rights in our daily lives and in global affairs.
Second, we cannot maintain our historic self-confidence as a people if we generate public panic.
Third, we cannot do our duty as citizens and patriots if we pursue an agenda that polarizes and divides our country.
Next, we cannot be true to ourselves if we mistreat others.
And finally, in the world at large, we cannot lead if our leaders mislead.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Post-Presidency, DNC address (2004)

People, World, Confidence, Sense

“Let's face it, minorities are people who probably look and act and think differently from us and have faults we don't have. We may dislike the way they look and act, and we may hate their faults. And it’s better if we admit to disliking and hating them, than if we try to smear over our feelings with pseudo-liberal sentimentality. If we’re frank about our feelings, we have a safety valve; and if we have a safety-valve, we’re actually less likely to start persecuting.... I know that theory is unfashionable nowadays. We all keep trying to believe that, if we ignore something long enough, it’ll just vanish––
‘Where was I? Oh yes... Well, now, suppose this minority does get persecuted – never mind why – political, economic, psychological reasons – there always is a reason, no matter how wrong it is – that’s my point. And, of course, persecution itself is always wrong; I’m sure we all agree there. But, the worst of it is, we now run into another liberal heresy. Because the persecuting majority is vile, says the liberal, therefore the persecuted minority must be stainlessly pure. Can’t you see what nonsense that is? What’s to prevent the bad from being persecuted by the worse? Did all the Christian victims in the arena have to be saints?’
‘And I’ll tell you something else. A minority has its own kind of aggression. It absolutely dares the majority to attack it. It hates the majority — not without a cause, I grant you. It even hates the other minorities – because all minorities are in competition: each one proclaims that its sufferings are the worst and its wrongs are the blackest. And the more they all hate, and the more they're all persecuted, the nastier they become! Do you think it makes people nasty to be loved? You know it doesn’t! Then why should it make them nice to be loathed?”

Christopher Isherwood book A Single Man

pps. 53-54
A Single Man (1964)

Love, Hate, People, Way

“I think that for me any picture that works even if it is in the guise of pure color application, if it works, involved drawing. That is falt space on a flat surface. And for me, and I always say this, whether it's a Titian or a [Kenneth] Noland, the ones that come off work in that depth and the color perhaps it is divine and the thing that makes it work, but it is line color. If it doesn't work then it's decorative or dead or just applied colors on a surface. That's what wallpaper is. And that's the difference between the striped wallpaper and a great Noland.”

Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) American artist

quote about drawing in a picture
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

Color, Thinking, Drawing, Dead

“A superintendent of a road fifty miles in length can give its business his professional attention and may be constantly on the line engaged in the direction of its details; each person is personally known to him, and all questions in relation to its business are at once presented and acted upon; and any system however imperfect may under such circumstances prove comparatively successful.
In the government of a five hundred miles in length a very different state exists. Any system which might be applicable to the business and extent of a short road would be found entirely inadequate to the wants of a long one. and I am fully convinced that in the want of system perfect in its details, properly adapted and vigilantly enforced, lies the true secret of their [the large roads’] failure; and that this disparity of cost per mile in operating long and short roads, is not produced by a difference in length, but is in proportion to the perfection of the system adopted.”

Daniel McCallum (1815–1878) Canadian engineer and early organizational theorist

Source: Report of the Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad to the Stockholders (1856), p. 34: Third paragraph. Cited in: Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (1962). Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise. p. 21-22

Secret, Failure, Question, Business

“So, Brussels have come up with a little thing called a European Constitution, which will unite all of the European Union into a single superstate, governed by a single government. There may be a problem with everyone speaking different languages and hating each other, but seemingly insurmountable problems have been solved in the past. Like Mount Everest, or making a film based on the Lord of the Rings.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

14 May 2003
Fully Ramblomatic

Hate, Problem, Past

“In the past the mood of the comic postcard could enter into the central stream of literature, and jokes barely different from McGill's could casually be uttered between the murders in Shakespeare's tragedies. That is no longer possible, and a whole category of humour, integral to our literature till 1800 or thereabouts, has dwindled down to these ill-drawn postcards, leading a barely legal existence in cheap stationers' windows. The corner of the human heart that they speak for might easily manifest itself in worse forms, and I for one should be sorry to see them vanish.”

Donald McGill (1875–1962) British artist

George Orwell "The Art of Donald McGill", in Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters (1984) Vol. 2, pp. 194-5.
Criticism

Literature, Mood, Past, Heart

“The piano is the only keyboard instrument in which one can grandly vary the effects of the harmonics or overtones of a chord at will by balancing the sonority in different ways.”

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist (2002), Ch. 1 Body and Mind

Way

“The state, [Kierkegaard] argues, bears a direct relation to numbers. When a state decays, numbers decline and the state disappears. The whole concept is void. The relation of Christianity to numbers is different. A single Christian gives it reality. Christianity bears indeed an inverse relation to numbers. When all become Christians, the concept of Christianity is void. The concept is indeed a polemical one. One can be a Christian only in opposition. When opposition is suppressed, there is no more sense in saying “Christian.” Christendom has astutely abolished Christianity by making us all Christians. … In Christendom there is not the slightest idea of what Christianity is. People cannot see or understand that Christianity has been abolished by its propagation. Again, history probably does not offer any other example of a religion being abolished by reason of its success.”

