Quotes about difference (8543 quotes, page 35)

“I saw no reason why you couldn't create a work of pornography that adhered to all the same standards as the best art or literature. The big difference between art and pornography is that art, at its best, makes you feel less alone. You see a painting or read a piece of writing that expresses a thought that you had but didn't express, and you suddenly feel less alone. Pornography, on the other hand, tends to engender feelings of self-disgust, isolation and wretchedness. I wanted to change that.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/alan-moore-the-reluctant-hero-64407.html

Art , Feeling , Literature , Change

“Since the belief in transmission of acquired adaptations arose from preconception rather than from evidence, it is worth observing that, rightly considered, the probability should surely be the other way. For the adaptations relate to every variety of exigency. To supply themselves with food, to find it, to seize and digest it, to protect themselves from predatory enemies whether by offence or defence, to counter-balance the changes of temperature, or pressure, to provide for mechanical strains, to obtain immunity from poison and from invading organisms, to bring the sexual elements into contact, to ensure the distribution of the type; all these and many more are accomplished by organisms in a thousand most diverse and alternative methods. Those are the things that are hard to imagine as produced by any concatenation of natural events; but the suggestions that organisms had had from the beginning innate in them a power of modifying themselves, their organs and their instincts so as to meet these multifarious requirements does not materially differ from the more overt appeals to supernatural intervention. The conception, originally introduced by Hering and independently by S. Butler, that adaptation is a consequence or product of accumulated memory was of late revived by Semon and has been received with some approval, especially by F. Darwin. I see nothing fantastic in the notion that memory may be unconsciously preserved with the same continuity that the protoplasmic basis of life possesses. That idea, though purely speculative and, as yet, incapable of proof or disproof contains nothing which our experience of matter or of life at all refutes. On the contrary, we probably do well to retain the suggestion as a clue that may some day be of service. But if adaptation is to be the product of these accumulated experiences, they must in some way be translated into terms of physiological and structural change, a process frankly inconceivable.”

William Bateson (1861–1926) British geneticist and biologist

Source: Problems In Genetics (1913), p. 190

Life , Food , Way , Imagination

“Of the splendid constellation of great names… we admire the living and revere dead far too warmly and too deeply to suffer us sit in judgment on their respective claims to in this or that particular discovery; to balance mathematical skill of one against the experimental dexterity of another, or the philosophical acumen a third. So long as "one star differs from another in glory,"—so long as there shall exist varieties, or even incompatibilities of excellence,—so long will the admiration of mankind be found sufficient for all who merit it.”

John Herschel (1792–1871) English mathematician, astronomer, chemist and photographer

On the Theory of Light https://books.google.com/books?id=Lo4_AAAAcAAJ (1828) p.494

Star , Mathematics , Suffering , Dead

“One has to take several different shots of a subject, from different points of view and in different situations, as if one examined it in the round rather than looked through the same key-hole again and again.”

Alexander Rodchenko (1891–1956) Russian artist and photographer

Quoted on Wikipedia:Rodchenko

“The 'new theory of money and the cycle' which is spoken of in the opening paragraph is of course Hayek's. It was from Hayek that I began - where I got to will be seen. Even at the end, I was minimising my differences from Hayek. I could do so because, as I have elsewhere explained (Economic Perspectives, p. 141n), I still thought, like Pigou and Robertson, and Hayek, but by that time unlike Keynes, that 'we were talking about fluctuations, which, since they did not result in complete collapse or complete explosion, could not have engendered an expectation of going on forever. Booms could then be considered as times of high prices, slumps as times of low prices - with regard to some norm, which throughout the which throughout the fluctuations would not be changed, or not much changed'.”

John Hicks (1904–1989) British economist

Source: Money, Interest and Wages, (1982), p. 28; on his "Equilibrium and the Cycle" (1933), an influential work on the topics of intertemporal equilibrium, monetary theory, and trade cycle phenomena.

Money , Change , Time

“If men would consider not so much where they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

Attributed to "Addison" in A Dictionary of Thoughts : Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern (1908) edited by Tryon Edwards, p. 117, but this might be the later "Mr. Addison" who was credited with publishing Interesting Anecdotes, Memoirs, Allegories, Essays, and Poetical Fragments (1794).
Disputed

Men , World , Feeling

“The seven dwarfs were each on different little trips. Happy was into grass and grass alone … Happy, that's all he did. Sleepy was into reds. Grumpy, too much speed. Sneezy was a full blown coke freak. Doc was a connection. Dopey was into everything. Any old orifice will do for Dopey. He's always got his arm out and his leg up. And then, the one we always forget, because he was Bashful. Bashful didn't use drugs. He was paranoid on his own. Didn't need any help on that ladder.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Toledo Window Box (1974)
Source: Carlin, George, perf. Toledo Window Box. Rec. 20 Jul 1974. Monte Kay, Jack Lewis, 1974. Vinyl recording.

Grass , Help , Speed , Forgetting

“the question to ask, in other, is not "What is the multitude?" but rather "What can the multitude become?" … common condition, of course, does not mean sameness or unity, but it does require that no differences of nature or kind divide the multitude.”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

(105-106)
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

Question , Nature

“I'm better suited to doing this because I enjoy dancing and performing, so I can incorporate a whole bunch of different elements of my personality into the performance component of Vitamin C and it turns out, without trying, there was a certain positive spirit and strong point of view [in the songs] that fairly well represented my personality. So it all came together quite nicely.”

Colleen Fitzpatrick (1972) American singer and actress

About the Vitamin C project
Attributed

Strong , Dance , Personality

“The effectiveness of political and religious propaganda depends upon the methods employed, not upon the doctrines taught. These doctrines may be true or false, wholesome or pernicious—it makes little or no difference.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World Revisited

Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 7 (p. 63)

Dependency , Falseness

“My mother made me a scientist without ever intending to. Every other Jewish mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school: So? Did you learn anything today? But not my mother. “Izzy,” she would say, “did you ask a good question today?” That difference — asking good questions — made me become a scientist.”

