Quotes about difference
page 28

J. B. Bury photo
Pope Benedict XVI photo

“Certainly, the contradiction of tensions and divisions between the followers of different religious traditions, sadly, cannot be denied. However, is it not also the case that often it is the ideological manipulation of religion, sometimes for political ends, that is the real catalyst for tension and division, and at times even violence in society?”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

" Meeting with Muslim religious leaders, members of the diplomatic corps and rectors of universities in Jordan http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2009/may/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20090509_capi-musulmani_en.html" (9 May 2009)
2009

Nastassja Kinski photo
Steve Jobs photo
Akira Ifukube photo
Yasunari Kawabata photo
Warren Farrell photo
Aidan Nichols photo
Mark Kac photo
Anatoliy Tymoshchuk photo
Kent Hovind photo
Grady Booch photo
Grant Morrison photo

“I use media exposure as a means of playing with multiple personalities. Each interview is a different me and they're all untrustworthy”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

2000
http://web.archive.org/web/20010215211642/http://www.bbc.co.uk/edfest/chat/post_chat.shtml
On himself

Zinedine Zidane photo

“Sometimes I don't know what takes me over during a game. Sometimes I just feel I have moved to a different place and I can make the pass, score the goal or go past my marker at will.”

Zinedine Zidane (1972) French association football player and manager

Interview, June 2000 http://soccernet.espn.go.com/euro2000/news/20000702finalpreview.html.

Gertrude Stein photo

“If anything is a surprise then there is not much difference between older and younger because the only thing that does make anybody older is that they cannot be surprised.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 2

Jordan Peterson photo

“We're adapted to the meta-reality, which means that we're adapted to that which remains constant across the longest spans of time. And that's not the same things that you see around you day to day. They're just like clouds, they're just evaporating, you know? There are things underneath that that are more fundamental realities, like the dominance hierarchy, like the tribe, like the danger outside of society, like the threat that other people pose to you, and the threat that you pose to yourself. Those are eternal realities, and we're adapted to those. That's our world, and that's why we express all those things in stories. Then you might say, well how do you adapt yourself to that world? The answer, and I believe this is a neurological answer, is that your brain can tell you when you're optimally situated between chaos and order. The way it tells you that is by producing the sense of engagement and meaning. Let's say that there's a place in the environment that you should be. So what should that place be? Well, you don't want to be terrified out of your skull. What good is that? And you don't want to be so comfortable that you might as well sleep. You want to be somewhere where you are kind of on firm ground with both of your feet, but you can take a step with one leg and test out new territory. Some of you who are exploratory and emotionally stable are going to go pretty far out there into the unexplored territory without destabilizing yourself. And some people are just going to put a toe in the chaos, and that's neuroticism basically - your sensitivity to threat that is calibrated differently in different people. And some people are more exploratory than others. That's extroversion and openness, and intelligence working together. Some people are going to tolerate more chaos in their mixture of chaos and order. Those are often liberals, by the way. They're more interested in novel chaos, and conservatives are more interested in the stabilization of the structures that already exist. Who's right? It depends on the situation. That's why liberals and conservatives have to talk to each other, because one of them isn't right and the other is wrong. Sometimes the liberals are right and sometimes the liberals are right, because the environment is unpredictable and constantly changing, so that's why you have to communicate. That's what a democracy does. It allows people of different temperamental types to communicate and to calibrate their societies. So let's say you're optimally balanced between chaos and order. What does that mean? Well, you're stable enough, but you're interested. A little novelty heightens your anxiety. It wakes you up a bit. That's the adventure part of it. But it also focuses the part of your brain that does exploratory activity, and that's associated with pleasure. That's the dopamine circuit. So if you're optimally balanced - and you know you're there if you're listening to an interesting conversation or you're engaged in one…you're saying some things that you know, and the other person is saying some things that they know - and what both of you know is changing. Music can model that. It provides you with multi-level predictable forms that can transform just the right amount. So music is a very representational art form. It says, 'this is what the universe is like.' There's a dancing element to it, repetitive, and then little variations that surprise you and produce excitement in you. In doesn't matter how nihilistic you are, music still infuses you with a sense of meaning because it models meaning. That's what it does. That's why we love it. And you can dance to it, which represents you putting yourself in harmony with these multiple layers of reality, and positioning yourself properly.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