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

Source: The Subversion of Christianity (1984), pp. 35-36

People, Religion, History, Idea

“This conscious self is only one aspect of our greater reality, however; the part that springs into earthknowing. It can be called the "focus personality," because through it we perceive our three-dimensional life. It contains within it, however, traces of the unknown or "source self" out of which it constantly emerges. The source self is the fountainhead of our present physical being, but it exists outside of that frame of reference. We are earth versions of ourselves, beautifully turned into corporal experience. Our known consciousness is filtered through perceptive mechanisms that are a part of what they perceive. We are the instruments through which we know the earth. In other terms, we are particles of energy, flowing from the source self into physical materialization. Each source self forms many such particles or "Aspect selves" that impinge upon three-dimensional reality, striking our space-time continuum. Others are not physical at all, but have their existence in completely different systems of reality. Each Aspect self is connected to the other, however, through the common experience of the source self, and can come to some degree to draw on the knowledge, abilities, and perceptions of the other Aspects. Psychologically, these other Aspects appear within the known self as personality traits, characteristics, and talents that are uniquely ours. The individual is the particle or focus personality, formed by the intersection of the unknown self with space and time. We can follow any of our traits or emotions back to this source self, or at least to a recognition of its existence.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Adventures In Consciousness: An Introduction to Aspect Psychology (1975), pp.118-119

Life, Spring, Knowledge, Reality

“How do you stand this? I don't care who you are; man, woman, gay, straight, black, white, Jew, gentile, it doesn't make any difference - how do you stand this? I can't. I can not…I can't handle this- You wanna know how I deal with this? When I finish these topics, or these letters, or these diaries, or these reports, and the show's over, I have to blank my mind - literally. Can you do that? I can, I have learned how to do that. I blank it out. I don't know where Israel is, I don't know what Palestinian means, I don't know what burned and mutilated children have to do with anything - it means nothing, it goes away. I must draw a dark black curtain in my consciousness. I can not deal with this, how do you? I have children, I've had children, I have grand-children, I have a four-and-a-half year-old… This is not right! This is not right…”

Mike Malloy (1942) American radio broadcaster

Mike cuts feed to music early
http://youtube.com/watch?v=mWemE3fcVXo
On the conflict in Gaza

Children, Music, Learning, Drawing

“The abstracts are the opposite to work on. That process is more like walking, step by step, without an intention, until you discover where you are going. When I paint a landscape from a photograph or an image like this one, I can see the end point before I start, although in fact it always turns out slightly different than I imagined. What I have is not facility, because this really doesn't take skill. I have an eye. I couldn't make a drawing of you sitting here right now. I would love to have that ability, in the same way that I would love to play the piano. Virtuosity is a precondition for pianists, but in addition you have to be good. These are not the same thing.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

Love, Way, Imagination, Drawing

“Now if plurality and difference belong only to the appearance-form; if there is but one and the same Entity manifested in all living things: it follows that, when we obliterate the distinction between the ego and the non-ego, we are not the sport of an illusion. Rather are we so, when we maintain the reality of individuation, — a thing the Hindus call Maya, that is, a deceptive vision, a phantasma. The former theory we have found to be the actual source of the phaenomenon of Compassion; indeed Compassion is nothing but its translation into definite expression. This, therefore, is what I should regard as the metaphysical foundation of Ethics, and should describe it as the sense which identifies the ego with the non-ego, so that the individual directly recognises in another his own self, his true and very being. From this standpoint the profoundest teaching of theory pushed to its furthest limits may be shown in the end to harmonise perfectly with the rules of justice and loving-kindness, as exercised; and conversely, it will be clear that practical philosophers, that is, the upright, the beneficent, the magnanimous, do but declare through their acts the same truth as the man of speculation wins by laborious research … He who is morally noble, however deficient in mental penetration, reveals by his conduct the deepest insight, the truest wisdom; and puts to shame the most accomplished and learned genius, if the latter's acts betray that his heart is yet a stranger to this great principle, — the metaphysical unity of life.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book On the Basis of Morality

Part IV, Ch. 2, pp. 273 https://archive.org/stream/basisofmorality00schoiala#page/273/mode/2up-274 <br class="br">On the Basis of Morality (1840)

Love, Life, Wisdom, Truth

“Could you imagine if I said that “I short circuited”? They would be calling for my execution, — electric chair. They’d bring back the electric chair. It would be a whole different ball game if I said it, believe me.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, August, Speech at rally in Wilmington, North Carolina (August 9, 2016)

Imagination, Game

“Religions all have different names, but they all contain the same truths. … I think the people of our religion should be tolerant and understand people believe different things.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

When asked how he felt about the suspects in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks sharing his Islamic faith <br class="br">As quoted in "Bush: 'Justice Will Be Done'" at CNN (20 September 2001) http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/20/gen.america.under.attack/

People, Truth, Religion, Understanding

“I feel like people can't tell the difference between the shows I worked on and the shows I didn't work on. That all that work really wasn't worth it. Sorry.”

Lauren Faust (1974) American animator and writer

Lauren Faust, Equestria LA 2015

People, Feeling

“Thus Kantian autonomy, once it is understood, will (and ought to) disappoint those shallow minds and immature souls who are attracted to the doctrine of autonomy for the wrong reasons. They were hoping for some radical individualist revolution in morality, in which paroxysms of human self-will overthrow the divine will’s numinous majesty (thereby replacing, as many such revolutions sadly do, one arbitrary and unjust tyranny with another and bringing to power merely a different mob of unprincipled scoundrels). The sober rationalism of Kantian ethics is equally incompatible with voluntarism in its theological and its Promethean forms.”