Isidor Isaac Rabi (1898–1988) American physicist

As quoted in "Great Minds Start With Questions" in Parents Magazine (September 1993).

School , Question , Learning

“The liberation of our continent means more than overcoming economic, social, and political dependence. It means, in a deeper sense, to see the becoming of mankind as a process of the emancipation of man in history. It is to see man in search of a qualitatively different society in which he will be free from all servitude, in which he will be the artisan of his own destiny.”

Gustavo Gutiérrez (1928) Peruvian theologian

Source: A Theology of Liberation (1971), p. 91

History , Search , Sense , Dependency

“…as individuals and as nations we live in states of society utterly different from each other. As a collection of individuals, we live under the highest and latest development of civilization, in which the individual is rigidly forbidden to defend himself, because society is always ready and able to defend him. As a collection of nations we live in an age of the merest Faustrecht, in which each one obtains his rights precisely in proportion to his ability, or that of his allies, to fight for them…In practice it is found that International Law is always on the side of strong battalions…It is puerile…to apply to the dealings of a nation with its neighbour's territory the morality which would be applicable to two individuals possessing adjoining property, and protected from mutual wrong by a law superior to both.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Quarterly Review, 151, 1881, pp. 542-544
1880s

Age , Law , Strong , Fight

“As systematic inquiry into the natural facts was begun it was at once found that the accepted ideas of variation were unfounded. Variation was seen very frequently to be a definite and specific phenomenon, affecting different forms of life in different ways, but in all its diversity showing manifold and often obvious indications of regularity. This observation was not in its essence novel. Several examples of definite variation had been well known to Darwin and others, but many, especially Darwin himself in his later years, had nevertheless been disposed to depreciate the significance of such facts. They consequently then lapsed into general disparagement. Upon more careful inquiry the abundance of such phenomena proved to be far greater than was currently supposed, and a discussion of their nature brought into prominence a consideration of greater weight, namely that the differences by which these definite or discontinuous variations are constituted again and again approximate to and are comparable with the class of differences by which species are distinguished from each other.”

William Bateson (1861–1926) British geneticist and biologist

Preface
Problems In Genetics (1913)

Life , Way , Idea , Nature

“The subject of a science is never well circumscribed and there is little use sharpening its definition. However, nobody will deny that physics deals with nature and sociology with human society in some of their aspects. With logic, it is another matter. Logic is usually understood nowadays as a study of certain formal systems, though in former times there were philosophers who held that the subject matter of logic was the formal rules of human thought. In the latter sense it would be an empirical rather than a formal science, though its empirical subject matter would still be fundamentally different from that of psychology of thinking. One interpretation of logic does not exclude the other. Formal approaches are often easier than empirical ones, and for this reason one can understand why logic as a study of formal systems has till now made more progress than logic as a study of the formal rules of thought, even if restricted to scientific thought.”

Hans Freudenthal (1905–1990) Dutch mathematician

Source: Realistic models in probability (1968), p. 1

Understanding , Nature , Thinking , Sense

“Different types of love
are possible”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

Desert Island Disk
Lyrics, A Moon Shaped Pool (2016)

Love

“You don't observe the past directly, even when you think about the creation account. We can't observe God creating, we can't observe Adam and Eve: we admit that. We're willing to admit our beliefs about the past. But see, what you observe in the present is very different. Even some public school textbooks sort of acknowledge the difference between historical and observational science.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

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

God , School , Thinking , Science

“Just between you and me, have you ever been wrong? Are you divinely infallible? Are you different from the rest of us? Human nature is prone to error; the person who invented the pencil eraser knew that.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

God doesn't believe in atheists (2002)

Error , Nature , Personality

“The philosophy of the likelihood of events concludes that folk from different worlds must have different forms.”

Michael Flynn book Eifelheim

Source: Eifelheim (2006), Chapter XII (p. 209)

World

“There's the Mike Wallace approach, or you can call it the Michael Moore approach, which is the adversarial approach. In the end, that is not in the service of finding out anything. It's in service of dramatizing a received view: Namely, "This guy is an asshole, and now I will illustrate how this guy is an asshole by showing his inability to answer the questions I put to him." It's not what I'm about. It's not that one approach is good and the other is bad. They just have different valences. I like confrontation as much as the next guy. I'll give you the best example I can think of for why I like my method. [During] my interview with Emily Miller, one of the wacko eyewitnesses in The Thin Blue Line, she volunteered that she had failed to pick out Randall Adams in a police lineup. It wasn't me saying to her, "Emily Miller, how come you failed to pick out Randall Adams in a police lineup?" Why? Because I didn't know she failed to do it, because part of the trial record said she had successfully picked him out. When I heard this, not in response to some adversarial question, just her telling me her story, I asked her, "How did you know you failed to pick out Randall Adams?"”

Errol Morris (1948) American filmmaker and writer

She said, "I know because the policeman sitting next to me told me I had picked out the wrong person and pointed out the right person so I wouldn't make that mistake again."
Source: Pitch Weekly http://www.tipjar.com/dan/errolmorris.html

Guy , Question , Thinking , Parting

“I purchased a Chevrolet Impala. I shopped around and had 5 different auto dealers competing for my business. Because all 5 offered the same product, they were forced to compete for my business… Funny thing, they still made a fair profit — not an outrageous one.”