"The selection pressure that women placed on men developed the entire species. There's two things that happened. The men competed for competence, since the male hierarchy is a mechanism that pushes the best men to the top. The effect of that is multiplied by the fact that women who are hypergamous peel from the top. And so the males who are the most competent are much more likely to leave offspring, which seems to have driven cortical expansion."
Concepts

John Horgan (journalist) photo
Frederic G. Kenyon photo
Li Hongzhi photo

“Although Qigong has been spread for quite a long period of time, several decades already, no one knows its real implications. Therefore, I have written in the book, Zhuan Falun, everything about certain phenomena in the Qigong community, why Qigong is spread in ordinary human society, and what the ultimate goal of Qigong is. Therefore, this book is a systematic work that enables one to practice cultivation. Through reading it repeatedly, many people feel that there is something unique about the book: no matter how many times you have read this book, you always seem to feel a sense of freshness, and no matter how many times you have read it, you always attain a different understanding from the same sentence, and no matter how many times you have read it, you always feel that there is still a great deal of content in it that is yet to be found. Why is it this way, then? It is because that I have systematically compiled many things that are considered heavenly secrets within this book, such as that people are able to practice cultivation, how cultivation should be practiced, and the characteristics of this universe, etc. For a practitioner, it can enable him to complete his cultivation practice successfully. Because no one has ever done such a thing in the past, when reading this book, many people find that a lot of the contents are heavenly secrets. After races are mixed up, you will find one's child born to be an infant of mixed blood. However, there is a partition in the middle of this child's life. If it is separated, he will be physically and intellectually incomplete or a person with an incomplete body. Modern science also knows that it is getting worse one generation after another. It would be like this”

Li Hongzhi (1951) Chinese religious leader and dissident

Falun Buddha Fa Lecture in Sydney http://www.falundafa.org/book/eng/lectures/1996L.html

George Carlin photo
Charles Robert Leslie photo

“Turner was a very different man to Constable, yet quite like him in one respect, namely, his entire reliance on a guide within himself, always a characteristic of genius.”

Charles Robert Leslie (1794–1859) British painter (1794-1859)

Autobiographical Recollections of C. R. Leslie with Selections from his correspondence

L. Ron Hubbard photo
Lisa Randall photo
Halldór Laxness photo
Wesley Snipes photo
Zoran Đinđić photo
Mehmed Talat photo

“These different blocs in the Turkish Empire…always conspired against Turkey; because of the hostility of these native peoples, Turkey has lost province after province - Greece, Serbia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Egypt, and Tripoli. In this way, the Turkish Empire has dwindled almost to nothing.”

Mehmed Talat (1874–1921) Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire and Minister of the Interior

Quoted in "A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility" - by Taner Akçam, Paul Bessemer - History - 2006 - Page 92

Mary Meeker photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Steve Blank photo

“Number one is "Do you have curiosity?" Number two is "Does it translate to imagination?" But number three is "Did it translate to action?" That’s the difference between someone with an idea and someone who is an entrepreneur.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

Interview with Harvard Business Review, https://hbr.org/ideacast/2017/08/when-startups-scrapped-the-business-plan.html.3 August 2017

Margaret Mead photo
Guity Novin photo
Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon photo
Hilary Duff photo
Cesar Chavez photo
Philip Melanchthon photo
Will Eisner photo
Philip Warren Anderson photo
Mark Steyn photo
Alfred de Zayas photo
Paul Karl Feyerabend photo
John Calvin photo
Subcomandante Marcos photo
Charles Darwin photo

“Man differs from woman in size, bodily strength, hairyness, &c., as well as in mind, in the same manner as do the two sexes of many mammals.”

volume I, chapter I: "The Evidence of the Descent of Man from some Lower Form", pages 13-14 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=26&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image
The Descent of Man (1871)

Steve Keen photo

“The term 'capital' has two quite different meanings in economics: a sum of money, and a collection of machinery.”