Allen W. Wood (1942) academic

Kantian Ethics (2008)

Hope, Disappointment, Soul

“Certainly, we live in a different world … for the first time in all of known human history, we live in a world absent of the likelihood of superpower conflict. Now we live in a world in which there are superpowers, but we're not butting heads all the time. That's a very good thing for the world… but… there's still a few bad guys out there.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

2000s, CNN interview (2000)

World, Guy, History, Time

“I suppose that American League pitchers have been feeding me soft ones for 21 years. I know how they all feel, and I don't blame 'em. They'd rather strike out the Babe than anyone else. For I've been a little lucky in the home run racket. They've walked me more than 2000 times and I've never squawked. You see, I used to be a pitcher myself. Those 2000 walks and those 700 or so home runs saved my legs. Anyhow, I've had pretty good legs. They talk about Ty Cobb's legs. He had about the best pair I ever knew of in baseball. But Ty was carrying 180 pounds for 24 years, and I've had to carry from 230 to 250 pounds. I've had to carry 50 to 70 pounds more than Cobb ever had to carry. I never talked to a horse, but I'd like to ask Equipoise or Twenty Grand or Cavalcade or some of the others just how much difference 50 or 70 pounds would make in a race. And I'm not supposed to be a horse or a tank.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

Responding to NL pitchers' stated intention—as relayed by Rice—to "bear down on" Ruth in 1935; as quoted in "'Never Happier in My Life' Ruth Tells Grantland Rice..."

Feeling, Home, Time, Horse

“If species had really arisen by the natural selection for impalpable differences, intermediate forms should abound, and the limits between species should be on the whole indefinite. As this conclusion follows necessarily from the premisses, the selectionists believe and declare that it represents the facts of nature. Difference between species being by axiom indefinite, the differences between varieties must be supposed to be still less definite. Consequently the conclusion that evolution must proceed by insensible transformation of masses of individuals has become an established dogma.”

William Bateson (1861–1926) British geneticist and biologist

Source: Mendel's Principles of Heredity (1913), p. 3

Nature

“When you are deprived of something that you long for desperately, the mind finds ways of doing the same thing in different ways; it creates the potential which you never knew you had – the potential to create something out of nothing.”

Lydia Canaan Lebanese singer-songwriter

As quoted in an interview with Sudha Chandran, Gulf Today/Panorama, November 24, 2000

Way

“Some people spend their time just runnin' round in circles
Always chasing some exotic bird
I prefer to spend some time just listening for that special something
That I've never ever heard
I like a new song to sing, another show or somewhere entirely different to be
But baby you make me feel so free.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

You Make Me Feel So Free
Song lyrics, Into the Music (1979)

People, Feeling, Bird, Singing

“The term money has two very different meanings in popular discourse. We often speak of someone "making money," when we really mean that he or she is receiving an income. We do not mean that he or she has a printing press in the basement churning out greenbacked pieces of paper. In this use, money is a synonym for income or receipts; it refers to a flow, to income or receipts per week or per year. We also speak of someone's having money in his or her pocket or in a safe-deposit box or on deposit at a bank. In that use, money refers to an asset, a component of one's total wealth. Put differently, the first use refers to an item on a profit-and-loss statement, the second to an item on a balance sheet”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

Source: Money Mischief (1992), Ch. 2 The Mystery of Money

Money, Loss, Wealth, Box

“Wouldn't it be wonderful to paint a nude here? [along the river near Aix ] There are innumerable motifs here on the banks of the river; the same spot viewed from a different angle offers a subject of the utmost interest. It is so varied that I think I could keep busy for months without changing my place, simply turning now tot the right and now to the left.”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Quote in a conversation with Vollard, along the river near Aix, 1896; as quoted in Cezanne, by Ambroise Vollard, Dover publications Inc. New York, 1984, p. 74
Quotes of Paul Cezanne, 1880s - 1890s

Business, Thinking, Change, Painting

“The truth is nobody finances tiny movies anymore. I mean there are so many movies I like that I hope will get their money together. It's a different world than it was when I first started making independent movies. Something is really wrong right now. I was a part of it and things are so different now. You can't make a movie for three million dollars with a kind of known actor. It's impossible. I think in general it has to do with the financial state of the country. It's tough for everybody in every business, but the independent movies have really suffered I think…they would never have made Secretary. They never would have financed Secretary with an unknown actress and James Spader. There's just no way.”

Maggie Gyllenhaal (1977) American actress

2008-07-11, Comics2Film

Money, Truth, World, Hope

“It is easy to spread the sails to propitious winds, and to cultivate in different ways a rich soil, and to give lustre to gold and ivory, when the very raw material itself shines.”
Facile est ventis dare vela secundis, Fecundumque solum varias agitare per artes, Auroque atque ebori decus addere, cum rudis ipsa Materies niteat.

Marcus Manilius Astronomica

Book III, line 26.
Astronomica

Way

“Behold me, Lucius; moved by thy prayers, I appear to thee; I, who am Nature, the parent of all things, the mistress of all the elements, the primordial offspring of time, the supreme among Divinities, the queen of departed spirits, the first of the celestials, and the uniform manifestation of the Gods and Goddesses; who govern by my nod the luminous heights of heaven, the salubrious breezes of the ocean, and the anguished silent realms of the shades below: whose one sole divinity the whole orb of the earth venerates under a manifold form, with different rites, and under a variety of appellations.”
En adsum tuis commota, Luci, precibus, rerum naturae parens, elementorum omnium domina, saeculorum progenies initialis, summa numinum, regina manium, prima caelitum, deorum dearumque facies uniformis, quae caeli luminosa culmina, maris salubria flamina, inferum deplorata silentia nutibus meis dispenso: cuius numen unicum multiformi specie, ritu vario, nomine multiiugo totus veneratus orbis.