Steve Kagen (1949) American politician

Comparing price competition in the automobile market to having a prescription filled at a pharmacy
[13 July 2007, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/7/13/852/86199, "I Have Been Living the Movie 'Sicko' For the Last 30 Years", Daily Kos, 2007-07-21]
Healthcare

Business

“But that leads me to my third hard truth: something happens to people in law enforcement. Many of us develop different flavors of cynicism that we work hard to resist because they can be lazy mental shortcuts. For example, criminal suspects routinely lie about their guilt, and nearly everybody we charge is guilty. That makes it easy for some folks in law enforcement to assume that everybody is lying and that no suspect, regardless of their race, could be innocent. Easy, but wrong.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

People , Truth , Lie , Law

“Depersonalization is a concept difficult to delineate. It can be regarded as a symptom or as a loosely associated group of symptoms that occurs in psychiatric patients. It can be induced experimentally and also occurs spontaneously in normal subjects. A major obstacle to clearer definition of this concept lies in the fact that it refers to exceedingly private events in the individual's experience. These prove very difficult to describe by a language geared to the description of public (consensually validated) events or private events, such as pain, that occur usually in clearly defined social settings. When it comes to describing and conveying something as ineffable as depersonalization or derealization, the subject resorts to metaphors, "as if" expressions, and figures of speech. The result is semantic confusion. Different authors mean different things when they use the term depersonalization.
The concept of depersonalization merges by imperceptible degrees with the concept derealization, the concept of altered body image and self, deja vu, jamais vu, altered time and space perception and so on - the whole gamut of phenomenological description of the experiences of mental patients. Therefore, it is rather difficult to evaluate and to review objectively the psychiatric literature on the phenomena of depersonalization.”

Thaddus E. Weckowicz (1919–2000) Canadian psychologist

Source: Depersonalization, (1970), p. 171

Pain , Literature , Time

“ah, So u persecute Jared Fogle just because he has different beliefs? Do Tell. (girls get mad at me) Sorry. Im sorry. Im trying to remove it”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/660644922744262656]
Tweets by year, 2015

Girl , Madness

“And I'm not saying that television is vulgar and dumb because the people who compose Audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction
Essays

People , Way

“There is no. man, there is no people, without a God. That God may be a visible idol, carved of wood or stone, to which sacrifice is offered in the forest, in the temple, or in the market-place; or it may be an invisible idol, fashioned in a man's own image and worshipped ardently at his own personal shrine. Somewhere in the universe there is that in which each individual has firm faith, and on which he places steady reliance. The fool who says in his heart "There is no God" really means there is no God but himself. His supreme egotism, his colossal vanity, have placed him at the center of the universe which is thereafter to be measured and dealt with in terms of his personal satisfactions. So it has come to pass that after nearly two thousand years much of the world resembles the Athens of St. Paul's time, in that it is wholly given to idolatry; but in the modern case there are as many idols as idol worshippers, and every such idol worshipper finds his idol in the looking-glass. The time has come once again to repeat and to expound in thunderous tones the noble sermon of St. Paul on Mars Hill, and to declare to these modern idolaters "Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you."
There can be no cure for the world's ills and no abatement of the world's discontents until faith and the rule of everlasting principle are again restored and made supreme in the life of men and of nations. These millions of man-made gods, these myriads of personal idols, must be broken up and destroyed, and the heart and mind of man brought back to a comprehension of the real meaning of faith and its place in life. This cannot be done by exhortation or by preaching alone. It must be done also by teaching; careful, systematic, rational teaching, that will show in a simple language which the uninstructed can understand what are the essentials of a permanent and lofty morality, of a stable and just social order, and of a secure and sublime religious faith.
Here we come upon the whole great problem of national education, its successes and its disappointments, its achievements and its problems yet unsolved. Education is not merely instruction far from it. It is the leading of the youth out into a comprehension of his environment, that, comprehending, he may so act and so conduct himself as to leave the world better and happier for his having lived in it. This environment is not by any means a material thing alone. It is material of course, but, in addition, it is intellectual, it is spiritual. The youth who is led to an understanding of nature and of economics and left blind and deaf to the appeals of literature, of art, of morals and of religion, has been shown but a part of that great environment which is his inheritance as a human being. The school and the college do much, but the school and the college cannot do all. Since Protestantism broke up the solidarity of the ecclesiastical organization in the western world, and since democracy made intermingling of state and church impossible, it has been necessary, if religion is to be saved for men, that the family and the church do their vital cooperative part in a national organization of educational effort. The school, the family and the church are three cooperating educational agencies, each of which has its weight of responsibility to bear. If the family be weakened in respect of its moral and spiritual basis, or if the church be neglectful of its obligation to offer systematic, continuous and convincing religious instruction to the young who are within its sphere of influence, there can be no hope for a Christian education or for the powerful perpetuation of the Christian faith in the minds and lives of the next generation and those immediately to follow. We are trustees of a great inheritance. If we abuse or neglect that trust we are responsible before Almighty God for the infinite damage that will be done in the life of individuals and of nations…. Clear thinking will distinguish between men's different associations, and it will be able to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to render unto God the things which are God's.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Making liberal men and women : public criticism of present-day education, the new paganism, the university, politics and religion https://archive.org/stream/makingliberalmen00butluoft/makingliberalmen00butluoft_djvu.txt (1921)

Life , Men , God , People

“An accomplished woman almost always knows more than we men, though her knowledge is of a different sort. I am sure you could teach me a thousand things--as an exquisite bird could teach a bear if there were any common language between them. Happily, there is a common language between women and men, and so the bears can get taught.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Middlemarch (1871)

Women , Men , Knowledge , Bird

“But they have not rejected the Budget; they have only referred it to the people. On what principle do they refer Bills to the people? I remember the election of 1900, when a most powerful member of the Tory Cabinet said that the Nonconformists could vote with absolute safety for the Government, because no question in which they were interested would be raised. In two years there was a Bill destroying the School Boards. There was a Bill which drove Nonconformists into the most passionate opposition. What did the House of Lords do? Did they refer it to the people? Oh no, there was a vast difference between protecting the ground landlords in towns and protecting the village Dissenter. After all, the village Dissenter is too low down in the social scale for such exalted patronage, so he was left to the mercy of a Tory House of Commons without any of this high and powerful protection. Well, the Dissenters, despised as they may be, once upon a time taught a lesson to the House of Lords, and ere another year has passed they will be able to say, "Here endeth the second lesson".”

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

Speech to the National Liberal Club (3 December 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), p. 189.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

People , School , Question , Passion

“Losing Bogey was horrible, obviously. Because he was young. And because he gave me my life. I wouldn't have had a — I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't met him — I would have had a completely different kind of life. He changed me, he gave me everything. And he was an extraordinary man.”