Steve Keen (1953) Australian economist

Source: Debunking Economics - The Naked Emperor Of The Social Sciences (2001), Chapter 6, The Holy War Over Capital, p. 130

A. Wayne Wymore photo
David Dixon Porter photo
Lee Smolin photo
John Wallis photo
Pierre Louis Maupertuis photo

“I have gone to a safe house, as they say, so I might as well have a different name”

Tony Banks (1942–2006) British politician

"Banks changes name for Lords life" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4123628.stm, BBC News, 23 June 2005.
on taking the title Lord Stratford when he entered the House of Lords.

Georges Braque photo
Thomas Carlyle photo

“For, in fact, I say the degree of vision that dwells in a man is a correct measure of the man. If called to define Shakspeare's faculty, I should say superiority of Intellect, and think I had included all under that. What indeed are faculties? We talk of faculties as if they were distinct, things separable; as if a man had intellect, imagination, fancy, &c., as he has hands, feet and arms. That is a capital error. Then again, we hear of a man's "intellectual nature," and of his "moral nature," as if these again were divisible, and existed apart. Necessities of language do perhaps prescribe such forms of utterance; we must speak, I am aware, in that way, if we are to speak at all. But words ought not to harden into things for us. It seems to me, our apprehension of this matter is, for most part, radically falsified thereby. We ought to know withal, and to keep forever in mind, that these divisions are at bottom but names; that man's spiritual nature, the vital Force which dwells in him, is essentially one and indivisible; that what we call imagination, fancy, understanding, and so forth, are but different figures of the same Power of Insight, all indissolubly connected with each other, physiognomically related; that if we knew one of them, we might know all of them. Morality itself, what we call the moral quality of a man, what is this but another side of the one vital Force whereby he is and works? All that a man does is physiognomical of him. You may see how a man would fight, by the way in which he sings; his courage, or want of courage, is visible in the word he utters, in the opinion he has formed, no less than in the stroke he strikes. He is one; and preaches the same Self abroad in all these ways.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet

Ryan North photo
Thomas Henry Huxley photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Chris Cornell photo
Rana Bhagwandas photo

“It is the virtue of God, the Parmatma, the creator to do justice and we as judges merely act as his agents. I always seek guidance from the creator so that we do not make a wrong judgment. We act without favour or fear, ill will or affection. For me it makes no difference.”

Rana Bhagwandas (1942–2015) Pakistani judge

Response when asked about feelings as first Pakistani acting-Chief Justice from a minority community, by Onkar Singh in Indian Rediff News interview (14 February 2006).

Chiang Pin-kung photo

“Negotiations can resolve differences, cooperation can replace confrontation and development can create a win-win scenario.”

Chiang Pin-kung (1932–2018) Taiwanese politician

Chiang Pin-kung (2010) cited in: "ARATS delegation arrives in Taipei http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2010/12/21/2003491489" in The China Post, 21 December 2010.
Statement made during his welcoming speech to Chen Yunlin at the Chairman of Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits (ARATS) at the Grand Hotel in Taipei for the sixth round of high-level cross-strait talks between ARATS and SEF, 20 December 2010.

Nisargadatta Maharaj photo

“These differences can make it difficult for female musicians to enter male-dominated musical cultures.”

Holly Kruse (1999). Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture, pg. 94. Malden, Massachusetts. ISBN 0631212639.

Andrew Solomon photo
Nicholas Wade photo
Kenji Miyazawa photo
Niccolao Manucci photo

“All the above names are Hindu, and ordinarily these …are Hindus by race, who had been carried off in infancy from various villages or the houses of different rebel Hindu princes. In spite of their Hindu names, they are however, Mahomedans.”