Apuleius book The Golden Ass

Bk. 11, ch. 5; p. 226.
Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass)

God, Nature, Parent, Appearance

“There are four different theories concerning Divine Providence; they are all ancient, known from the time of the Prophets, when the true law was revealed to enlighten these dark regions.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.17

Law, Time

“Dreams can be classified in many different ways. We will examine four types. The first concerns dreams that occur as a result of physiological stimulation. […] The second category involves thoughts that are dormant in the subconscious. Whatever you think about often becomes impressed in your subconscious mind. […] The third type of dream concerns the predominating thoughts you have when you are awake. […] The fourth category of dreams involves those that help to work out karma, that is, lessons that are to be experienced in this lifetime. Sometimes, dreams can be used as a medium to play out the karma that one has accumulated. […] This serves two functions: one, it saves time because the dynamics do not have to be played out in the physical realm and two, the lessons learned through the subtle body penetrate the soul more thoroughly, leaving lasting impressions.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 19-20

Dreams, Way, Soul, Thinking

““The fact is, there’s no such thing as an ultimate state of consciousness. It’s a myth; sentience has meaning only insofar as it’s connected into the physical world…
If you’d like to see it, here’s a view of the Omega Point.” It gestured to open a large inscape window in the sky. Instantly Doran’s head was filled with an undifferentiated roar; white noise matched in the window by endless video snow.
Choronzon laughed. “The more information there is in a signal, the more it resembles noise. You’re looking at infinite information density, gentlemen, a signal so packed with information that it has become noise. These idiots pushed so far in one direction that they ended up at the opposite pole…
Perhaps the fanatics of Omega Point had gotten their wish, but if so they had been mistaken in thinking that the Absolute was something that hadn’t been there all along. Absolute meaning, it seemed, was no different from no meaning at all.”

Karl Schroeder (1962) Author. Technology consultant

Source: Lady of Mazes (2005), Chapter 14 (p. 158).

World, Thinking

“When I listen to this rock and roll and look at you kids, I don't think it's a whole lot different than the Charleston and the Varsity Drag.”

Helen Kane (1904–1966) American actress

1959 interview. https://archive.org/details/HelenKaneInterview

Thinking

“You know, my dear Lahousen, the students of history will not need to trouble their heads after this war, as they did after the last, to determine who was guilty of starting it. The case is, however, different when we consider guilt for prolonging the war. I believe that the other side have now disarmed us of the last weapon with which we could have ended it. 'Unconditional surrender', no, our generals will not swallow that. Now I cannot see any solution.”

Wilhelm Canaris (1887–1945) German admiral, head of military intelligence service

To General Erwin Lahousen. Quoted in "Admiral Canaris - Chief of Intelligence" - Page 163 by Ian Colvin - 2007

War, History

“As our self-interests differ, so do our feelings.”

Pierre Corneille The Death of Pompey

Comme nos intérêts, nos sentiments diffèrent.
Cornélie, act V, scene ii.
La Mort de Pompée (The Death of Pompey) (1642)

Feeling

“What these tests tell employers about potential employees is hard to imagine, since the "right" answers should be obvious to anyone who has ever encountered the principle of hierarchy and subordination. Do I work well with others? You bet, but never to the point where I would hesitate to inform on them for the slightest infraction. Am I capable of independent decision making? Oh yes, but I know better than to let this capacity interfere with a slavish obedience to orders. At The Maids, a housecleaning service, I am given something called the "Accutrac personality test," which warns at the beginning that "Accutrac has multiple measures which detect attempts to distort or 'psych out' the questionnaire." Naturally, I "never" find it hard "to stop moods of self-pity," nor do I imagine that others are talking about me behind my back or believe that "management and employees will always be in conflict because they have totally different sets of goals."”

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941) American writer and journalist

The real function of these tests, I decide, is to convey information not to the employer but to the potential employee, and the information conveyed is always: You will have no secrets from us.
Source: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America (2001), Ch. 2: Scrubbing in Maine (p. 59)

Secret, Imagination, Mood, Nature

“Perhaps I was too dumb, or just too interested in cricket or in girls, to ask myself any questions about religion. If I had not been, I might have, inevitably, asked myself questions that have troubled skeptics and unbelievers for as long as men and women have been skeptical or have lacked belief. "Is there really no God? And if there really is no supernatural dimension to the universe, why have so many people throughout history and in so many different cultures thought there was?"”

Jonathan Miller (1934–2019) British theatre director (born 1934)

Episode one: "Shadows of Doubt".
Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief (2004)

Women, Men, God, People

“Among the ways the Spartans differ from other peoples is this. When an ally in distress applies to them for aid, they alone dispatch neither troops nor treasure but a solitary commander, a general. This officer alone, assuming charge of the beleagured forces, is sufficiant, they feel, to turn affairs about and produce victory. This as the world knows is what happened at Syracuse.”

Steven Pressfield book Tides of War

Polemides, p. 162
Tides of War (2000)

People, World, Way, Feeling

“It is the considered opinion of most members of our rational élites that, in any given difference of opinion with reality, reality is wrong.”

John Ralston Saul The Doubter's Companion

"Reality"
The Doubter's Companion (1994)

Reality

“It's nice to know that people are paying attention to you on the other side of the ball, but it's also kind of sad because you feel like you're a man that's being hunted down by some vicious animal. I feel they're going to come after me and do whatever they can to shut down the run, and that makes a difference with me in going out and doing my job.”

Emmitt Smith (1969) American football player and sports broadcaster

Jim Greenidge (January 24, 1996) "Smith Rose to the Occasion in '95 Cowboy Mainstay Had Get-Up-And-Go", Boston Globe, p. 54.