Lauren Bacall (1924–2014) American actress, model

Larry King interview (2005)

Life , Change

“It makes no difference whether a work is naturalistic or abstract; every visual expression follows the same fundamental laws.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Excerpts from the Teaching of Hans Hofmann', p. 61
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Law

“My memoirs "On the Mechanical Theory of Heat" are of different kinds. Some are devoted to the development of the general theory and to the application thereof to those properties of bodies which are usually treated of in the doctrine of heat. Others have reference to the application of the mechanical theory of heat to electricity. …Other memoirs… have reference to the conceptions I have formed of the molecular motions which we call heat. These conceptions, however, have no necessary connexion with the general theory, the latter being based solely on certain principles which may be accepted without adopting any particular view as to the nature of molecular motions. I have therefore kept the consideration of molecular motions quite distinct from the exposition of the general theory.”

Rudolf Clausius (1822–1888) German mathematical physicist

Preface (August, 1864)
The Mechanical Theory of Heat (1867)

Nature

“The finance conception of the modern corporation, which currently dominates, emphasizes control through the use of financial tools which measure performance according to profit rates. Product lines are evaluated on their short-run profitability and important management decisions are based on the potential profitability of each line. Firms are viewed as collections of assets earning differing rates of return, not as producers of given goods. The firm is not seen as being a member of only one industry. Consequently if the prospect of an industry in which it participates declines, the firm disinvests. The problem for management from this perspective is to maximize short-run rates of return by altering product mix, thereby increasing shareholder equity and keeping the stock price high”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: The transformation of corporate control, 1993, p. 15

Problem , Decision

“An artist should combine her beautiful voice, her external form with her coquetry and mollycoddle and to stay away from temptation, in my opinion. There is a huge difference between femininity, coquetry, temptation and irritation.”

Layal Abboud (1982) Lebanese pop singer

2008

Beauty

“That Law, therefore, is highly beneficial to the Community where it is established, which ordains that every Man shall be judged by his Peers and Equals. For when the Fate of a Citizen is in Question, all Prejudices arising from the Difference of Rank or Fortune should be stifled; because they ought to have no Influence between the Judges and the Parties accused.”

Catherine the Great (1729–1796) Empress of Russia

Item 180
Proposals for a New Law Code (1768)

Fate , Law , Communication , Question

“I considered that the painter's personality should be kept out of things, and therefore pictures should be anonymous. It was I who decided that pictures should not be signed, and for a time Picasso did the same. I thought that from the moment someone else could do the same as myself, there was no difference between the pictures and they should not be signed. Afterwards I realized it was not so and began to sign my pictures again. Picasso had begun again anyhow. I realized that one cannot reveal oneself without mannerism, without some evident trace of one's personality. But all the same one should not go too far in that direction..”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1946 - 1963, In conversation with Dora Vallier' (1954), p. 265

Time , Personality

“We are inescapably the result of a long heritage of learning, adaptation, mutation and evolution, the product of a history which predates our birth as a biological species and stretches back over many thousand millennia… Going further back, we share a common ancestry with our fellow primates; and going still further back, we share a common ancestry with all other living creatures and plants down to the simplest microbe. The further back we go, the greater the difference from external appearances and behavior patterns which we observe today.”

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) British astronomer

Lifecloud: The Origin of Life in the Universe (1978), p. 15

Behavior , History , Birth , Learning

“Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Sententiæ
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)

Love

“Today is different, and tomorrow the same.
It's hard to take the world the way that it came.
Too many rapids keep us sweeping along.
Too many captains keep on steering us wrong.
It's hard to take the heat.
It's hard to lay blame.
To fight the fire, while we're feeding the flames.
-- Second Nature (1987)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

World , Way , Nature , Fight

“There are so many elements flying in so many different directions that you really have to go with what feels like instinctively. The nature of the universe is fairly whimsical and nonsensical. In the most somber, beatific peacefulness there's complete chaos and maniacal laughter. I think music that doesn't reflect that is boring.”

Beck (1970) American Musician (b.1970)

Guitar magazine, January 1999

Peace , Music , Feeling , Nature

“Dalits have faced a unique discrimination in our society that is fundamentally different from the problems of minority groups in general. The only parallel to the practice of untouchability was apartheid.”

Manmohan Singh (1932) 13th Prime Minister of India

Comparing the caste system with apartheid, as quoted in "Indian leader likens caste system to apartheid regime" http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/dec/28/india.mainsection, The Guardian (UK) (28 December 2006)
2006-2010

Problem

“The house was somehow very lonely at night and Dr. Darell found that the fate of the Galaxy made remarkably little difference while his daughter’s mad little life was in danger.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Source: The Foundation series (1951–1993), Second Foundation (1953), Chapter 11 “Stowaway”

Life , Fate , Housing , Daughters

“Perhaps she was not really so perfect, but he had made her so in his mind. People did this; he had seen it. As though the world of humans was created from their desires as much as their perception—an issue the empiricists tried to deal with in their natural philosophy.
Although he realized this was a trivial truth, still, trying to comprehend the reality of a situation was his constant activity. He could not necessarily trust the word of ministers, who all had their own purposes; nor what his mother might think, for her own perception was colored by her desire to see people in certain ways. One did not trust the periodicals, certainly, and pamphleteers were never disinterested. Everyone seemed to see the world and events a little differently, depending on their own personal mixture of desire and pragmatism. In history there were any number of rulers whose perception of events was so far removed from reality that it led to calamity. Prince Wilam did not want to be one of those—at any cost. Even if it meant giving up the world as he desired it to be.”