Niccolao Manucci (1638–1717) Italian writer and historian

Manucci elaborating about the women and eunuchs in the Mughal harems. Manucci, II, 336-38. Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 12
Storia do Mogor

Vincent Van Gogh photo

“At the moment I quite often go to draw with Breitner [in the streets of The Hague], a young painter who's acquainted with Rochussen as I am with Mauve. He draws very skilfully and very differently from me, and we often draw types together in the soup kitchen or the waiting room &c. He sometimes comes to my studio to look at woodcuts, and I go to see the ones he has as well.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

In his letter to his brother Theo, from The Hague, Monday, 13 February 1882, http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let204/letter.html, from the original letter; location and translation: Van Gogh museum, Amsterdam]]
1880s, 1882

Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo
Gillian Anderson photo

“I'm damaged in many ways. And yet a lot of what my fight is about is pushing through that to live a meaningful, sane existence and make a difference and play to my strengths.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

WSJ "Gillian Anderson: Reviving Blanche DuBois in Brooklyn" http://www.wsj.com/articles/gillian-anderson-reviving-blanche-dubois-in-brooklyn-1461975005 (April 29, 2016)
2010s

Jimmy Wales photo

“I think that argument is completely morally bankrupt, and I think people know that when they make it. There's a very big difference between having a sincere, passionate interest in a topic and being a paid shill … Particularly for PR firms, it's something they should really very strongly avoid: ever touching an article.”

Jimmy Wales (1966) Wikipedia co-founder and American Internet entrepreneur

PRWeek (30 Jan 2007) http://www.prweek.com/us/login/required/629646 In response to suggestions Wikipedia might change policies to allow PR firms to edit the site without breaking a rule called "WP:AUTO".

Edward Heath photo
Tom Petty photo

“Both the Republican and Tea Party nominees are listed side by side on the Nevada ballot and, ironically, the difference in the race could be the handful of points secured by the Tea Party candidate Scott Ashjian, at the expense of Republican Sharron Angle.”

Scott Ashjian (1963) American businessman

David Paleologos — reported in [Bruce, Drake, http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/10/13/scott-ashjians-tea-party-candidacy-still-a-factor-in-nevada-sen/, Scott Ashjian's Tea Party Candidacy Still a Factor in Nevada Senate Contest, Politics Daily, AOL News, October 13, 2010, 2010-10-14]
About

Margaret Atwood photo
Fred Astaire photo
Nelson Mandela photo

“What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

Nelson Mandela on life, 90th Birthday celebration of Walter Sisulu, Walter Sisulu Hall, Randburg, Johannesburg, South Africa (18 May 2002). Source: From Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations © 2010 by Nelson R. Mandela and The Nelson Mandela Foundation http://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/mini-site/selected-quotes
2000s

“Since the business of politics is the conciliation of differing interests, justice must not merely be done, but to be seen to be done.”

Bernard Crick (1929–2008) British political theorist and democratic socialist

Source: In Defence Of Politics (Second Edition) – 1981, Chapter 7, In Praise Of Politics, p. 148.

Anthony Kiedis photo
William Ellery Channing photo
Kenneth Arrow photo
Jeet Thayil photo
Little Richard photo
Shashi Tharoor photo
Andy Warhol photo
Mary Parker Follett photo
Begum Aga Khan photo

“How would your life be different if… You stopped allowing other people to dilute or poison your day with their words or opinions? Let today be the day”

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 119
Context: How would your life be different if… You stopped allowing other people to dilute or poison your day with their words or opinions? Let today be the day … You stand strong in the truth of your beauty and journey through your day without attachment to the validation of others.

Donald J. Trump photo

“I think I'm a sober person. I think the press tries to make you into something a little bit different. In my case, a little bit of a wild man, I'm not, I'm actually not. I'm a very sober person.”

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

During an interview on 60 Minutes (11 November 2016)
2010s, 2016, November

Maimónides photo