People, Sadness, Feeling, Animals

“Do not think of knocking out another person's brains because he differs in opinion from you. It would be as rational to knock yourself on the head because you differ from yourself ten years ago.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

James Burgh, in The Dignity of Human Nature, Or, A Brief Account of the Certain and Established Means for Attaining the True End of Our Existence (1754); this is very widely misattributed to Mann, appearing at least as early as the publication of Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann (1867) edited by Mary Mann.
Misattributed

Thinking, Personality

“I was surprised that Godzilla was going to die on land instead of in the ocean, which was his cradle. I think it's natural for Godzilla to die because he is a living thing, but I envisioned his death differently. My idea was based on the legend of the tomb of elephants. According to the legend, when an elephant begins to feel that he is going to die, he secretly goes to the tomb. I envisioned Godzilla returning to the South Pacific when he began to feel that his end was coming. There then would have been some implication that Godzilla had died.”

Kenpachiro Satsuma (1947) Japanese actor

As quoted by David Milner, "Kenpachiro Satsuma Interview III" http://www.davmil.org/www.kaijuconversations.com/satsum3.htm, Kaiju Conversations (December 1995)

Death, Feeling, Idea, Nature

Chittaranjan Das (1870–1925) Indian politician and leader of the Swaraj Party

Speech in defence of Aurobindo Ghosh in the Maincktala Bomb Case. The judgement was issued in 1909. Source: Collected Works of Deshbandhu.
Legal

Life, Law, Dreams, Idea

“There is no difference between landscapes and other subjects: in general in painting I try to express the emotions that the contemplation of the form produces in me.”

Roger Fry (1866–1934) English artist and art critic

Letters by Roger Fry (496 - 497) Chatto and Windus ISBN 9780701115999
Art Quotes

Painting

“About three or four years ago, I wanted to try something different in my life, something that could also affect my health … I decided not to eat meat anymore … and the truth is that I’ve never missed meat. I realized that there were so many delicious vegan food options that it was very easy for me to make that change. Everyone can simply give it a try. … You are going to feel great, and the truth is that the food is delicious.”

Gaby Moreno (1981) singer

“Conoce las razones que llevaron a Gaby Moreno a elegir ser vegana,” video interview with PETA Latino (2 March 2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mht2XV8dgQ.

Life, Health, Truth, Food

“Well I just want to say that we are, you know, very honored by the victory that we had, 306 electoral college votes, we were not supposed to crack 220, you [turning to the Israeli PM] know that right? There was no way to 221, but then they said there's no way to 270 [Netanyahu tries to respond, but Trump continues, so then mouths "I thought he was talking to me"] and there's tremendous enthusiasm out there. I will say that, um, we are going to have peace, in this country, we are going to stop crime, in this country, we are going to do everything within our power to stop long-simmering racism, and every other thing that's going on, because a lot of bad things have been taking place over a long period of time. I think one of the reasons I won the election is we have a very, very divided nation, very divided, and hopefully I'll be able to do something about that, and I, you know, it's something that was very important to me. As far as people, Jewish people, so many friends, a daughter who happens to be here right now, a son-in-law, and three beautiful grandchildren, I think that you're going to see a lot different United States of America over the next three, four, or eight years, er, I think a lot of good things are happening, and you're going to see a lot of love, you're going to see a lot of love.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Trump responding to a reporter's question about rising anti-Semitic incidents and a perception of xenophobia in his administration, during a joint press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmfseeZt5fA (15 February 2017) <br class="br">2010s, 2017, February

Love, People, Peace, Law

“Now was the quiet, fierce solitude of the primeval forest broken by new, strange cries. No longer was there safety for bird or beast. Man had come.
Other animals passed up and down the jungle by day and by night — fierce, cruel beasts — but their weaker neighbors only fled from their immediate vicinity to return again when the danger was past.
With man it is different. When he comes many of the larger animals instinctively leave the district entirely, seldom if ever to return; and thus it has always been with the great anthropoids. They flee man as man flees a pestilence.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 12 : Man's Reason

Bird, Solitude, Past, Animals

“I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgement for not agreeing with me in that, from which perhaps within a few days I should dissent myself.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 6
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

“All Dickens is packed with orphans or people in uncertain relation to family groups, or clubs. It’s impossible to read anything he wrote without feeling that the question of belonging was a major issue for him. He had to write about these matters. If we read Lovecraft’s science-fiction horror stories, weird and unpleasant as they may be, they are all obsessively about fear of otherness—women’s, people of other races’, aliens’. All the over-heated horror of the books arises from this gut fear. He can’t leave it alone. Whether or not we like the books and quite regardless of any verisimilitude, it’s clear that the author is writing directly from his personal concerns. The stuff wasn’t just constructed for a literary prize. A certain form of repetition, particularly the endless reformulation, in dozens of different guises, of the same core conflict is probably the hallmark of authenticity.”

Tim Parks (1954) British writer

"In Search of Authenticity," The New York Review of Books (4 February 2015).

Women, People, Books, Fear

“bulshytt … Technical and clinical term denoting speech (typically but not necessarily commercial or political) that employs euphemism, convenient vagueness, numbing repetition, and other such rhetorical subterfuges to create the impression that something has been said. …
It is inherent in the mentality of extramuros bulshytt-talkers that they are more prone than anyone else to taking offense (or pretending to) when their bulshytt is pointed out to them. … One is forced either to use this “offensive” word and be deemed a disagreeable person and as such excluded from polite discourse, or to say the same thing in a different way, which means becoming a purveyor of bulshytt oneself…. The latter quality probably explains the uncanny stability and resiliency of bulshytt.”

Neal Stephenson book Anathem

Definition of "bulshytt," The Dictionary, 4th edition, A.R. 3000
Anathem (2008)

Way, Personality

“A comparative social science requires a generalized system of concepts which will enable the scientific observer to compare and contrast large bodies of concretely different social phenomena in consistent terms.”