Sean Russell (1952) author

Source: Sea Without a Shore (1996), Chapter 26 (p. 352)

People , Truth , World , Color

“The first article in the foregoing quotation brings to my recollection the extraordinary performances of a professed fire-eater, whose name was Powel, well known in different parts of the kingdom about forty years ago. Among other wonderful feats, I saw him do the following: He ate the burning coals from the fire; he put a large bunch of matches lighted into his mouth, and blew the smoke of the sulphur through his nostrils; he carried a red-hot heater round the room in his teeth; and broiled a piece of beef-steak upon his tongue. To perform this, he lighted a piece of charcoal, which he put into his mouth beneath his tongue, the beef was laid upon the top; and one of the spectators blew upon the charcoal, to prevent the heat decreasing, till the meat was sufficiently broiled. By way of conclusion, he made a composition of pitch, brimstone, and other compustibles, to which he added several pieces of lead; the whole was melted in an iron ladle, and then set on fire; this he called his soup; and, taking it out of the ladle with a spoon of the same metal, he ate it in its state of liquefaction, and blazing furiously, without appearing to sustain the least injury.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 237
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Public entertainment

Way , Light , Appearance , Parting

“The essential difference, which we meet in entering the realm of spirit and mind, seems to hang round the word "Ought."”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Science and the Unseen World (1929)

“To conclude, if we call light, those rays which illuminate objects, and radiant heat, those which heat bodies, it may be inquired whether light be essentially different from radiant heat? In answer to which I would suggest that we are not allowed, by the rules of philosophizing, to admit two different causes to explain certain effects, if they may be accounted for by one. …If this be a true account of the solar heat, for the support of which I appeal to my experiments, it remains only for us to admit that such of the rays of the sun as have the refrangibility of those which are contained in the prismatic spectrum, by the construction of the organs of sight, are admitted under the appearance of light and colors, and that the rest, being stopped in the coats and humors of the eye, act on them, as they are known to do on all the other parts of our body, by occasioning a sensation of heat.”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

Source: Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works (1880), Ch.4 "Life and Works" on his discovery of the infrared light.

Color , Support , Light , Appearance

“[In Marcel Ophuls' film The Memory of Justice] Mad old Nazis were to be heard deploring modern decadence. 'The difference is, we weren't obsessed with smut,' said one comfortable, retired SS man, all unaware of being up to his neck in blood and pus.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'The Weld This Week'
Essays and reviews, The Crystal Bucket (1982)

Justice , Memory , Madness

“We can reckon the cost of misdirected emotions by the price which the past has paid for them. We know the full significance of that irresponsible sympathy which … admits no difference between attack and resistance, between a war of aggression and a war of defence; which confuses moral issues, ignores experience, and insults the intelligence of mankind. The reformer whose heart is in the right place, but whose head is elsewhere, represents a waste of force; and we can not afford any waste in the conservation of honour and goodness.”

Agnes Repplier (1855–1950) American essayist

in "The Cost of Modern Sentiment" (1916)

War , Intelligence , Past , Heart

“The search for the most effective conflict resolution procedure requires identification of the primary objective in resolving different kinds of disputes. This article focuses on the kind of disputes considered in the legal system and draws on the results of the authors' empirical studies to develop a general theory of procedure for attaining the objectives of "truth" and "justice" in situations of cognitive conflict, conflict of interest, and in "mixed" disputes.”

John Thibaut (1917–1986) American social psychologist

Source: "A theory of procedure." 1978, p. 541, Abstract

Truth , Justice , Search , Study

“Now, that brings me to the Liberal Party. I gather that during the last few days there have been some ill-natured jokes about their new symbol, a bird of some kind, adopted by the Liberal Democrats at Blackpool. Politics is a serious business, and one should not lower the tone unduly. So I will say only this of the Liberal Democrat symbol and of the party it symbolises. This is an ex-parrot. It is not merely stunned. It has ceased to be, expired and gone to meet its maker. It is a parrot no more. It has rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is a late parrot. And now for something completely different.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (12 October 1990) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108217. Partially quoting from Monty Python's Dead Parrot Sketch https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Flying_Circus#Dead_Parrot_Sketch.
Third term as Prime Minister

Business , Nature , Bird

“Fleecy locks and black complexion
Cannot forfeit nature's claim;
Skins may differ, but affection
Dwells in white and black the same.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

Source: The Negro's Complaint (1788), Lines 13-16

Nature

“Herz, Thalberg, Heller, Felicien David and others were great virtuosos of their time, more famous than Chopin himself. They had their own personal styles, but the essence of their music was time-bound, nothing that could occupy generations after them. Chopin, in contrast, was someone special, someone who was completely different from all other artists, composers, and pianists. So too with his style. As a result, the aesthetic in approaching Chopin is distinctive: interpreting his music is the most difficult of all. For me personally, it’s the crowning of playing piano. Bach, Mozart, Chopin: these are the three who definitely created musical art in an all-embracing and overwhelming way.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings about Chopin and Schumann

Art , Music , Way , Time

“Mister President and Madam first lady, distinguished guests, and residents of Goree Island, citizens of Senegal, I'm honored to begin my visit to Africa in your beautiful country. For hundreds of years on this island, peoples of different continents met in fear and cruelty. Today, we gather in respect and friendship, mindful of past wrongs and dedicated to the advance of human liberty.”

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

2000s, 2003, Hope and Conscience Will Not Be Silenced (July 2003)

Friendship , People , Fear , Beauty

“The essential difference between est and Scientology is two-fold. The first has to do with Scientology’s emphasis on survival and its idea that the purpose of life is survival. est sees the purpose of life as wholeness or completion – truth – not survival…The other main difference between est and Scientology lies in the treatment of knowing. Ron Hubbard seems to have no difficulty in codifying the truth and in urging people to believe it. But I suspect all codifications, particularly my own. In presenting my own ideas, I emphasize their epistemological context. I hold them as pointers to the truth, not as the truth itself. I don’t think anyone ought to believe the ideas that we use in est. The est philosophy is not a belief system and most certainly ought not to be believed. In any case, even the truth, when believed, is a lie. You must experience the truth, not believe it.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

Interview with William Warren Bartley, cited in — [Bartley, William Warren, w:William Warren Bartley, Werner Erhard: the Transformation of a Man: the Founding of est, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1978, New York, 157, 0-517-53502-5]

Life , People , Truth , Lie

“The denial of any distinction between foreseen and intended consequences, as far as responsibility is concerned, was not made by Sidgwick in developing any one 'method of ethics'; he made this important move on behalf of everybody and just on its own account; and I think it plausible to suggest that this move on the part of Sidgwick explains the difference between old-fashioned Utilitarianism and the consequentialism, as I name it, which marks him and every English academic moral philosopher since him.”