David Aberle (1918–2004) anthropologist

David Aberle, Albert K. Cohen, A. K. Davis, Marion J. Levy Jr. and Francis X. Sutton, (1950). T"he functional prerequisites of a society." Ethics, 60(2), p. 100; cited in: Neil J. Smelser (2013), Comparative Methods in the Social Sciences. p. 189

Science

“.. I am not going to New York, I am leaving Paris. That's quite different. Long before the war [World War 1. ] I already had a distaste for the 'artistic life' I was involved in. – It's quite the opposite of what I'm looking for. – And so I tried, through the Library, to escape from artists somewhat. Then, with the war, my incompatibility with this milieu grew. I wanted to go away at all costs. Where to? My only option was New York where I knew you [ Walter Pach, artist and friend of Duchamp] and where I hope to be able to escape leading the artistic life, if needs be through a job which will keep me very busy. I ask you to keep all this from my brothers [all his brothers were artists as well] because I know my leaving will be very painful for them.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

the same goes for my father and sisters.
Quote in Duchamp's letter to Walter Pach, Paris 27 April 1915; as quoted in The Duchamp Book, ed. Gavin Parkinson, Tate Publishing, London 2008 p. 157
1915 - 1925

Life, Pain, War, World

“All men want to be different, and to be greater than they are; they seek for an air other than their own, and a mind different from what they possess; they take their style and manner at chance. They make experiments upon themselves without considering that what suits one person will not suit everyone, that there is no universal rule for taste or manners, and that there are no good copies.”

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French author of maxims and memoirs

Reflections on Various Subjects (1665–1678), VII. On Air and Manner

Men, Universe, Chance, Personality

“I have said this on many a previous occasion: that had the mix in Singapore been different, had it been 75% Indians, 15% Malays and the rest Chinese, it would not have worked. Because they believe in the politics of contention, of opposition. But because the culture was such that the populace sought a practical way out of their difficulties, therefore it has worked.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

[President's Address, Debate on President's Address, Parliament of Singapore, http://sprs.parl.gov.sg/search/topic.jsp?currentTopicID=00062986-ZZ&currentPubID=00069476-ZZ&topicKey=00069476-ZZ.00062986-ZZ_1%2Bid005_19850301_S0005_T00051-president-address%2B, March 01 1985, January 16 2015]
1980s

Way

“Having the security of being in a series week in, week out gives you great flexibility; you can experience with yourself, try a different scene different ways. If you make a mistake one week, you can look at it and say, 'Well, I won't do that again,' and you're still on the air next week.”

Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States

On Rawhides impact on his beginning acting career
Zmijewsky, Boris; Lee Pfeiffer (1982). The Films of Clint Eastwood. p. 20. Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press. ISBN 0806508639.

Way

“But while, to the immigrant, entry to this country was admission to privileges and opportunities eagerly sought, the impact upon the existing population was very different. For reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

The 'Rivers of Blood' speech

Decision, Country

“Visual forms are not perceived differently from colors or brightness. They are sense qualities, and the visual character of geometry consists in these sense qualities.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Color, Sense

“I want to be different, like everybody else I want to be like. I want to be just like all the different people. I have no further interest in being the same, because I have seen difference all around, and now I know that that's what I want. I don't want to blend in and be indistinguishable. I want to be part of the different crowd, and assert my individuality along with others who are different like me.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

"It's Saturday"
Lyrics, Happy Hour (1992)

People, Parting

“The unusual treatment began soon after his birth, when Micheau was sent to live with a humble family in a nearby village. Having a peasant wet-nurse was normal enough, but Montaigne’s father wanted his son to absorb an understanding of commoners’ ways along with their breast milk, so that be would grow up comfortable with the people who most needed a seigneur’s help. Instead of bringing a nurse to the baby, therefore, he sent the baby to the nurse, and left him there long enough to be weaned. Even at the christening, Pierre [Montaigne’s father] had “people of the lowest class” hold the infant over the font. From the start, Montaigne had the impression at once of being a peasant among peasants, and of being very special and different. This is the mixture of feelings that would stay with him for life. H felt ordinary, but knew that the very fact of realizing his ordinariness made him extraordinary.”

Sarah Bakewell book How to Live

Source: How to Live, or, A Life of Montaigne in one Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (2010), p. 52.

Life, People, Family, Way

“Most people won’t have opportunity to do full-time service, but those lucky enough to have monetary wealth or some spare time really can make an enormous difference. As someone who’s now in the public sector, and is seeing up-close-and-personal the real impact of what we do and what we give, I can tell you: every dollar and every volunteer help, in more ways than you can count.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://mikebloomberg.com/en/issues/education/mayor_michael_bloomberg_delivers_slate_60_dinner_keynote_address_at_william_j_clinton_presidential_library
Philanthropy

People, Way, Time, Help

“The fundamental thesis of ordinary conventionalism, represented for instance by Poincare, states that there are problems which cannot be solved by appeal to experience unless one introduces a certain convention, since only such a convention, together with experimental data, makes it possible to solve the problem in question. The judgements which combine to make up such a solution are thus not forced on us by empirical data alone, but their adoption depends partly on our recognition, since the said convention which co-determines the solution of the problem can be arbitrarily changed by us so that as a result we obtain different judgements.
In the present paper it is my intention to make that thesis of ordinary conventionalism more general and more radical. Namely, we want to formulate and to prove the theorem that not only some, but all the judgements which we accept and which combine to make up our image of the world are not univocally determined by empirical data, but depend on the choice of the conceptual apparatus by means of which we make mappings of those empirical data. We can, however, choose this or that conceptual apparatus, which will change our whole image of the world.”

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz (1890–1963) Philosopher, logician

Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, "Das Weltbild und die Begriffsapparatur", in Erkenntnis, 1934, Vol. 4, p. 259; as cited in: Schaff (1962;81-82)

World, Question, Problem, Change

“It makes no difference abroad,
The seasons fit the same,
The mornings blossom into noons,
And split their pods of flame.

Wild-flowers kindle in the woods,
The brooks brag all the day;
No blackbird bates his jargoning
For passing Calvary.

Auto-da-fé and judgment
Are nothing to the bee;
His separation from his rose
To him seems misery.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Nature, p. 120
Collected Poems (1993)

Flowers, Bee, Season

“The Quran urges people who feel vulnerable before oppressors to rid themselves of the influence of the bluffing and false appearances of these oppressors and to compare themselves realistically to the latter in order to realize that they have no hidden or different power that normal people do not have.”

Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah (1935–2010) Lebanese faqih

The Quran calls on the weak and oppressed to gain strength http://english.bayynat.org/TheHolyQuran/Quran_QuranCalls.htm

People, Feeling, Appearance, Falseness

“There has never been just one best way to teach quantum mechanics. My goal is neither to sow nostalgia for the philosophically engaged style of Oppenheimer and Nordheim, nor to condemn the pragmatic approach of Fermi, Bethe and Feynman. It is rather to highlight the choices that physicists must always make when stepping into the classroom. Choices of topics to discuss and problems to assign reflect deeper decisions about the ideal type of physicist one seeks to train. Should the new generation be philosophically attuned, concerned with minute details of conceptual interpretation? Or should physicists hone their ability to calculate, pushing Heisenberg’s and Schrödinger’s equations into the service of ever more elaborate problems to solve and phenomena to analyse? Competing ideals have flourished under different pedagogical conditions.”

David Kaiser (1971) American physicist

Turning physicists into quantum mechanics (2007)

Way, Problem, Decision, Nostalgia

“Marx may have erred in analyzing the nature of this conflict. Interests of workers and capitalists may not be irreconcilable under all circumstances, and workers may see the choice between capitalism and socialism differently depending upon the specific political and economic conditions under which they live.”

Adam Przeworski (1940) Polish-American academic

Adam Przeworski and Michael Wallerstein, The American Political Science Review (Jun., 1982)

Nature, Dependency

“Quantum theory was split up into dialects. Different people describe the same experiences in remarkably different languages. This is confusing even to physicists.”

David Finkelstein (1929–2016) American physicist

in Physical Process and Physical Law, in an edition by [Timothy E. Eastman, Hank Keeton, Physics and Whitehead: quantum, process, and experience, SUNY Press, 2004, 0791459136, 181]

People

“To me, there are multifarious forces at work in government departments which are different from those in private business; the responsibility to and necessary interference of Congress, the responsibility to the President, to defined over-all controls, have little parallel in private business. The power politics of government departments are radically different from the power politics of private companies. The existence of pipe lines into Congress strengthens the bureaucracy against the chief executive of the particular subdivision of government. It may strengthen it against the President of the United States or Congress itself. Dimock himself points out how easily government bureaucracies develop organized opposition to policies involving change. This opposition may in substance, though not in form, sabotage all change which appears to threaten the security of the bureaucracy. Power politics, of course, exists in large private companies; but the urge to expand functions and simultaneously to defend what exists seems to me radically less in the case of well-run, large, private industry than in the case of big departments of the government. The quantitative difference becomes a qualitative change.”

Wallace Brett Donham (1877–1954) American academic

"Governmental and Business Executives", 1946

Business, Appearance, Change

“The male dares to be different to the degree that he accepts his passivity and his desire to be female, his fagginess. The farthest out male is the dragqueen, but he, although different from most men, is exactly like all other dragqueens; like the functionalist, he has an identity - a female; he tries to define all his troubles away - but still no individuality. Not completely convinced that he's a woman, highly insecure about being sufficiently female, he conforms compulsively to the man-made feminine stereotype, ending up as nothing but a bundle of stilted mannerisms.”

Valerie Solanas (1936–1988) American radical feminist and writer. Attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol.

Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 8 ("dragqueen", "dragqueens", & hyphens (not en- or em-dashes) so in original).

Men

“Primarily, they (ideas) come from daydreaming or every day occurrences. I try to get out and about, especially new places to let the environment inspire me. I start an illustration of a building I see and then the elements of different characters will populate in my mind like a set and actors on a stage. If nothing comes up I continue to draw until something unfolds.”

Lorin Morgan-Richards (1975) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

Regarding how he comes up with ideas for his comic strips The Goodbye Family and The Noodle Rut (1 June 2017). <br class="br">Source: Lorin Morgan-Richards Newsletter #2, Us6.campaign-archive2.com, 2017-06-26 http://us6.campaign-archive2.com/?u=51e751ef352e602deca0ecdc7&id=2e82f26313,

Idea, Drawing

“The two men would have disliked each other by instinct had they lived in different planets. Each was created only for exasperating the other; the virtues of one were the faults of his rival, until no good quality seemed to remain of either.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Men

“For too long, many nations, including my own, tolerated, even excused, oppression in the Middle East in the name of stability. Oppression became common, but stability never arrived. We must take a different approach. We must help the reformers of the Middle East as they work for freedom, and strive to build a community of peaceful, democratic nations.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2004, Speech to United Nations General Assembly (September 2004)

Peace, Communication, Freedom, Help

““Eyes, what an eloquent pair he has! He is able to express with them even the slightest difference in the mood”
- L. S Rajagopalan (noted art critic), 1990”

Mani Madhava Chakyar (1899–1990) Indian actor

Source: Abhinaya and Netrābhinaya, L.S Rajagopalan, Mani Madhava Chakyar- A Titan of A Thespian, Sruti- India's premier Music and Dance magazine, August 1990 issue (71), p. 17.