G. E. M. Anscombe Modern Moral Philosophy

Here Anscombe coined the word "consequentialism".
Modern Moral Philosophy (1958)

Fashion , Thinking , Parting

“If Brideshead Revisited is not a great book, it's so like a great book that many of us, at least while reading it, find it hard to tell the difference.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Borgias on my mind'
Essays and reviews, Glued to the Box (1983)

Books , Reading

“We are moving towards another type of society than that to which we have become accustomed. This is sometimes referred to as a new service society, the society of the second industrial revolution or the post-industrial society. There is no guarantee of our safe arrival. Not only are the interdependencies greater – they are differently structured… The changes in the policy field [housing, health care, urban rehabilitation, education, etc. ] demand a new mobilization of the sciences.”

Eric Trist (1909–1993) British scientist

Eric Trist (1969) cited in: Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld ed. (2011) INNOVATION SUMMIT April 13 & 14, 2011 http://summit.research.illinois.edu/files/posters/CutcherGershenfeldWorkshopPoster.pdf.

Health , Education , Science , Change

“I have divided [the different sections of mankind] into three classes. The first, to which you and I have the honour to belong, marches under the banner of the progress of the human mind. It is composed of scientists, artists and all those who hold liberal ideas. On the banner of the second is written 'No innovation!' All proprietors who do not belong in the first category are part of the second. The third class, which rallies round the slogan of 'Equality' is made up of the rest of the people.”

Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) French early socialist theorist

[J]e me propose en m'adressant à différentes fractions de l'humanité, que je divise en trois classes: la première, celle à laquelle vous et moi avons l'honneur d'appartenir, marche sous l'étendard des progrès de l'esprit humain; elle marche sous l'étendard des progrès de l'esprit humain; elle est composée des savants, des artistes et de tous les hommes qui ont des idées libérales. Sur la bannière de la seconde il est écrit: point d'innovation; tous les propriétaires qui n'entrent point dans la première sont attachés à la seconde. La troisième, qui se rallie au mot égalité, renferme le surplus de l'humanité.
Oeuvres choisies: précédées d'un essai sur sa doctrine (1839), p. 15

People , Idea , Parting

“The experience or the vision is the artist’s counterpart to the scientific discovery of a principle or law. What the scientist does when he discovers a new law is to give a new ordering to observed facts. The artist is engaged in a similar task. He gives new meaning to our experience and organizes it in a different way due to his perception of subtler qualities in reality.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Law , Way , Reality

“It is apparently very congenial for some people who are professionally concerned with fictional texts to be told that all texts are really fictional anyway, and that claims that fiction differs significantly from science and philosophy can be deconstructed as a logocentric prejudice, and it seems positively exhilarating to be told that what we call "reality" is just more textuality. Furthermore, the lives of such people are made much easier than they had previously supposed, because now they don't have to worry about an author's intentions, about precisely what a text means, or about distinctions within a text between the metaphorical and the literal, or about the distinction between texts and the world because everything is just a free play of signifiers. The upper limit, and I believe the reductio ad absurdum, of this "sense of mastery" conveyed by deconstruction, is in Geoffrey Hartman's claim that the prime creative task has now passed from the literary artist to the critic.”

John Rogers Searle (1932) American philosopher

"The Word Turned Upside Down", The New York Review of Books, Volume 30, Number 16, October 27, 1983.

People , World , Reality , Sense

“What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the dark ages which are already upon us. … This time, however, the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been among us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict.”

Alasdair MacIntyre book After Virtue

Source: After Virtue (1981), p. 263.

Life , Age , Communication , Time

“The successful scientist and the raving crank are separated by the quality of their inspirations. But I suspect that this amounts, in practice, to a difference, not so much in ability to notice analogies as in ability to reject foolish analogies and pursue helpful ones.”

Richard Dawkins book The Blind Watchmaker

Source: The Blind Watchmaker (1986), Chapter 8 “Explosions and Spirals” (pp. 195–196)

Success , Help

“I've always liked to go down a different path. Being a woman of color, I never followed a cookie cutter way.”

Halle Berry (1966) American actress

Cindy Pearlman (November 17, 2002) "Female Bonding - Hot on the Heels of her Academy-Award Winning Turn in 'Monster's Ball,' Halle Berry Shares the Screen With 007", Chicago Sun-Times, p. 1.

Color , Way

“The last time I visited the Capitol, I came to take an oath. On the steps of this building, I pledged to honor our Constitution and laws, and I asked you to join me in setting a tone of civility and respect in Washington. I hope America is noticing the difference. We are making progress. Together, we are changing the tone in the Nation’s capital. And this spirit of respect and cooperation is vital, because in the end we will be judged not only by what we say or how we say it, we will be judged by what we are able to accomplish. America today is a Nation with great challenges, but greater resources.”

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

2000s, 2001, Address to Joint Session of Congress on Administration Goals (February 2001)

Law , Hope , Change , Time

“When taken as a way of modeling cognitive architecture, connectionism really does represent an approach that is quite different from that of the classical cognitive science that it seeks to replace. Classical models of the mind were derived from the structure of Turing and Von Neumann machines. They are not, of course, committed to the details of these machines as exemplified in Turing's original formulation or in typical commercial computers—only to the basic idea that the kind of computing that is relevant to understanding cognition involves operations on symbols.. In contrast, connectionists propose to design systems that can exhibit intelligent behavior without storing, retrieving, or otherwise operating on structured symbolic expressions. The style of processing carried out in such models is thus strikingly unlike what goes on when conventional machines are computing some function.”

Zenon Pylyshyn (1937) Canadian philosopher

Jerry A. Fodor, and Zenon W. Pylyshyn. "Connectionism and cognitive architecture: A critical analysis." Cognition 28.1-2 (1988): 3-71.