Art, Mood

“It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lecture II, "Circumscription of the Topic"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

Happiness, Way, Universe, Passion

“There is a fundamental difference, however, between asking to be permitted to keep a vegetative relative on costly machinery, and asking the taxpayers or society as a whole to pay for such machinery.”

Jacob M. Appel (1973) American author, bioethicist, physician, lawyer and social critic

"Rational Rationing vs. Irrational Rationing" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-m-appel/rational-rationing-vs-irr_b_622057.html, The Huffington Post (2010-06-23)

“Not chaos-like together crush'd and bruis'd,
But as the world, harmoniously confus'd,
Where order in variety we see,
And where, though all things differ, all agree.”

Alexander Pope book Windsor Forest

Source: Windsor Forest (1713), Line 13.

World

“Sarva-dharma-samabhAva was unknown to mainstream Hinduism before Mahatma Gandhi presented it as one of the sixteen mahAvratas (great vows). in his booklet, MaNgala-PrabhAta. It is true that mainstream Hinduism had always stood for tolerance towards all metaphysical points of view and ways of worship except that which led to AtatAyI-AchAra (gangsterism). But that tolerance had never become samabhAva, equal respect for all points of view. The acharyas of the different schools of Sanatana Dharma were all along engaged in debates over differences in various approaches to Sreyas (the Great Good). No Buddhist acharya is known to have equated the way of the Buddha to that of the Gita and vice versa, for instance. It is also true that overawed by the armed might of Islam, and deceived by the tall talk of the sufis, some Hindu saints in medieval India had equated Rama with Rahim, Krishna with Karim, Kashi with Kaba, the Brahmana with the Mullah, pUjA with namAz, and so on. But, the sects founded by these saints had continued to function on the fringes of Hindu society while the mainstream followed the saints and acharyas who never recognized Islam as a dharma. In modern times also, movements like the Brahmo Samaj which recognised Islam and Christianity as dharmas had failed to influence mainstream Hinduism, while Maharshi Dayananda and Swami Vivekananda who upheld the Veda and despised the Bible and the Quran, had had a great impact. This being the hoary Hindu tradition, Mahatma Gandhi’s recognition of Christianity and Islam not only as dharmas but also as equal to Sanatana Dharma was fraught with great mischief. For, unlike the earlier Hindu advocates of Islam and Christianity as dharmas, Mahatma Gandhi made himself known and became known as belonging to mainstream Hinduism.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)

School, Way, Time

“… to put it into slightly different form, it is not the facts in nature that the good picture aims at portraying, but the effects of light and shade accompanied by a pleasing arrangement.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, How expression may be given to a picture, p. 34

Nature, Light

“We shouldn't discount or downplay those who are showing up because the protests overall aren't as big as we would like them to be. There are a growing number of young people in this country who are getting fed up, and they're the ones who are showing up to protests and demonstrations, and who want to fight now. We have to connect with those people to figure out where we take these movements around different issues. Movements don't just fall out of the sky fully formed.”

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (1950) American academic and author

The fight against racism doesn't stop here (2013)

People, Fight, Country

“The reason for the astonishing fact that a majority of working people submit to a handful of idlers who control their labour and their very lives is always and everywhere the same — whether the oppressors and oppressed are of one race or whether, as in India and elsewhere, the oppressors are of a different nation. This phenomenon seems particularly strange in India, for there more than two hundred million people, highly gifted both physically and mentally, find themselves in the power of a small group of people quite alien to them in thought, and immeasurably inferior to them in religious morality. … the reason lies in the lack of a reasonable religious teaching which, by explaining the meaning of life would supply a supreme law for the guidance of conduct, and would replace the more than dubious precepts of pseudoreligion and pseudoscience and the immoral conclusions deduced from them, commonly called "civilization."”

Leo Tolstoy A Letter to a Hindu

Source: A Letter to a Hindu (1908), I

Life, People, Law

“Thinking and doing the opposite of what the majority is doing isn’t about being different for the sake of being different. There are lots of times when the well-trodden path is the right one to take. Your challenge is to know when it will be in your interest to do the opposite.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE

Thinking, Time

“Rhythm and repetition of sounds, words and phrases make spoken poetry sound different to ordinary discourse.”

John Hollander (1929–2013) American poet

“Think about every example, every time someone comes up with religion as the reason why they want to impose it. It is always stupid. It is always imposing bigotry or limitations against somebody else’s freedom because you want to pretend in your special brand of pixie dust that is different from the gods and monsters other people want to make up. That’s what it is all about. There is simply no true religion because literally none of it is true.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Exclusive Interview with Aron Ra – Public Speaker, Atheist Vlogger, and Activist https://conatusnews.com/interview-aron-ra-past-president-atheist-alliance-america/, Conatus News (May 17, 2017)

God, People, Stupidity, Religion

“As a teenager I started to learn about what was on my plate – where it came from and what it was doing to my body. I became vegetarian then later on vegan. … Each and every person who decides to be vegan makes a massive difference. From literally saving animals from suffering and death, to improving their health and the environmental benefits – being vegan means seeing the bigger picture and saying I'm going to do what I can and take a stand. … I'm motivated by being the best example I can of what can be achieved physically and ethically. I strive to excel in what I love doing and don't believe in the idea that I can't be strong and muscular because I'm vegan, that I can't be fast or flexible because I'm a bodybuilder, and that one person can't make a difference.”

Billy Simmonds (1980)

"Interview with Billy Simmonds: Vegan Body Builder" https://web.archive.org/web/20160201195350/http://www.vivalavegan.net/articles/467-interview-with-billy-simmonds-vegan-body-builder.html, Viva La Vegan! (2016).

Love, Death, Health, Motivation

Quotes about difference page 22

Quotes about difference
page 22