Way , Behavior , Intelligence , Idea

“Politics in America is still different from politics anywhere else because the politics has arisen out of the immediate needs, ambitions, and cupidities of the people, that our politics still smell of the bedroom and the kitchen, rather than having descended to us from the chill punctilio of aristocratic negotiation.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Superman Comes to the Supermarket (1960)

People

“The image that creates this thinking gives rise to a feeling of evidence and a conviction that it is not based on reason. This kind of thinking explains the reaction we so often note among our contemporaries: when someone asks them to give the reason for their opinions, they answer: "It’s evident." This thinking, which creates prejudices and stereotypes, is the domain of the unquestionable. Obviously you cannot dispute with an image, and you cannot challenge the hero of a film. But this extends to the mental images produced by the film: there is no criticism or debate possible, because these involve differing methods of thought. What produces immediate assent cannot bear the discussion process. The conviction acquired in this way can only be attacked on its own ground: by other images.”

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

J. Hanks, trans. (1985), p. 213
The Humiliation of the Word (1981)

Way , Feeling , Thinking

“During the April battles the Armenian leadership was completely exposed because they suffered a heavy defeat and did not receive any political support. But, in fact, they relied on that support very much. And when they did not receive that support they, as usual, started to accuse different countries. At the end of the day, they were forced to admit their defeat in the April battles. First, they said that they did not lose the lands. Then they said that these lands are unimportant. Then they said that they will retake these territories. All this is totally untrue. The Armenian leadership has put itself in such a ridiculous situation that Armenia still feels grave consequences of this.”

Ilham Aliyev (1961) 4th President of Azerbaijan from 2003

While receiving a group of servicemen on the anniversary of the April victories of the Azerbaijani army (31 March 2017) http://en.apa.az/nagorno_karabakh/ilham-aliyev-nagorno-karabakh-conflict-is-azerbaijan-s-internal-affair.html
Nagorno-Karabakh

Feeling , Support , Suffering , Country

“Children being left, it's not always like books of Charles Dickens. When you lose your parents in childhood, it's a fact of life, and, you know, human beings are extraordinary powerful survivors. My mother commit suicide. I was lucky it was not in front of me. O. K.? Which is truth, and Father was confused, and we never had any relationship, serious relationship. I never knew my father, in a way. But what? It's made me different? No, I mean. I blame for every fuckups in my life my parents? No. [Pause] I got lucky. I fell in love with dance.”

Mikhail Baryshnikov (1948) Soviet-American dancer, choreographer, and actor born in Letonia, Soviet Union

As quoted in "Profile: The Soloist", reprinted in Life Stories: Profiles from The New Yorker https://books.google.com/books?id=KDhjzXAjyUMC&pg=PA66, p. 66.

Love , Life , Children , Truth

“If you say Ram Ram Ram and Allah Allah Allah, you will get confused. So one god is enough. For me Bindu has never done the same thing. There is logic in every abstract form that I make. My work is like poetry and it should create a different atmosphere for the visitor. Poetry, literaturea and art seem simple but it is very difficult to understand it.”

S. H. Raza (1922–2016) Indian artist

Indian contemporary artists have not reached my standard: SH Raza

God , Art , Understanding

“Got my ticket at the airport
Well I guess I've been marking time
I've been living in another country
That operates along entirely different lines
Keep me away from porter or whiskey
Don't play anything sentimental it'll make me cry
I've got to go back my friend
Is there really any need to ask why?”

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

Got to Go Back
Song lyrics, No Guru (1986)

Time , Cry , Country

“When Mrs. Casaubon was announced he started up as from an electric shock, and felt a tingling at his fingerends. Any one observing him would have seen a change in his complexion, in the adjustment of his facial muscles, in the vividness of his glance, which might have made them imagine that every molecule in his body had passed the message of a magic touch. And so it had. For effective magic is transcendent nature; and who shall measure the subtlety of those touches which convey the quality of soul as well as body, and make a man’s passion for one woman differ from his passion for another as joy in the morning light over valley and river and white mountain-top differs from joy among Chinese lanterns and glass panels? Will, too, was made of very impressible stuff. The bow of a violin drawn near him cleverly, would at one stroke change the aspect of the world for him, and his point of view shifted— as easily as his mood. Dorothea’s entrance was the freshness of morning.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Middlemarch (1871)

World , Soul , Imagination , Mountain

“What if there are not only two nostrils, two eyes, two lobes, and so forth, but two psyches as well, and they are separately equipped? They go through life like Siamese twins inside one person … They can be just a little different, like identical twins, or they can be vastly different, like good and evil.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Kittredge Gardiner, in Harlot's Ghost : A Novel (1991)

Life , Evil , Personality

“Everybody’s got their differences
too bad
here’s a circumstance in which the stakes are high
everybody’s got their secrets out
so sad
go around the room and see who doesn’t cry Soon enough
you’ll be free to write it off
you don’t know enough
to call a bluff
and the one who does
will never ever tell”

Aimee Mann (1960) American indie rock singer-songwriter (born 1960)

"Soon Enough" · Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkjIoIhNDVY
Song lyrics, Charmer (2012)

Secret , Sadness , Cry

“We all have ability. The difference is how we use it.”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

As quoted in The Story of Stevie Wonder (1976) by James Haskins, Ch. 1 : Growing Up in a World of Darkness
1970s

“The idea is still widespread that Australians were among the world's most persistent racists until the White Australia policy was abolished. But in 1900, and long after, almost every part of the Western world was wary of large-scale immigration from poorer, low-wage countries whose reigning culture was different. Asians at times were wary of outsiders. Between 1860 and 1914 it was safer to be a Chinese gold-digger living in Australia than to be an Australian, especially a female missionary, living in China.”

Geoffrey Blainey (1930) Australian historian

The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia (2016)

World , Idea , Time , Parting

“By The middle of The 1920s General Motors had accomplished some things, but apart from survival and reorganization, they were more in the realm of the mind than of reality. We knew, as I have related, the strategy with which we proposed to approach the car business, how we proposed to manage the enterprise financially, and the relationships we wanted to establish among persons in different roles. But by the end of 1924 little of this was reﬂected in Our activities in the automobile market. That our volume of business had increased after the slump of 1921 — and especially in 1923 — could be attributed less to our own wits than to the improvement in the general economy and the rising demand for automobiles. While internally we had made much progress, externally we had marked time. But the time had come to act.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: My Years with General Motors, 1963, p. 149

Cars , Business , Reality , Time

“There is no coherent knowledge, i. e. no uniform comprehensive account of the world and the events in it. There is no comprehensive truth that goes beyond an enumeration of details, but there are many pieces of information, obtained in different ways from different sources and collected for the benefit of the curious. The best way of presenting such knowledge is the list - and the oldest scientific works were indeed lists of facts, parts, coincidences, problems in several specialized domains.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend book Farewell to Reason

pg 98, italics are feyerabends.
Farewell to Reason (1987)

Truth , World , Way , Knowledge

“Humans were genetically inclined to be intolerant of difference. They could overcome the inclination, but it was a reality of the Human conflict that they often did not.”

Octavia E. Butler book Imago

Source: Imago (1989), Chapter III, “Imago” section 7 (p. 710)

Reality

“The mean and variance are unambiguously determined by the distribution, but a distribution is, of course, not determined by its mean and variance: A number of different distributions have the same mean and the same variance.”

Richard von Mises (1883–1953) Austrian physicist and mathematician

Sixth Lecture, Statistical Problems in Physics, p. 212
Probability, Statistics And Truth - Second Revised English Edition - (1957)

“Knowledge management often generates theories that are too general or abstract to be easily testable. In some cases, simulation modeling can help. [WE have developed] an agent-based simulation model derived from a conceptual framework, the Information Space or I-Space and use it to explore the differences between a neoclassical and a Schumpeterian information environment.”

Max Boisot (1943–2011) British academic and educator

Boisot, M. H., Canals, A., & MacMillan, I. (2004). " Simulating I-Space (SIS): An agent-based approach to modeling knowledge flows http://entrepreneurship.wharton.upenn.edu/research/simispace3_200405.pdf." Working papers of the Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Knowledge , Help

“If history has a lesson, it is that the "winner take all" attitude deprives one of the pleasures of being the heir to the best of different traditions, even while avoiding their intolerance against each other.”

László Tisza (1907–2009) Hungarian physicist

as reported by [Magdolna Hargittai, Candid science IV: conversations with famous physicists, Imperial College Press, 2004, 1860944167, 402]

Pleasure , History

“It is the kind of thing that happens to you when you are stupid," said Esa. "Things go entirely differently from the way you planned them.”

Agatha Christie book Death Comes as the End

Death Comes as the End (1945)

Stupidity , Way

“I have always thought that clarity is a form of courtesy that the philosopher owes; moreover, this discipline of ours considers it more truly a matter of honor today than ever before to be open to all minds … This is different from the individual sciences which increasingly [interpose] between the treasure of their discoveries and the curiosity of the profane the tremendous dragon of their closed terminology.”

José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist

Source: What is Philosophy? (1964), p. 19

Science

“No one lusting for blood is ever innocent. Or satisfied. I have not been innocent. Or satisfied. Just as the man who wants silver will not be satisfied with silver, a man who wants the blood of another will not be satisfied with having that blood, nor the woman with jewels be satisfied with jewels, and the man who wants women will not be satisfied with women. Don't try telling me different. Haven't I looked about me in the city and seen how all labor is for the mouth, yet the appetite is not filled? Don't I know myself that no want is ever satisfied? Wishes are granted, goals attained. But wants? Forget them. They live as long as the person they inhabit.”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

Women , Personality , Forgetting

“It's tempting to say all religions are bad, and I do say all religions are bad, but it's a worse temptation to say all religions are equally bad because they're not. If you look at the actual impact that different religions have on the world it's quite apparent that at present the most evil religion in the world has to be Islam. It's terribly important to modify that because of course that doesn't mean all Muslims are evil, very far from it. Individual Muslims suffer more from Islam than anyone else. They suffer from the homophobia, the misogyny, the joylessness which is preached by extreme Islam, Isis and the Iranian regime. So it is a major evil in the world, we do have to combat it, but we don't do what Trump did and say all Muslims should be shut out of the country. That's draconian, that's illiberal, inhumane and wicked. I am against Islam not least because of the unpleasant effects it has on the lives of Muslims.”

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

As quoted in "Richard Dawkins: religious education is crucial for British schoolchildren" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/06/11/richard-dawkins-religious-education-crucial-british-schoolchildren/ by Sarah Knapton, The Telegraph (11 June 2017)

World , Religion , Suffering , Evil

“I've repeatedly said that for people as little in common as Joanne and myself, we have an uncommonly good marriage. We are actors, we make pictures — and that's about all we have in common. Maybe that's enough. Wives shouldn't feel obligated to accompany their husbands to a ball game, husbands do look a bit silly attending morning coffee breaks with the neighbourhood wives when most men are out at work. Husbands and wives should have separate interests, cultivate different sets of friends — and not impose one upon the other.”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in Paul Newman (1975) by Charles Hamblett ISBN 0-491-01761-8, p. 176

Men , Marriage , People , Feeling

“Today, I will try to remember to regret the past. I will think of how many mistakes I have made throughout my life. I will say to myself, "If only I could go back in time and make different choices, so that my life could be the way it should have been."”

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

Then I will remind myself that I cannot.
March 16
Quotes from Daily Negations (2007)

Life , Way , Thinking , Time

“President Roosevelt and President Truman and President Eisenhower had the same experience, they all made the effort to get along with the Russians. But every time, finally it failed. And the reason it failed was because the Communists are determined to destroy us, and regardless of what hand of friendship we may hold out or what arguments we may put up, the only thing that will make that decisive difference is the strength of the United States.”

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

Speech at Democratic Rally, George Washington High School Stadium, Alexandria, Virginia (24 August 1960) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=74188
1960

Friendship , Decision , Effort , Time