Quotes about difference

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“That's the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do.”

“But it's also true that the person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing. All we know about the future is that it will be different. But perhaps what we fear is that it will be the same. So we must celebrate the changes.”

“As much as I live I shall not imitate them or hate myself for being different to them”

“What is the difference between a taxidermist & a tax-collector? The taxidermist only takes your skin.”

“The only difference between a caprice and a lifelong passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.”

“I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.”

“Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”

“If you've a story, make sure it's a whole one, with details close to hand. It's the difference between a good lie and getting caught.”

“No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.”

“Different authors have different points of view. You can't just say, 'I believe in the Bible.”

“The specific character of [women's] oppression cannot be explained away by equating different situations through superficial and childish simplifications[:]

It is true that both the woman and the male worker are condemned to silence by their exploitation. But under the current system, the worker's wife is also condemned to silence by her worker-husband. In other words, in addition to the class exploitation common to both of them, women must confront a particular set of relations that exist between them and men, relations of conflict and violence that use physical differences as their pretext.”

“She'd thought love had something to do with happiness, but it turned out they were not even vaguely related. Love was closer to a need, no different from the need to eat, to breathe.”

“There are so many different kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.”

“Whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.”

“Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world's original sin. If the cave-man had known how to laugh, History would have been different.”

“To create, I destroyed myself; I made myself external to such a degree within myself that within myself I do not exist except in an external fashion. I am the living setting in which several actors make entrances, putting on several different plays.”

“I was not ladylike, nor was I manly. I was something else altogether. There were so many different ways to be beautiful.”

“If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God.”

“There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.”

“Evil isn’t the real threat to the world. Stupid is just as destructive as Evil, maybe more so, and it’s a hell of a lot more common. What we really need is a crusade against Stupid. That might actually make a difference.”

“Maybe the only significant difference between a really smart simulation and a human being was the noise they made when you punched them.”

“Men don't think and differently from women - they just make more noise about being able to.”

“Think of God and not religion, of ecstasy and not mysticism. The difference between the theoretician of faith and the believer is as great as between the psychiatrist and the psychotic.”

“The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal.”

“Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot if difference. They don't have to makes speeches. Just believing is usually enough.”

“The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.”

“If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is today? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men? Is the lot of the average human being better now that in the time of the Pharaohs?”

“I have one life and one chance to make it count for something… I'm free to choose what that something is, and the something I've chosen is my faith. Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands -- this is not optional -- my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.”

“Every year, when you're a child, you become a different person.”

“Cecily. This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade.
Gwendolen. [Satirically. ] I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.”

“There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do.”

“And what had he wanted? He'd never sat down to think about it. But mostly, he wanted yesterday to be different from today.”

“I manage because I have to. Because I've no other way out. Because I've overcome the vanity and pride of being different, I've understood that they are a pitiful defense against being different. Because I've understood that the sun shines differently when something changes. The sun shines differently, but it will continue to shine, and jumping at it with a hoe isn't going to do anything.”

“When I was young, my ambition was to be one of the people who made a difference in this world. My hope is to leave the world a little better for having been there.”

“It's hard to explain," said Brutha. "But I think it's got something to do with how people should behave… you should do things because they're right. Not because gods say so. They might say something different another time.”

“The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.”

“The difference between slaves in Roman and Ottoman days and today’s employees is that slaves did not need to flatter their boss.”

“For example, the dwarfs found out how to turn lead into gold by doing it the hard way. The difference between that and the easy way is that the hard way works.”

“The easiest thing in the world is self-deceit; for every man believes what he wishes, though the reality is often different.”

“Remember this well. There are two kind of fights. As long as we place ourselves in battle, we must always know the difference: fights to defend life… and fights to defend pride…”

“Each path to knowledge involves different rules and these rules are not interchangeable.”

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

“Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation, and conversation must have a common basis, and between two people of widely different culture the only common basis possible is the lowest level.”

“God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.”

“There's all the difference in the world between having something to say, and having to say something.”

“One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.”

“I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.”

“I remained standing in the middle of the room, swaying on my feet as though I had received a blow. I thought of my life and saw what it had been. No one could swim against such a current of mud. I had been a man so horrible that he could have no friend. But wasn't that, I asked myself, because I had always been incapable of wearing a disguise? If all men went through life with unmasked faces, as I had done for half a century, one might be surprised to find how little difference there was between them. But, in fact, no one lives with his face uncovered, no one. Most men ape greatness or nobility. Though they do not know it, they conform to certain fixed types, literary or other. This the saints know, and they hate and despise themselves because they see themselves with unclouded eyes. I should not have been so universally condemned had I not been so defenseless, so open, and so naked.”

“I learned that just beneath the surface there's another world, and still different worlds as you dig deeper. I knew it as a kid, but I couldn't find the proof. It was just a kind of feeling. There is goodness in blue skies and flowers, but another force--a wild pain and decay--also accompanies everything.”

“The world of the happy is quite different from the world of the unhappy.”

“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions that differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.”

“It is interesting to note that an overwhelming majority of citizens in the world's three largest democracies have different religions: India (81 percent Hindu), the United States (76 percent Christian), and Indonesia (87 percent Muslim). Two of them have elected women as leaders of their government.”

“Harmony exists no less in difference than in likeness, if only the same key-note govern both parts.”

“The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.”

“We must find time to stop and thank the people who make a difference in our lives.”

“But for half a minute she wished it was a different sort of day, even though she knew that nothing good could come from wanting at the world.”

“So go ahead. Fall down. The world looks different from the ground.”

“All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.”

“To me [Edgar Allen Poe's] prose is unreadable—like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death.”

“Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.”

“People ask the difference between a leader and a boss… The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.”

“The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.”

“The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say “no” to almost everything.”

“Why can’t I try on different lives, like dresses, to see which fits best and is more becoming?”

“Symmetry is what we see at a glance; based on the fact that there is no reason for any difference…”

“Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we've passed. Or a month, it makes no difference.
So unless were going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes.”

“Maybe it was the same with people: if you studied them, you'd see new and different things. But would you like what you saw? Did it depend on who was doing the looking?”

“If you're black, you got to look at America a little bit different. You got to look at America like the uncle who paid for you to go to college, but who molested you.”

“Some people work an entire lifetime and wonder if they ever made a difference to the world. But the Marines don't have that problem.”

“Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference: the one takes account only of the visible effect; the other takes account of both the effects which are seen and those which it is necessary to foresee.”

“What exactly was the difference? He wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?”

“You ride as a man, fight as a man, and you think as a man-"
"I think as a human being," she retorted hotly. "Men don't think any differently from women- they just make more noise about being able to.”

“Good men and bad men alike are capable of weakness. The difference is simply that a bad man will be proud all his life of one good deed - while an honest man is hardly aware of his good acts, but remembers a single sin for years on end.”

“Good books tell the truth, even when they're about things that never have been and never will be. They're truthful in a different way.”

“Every established order tends to produce (to very different degrees with different means) the naturalization of its own arbitrariness.”

“The love of a single heart can make a world of difference.”

“It is not difference that dominates the world, but the obliteration of difference by mimetic reciprocity, which itself, being truly universal, shows the relativism of perpetual difference to be an illusion.”

“One of the better definitions of insanity - doing the exact same thing over and over and expecting the result to be different.”

“In a very real sense we have two minds, one that thinks and one that feels. These two fundamentally different ways of knowing interact to construct our mental life.”

“She had always liked this image of herself as too much trouble, as different, and she sometimes thought of it as a carapace that kept her safe.”

“The difference between misery and happiness depends on what we do with our attention.”

“Was I ignorant, then, when I was seventeen? I think not. I knew everything. A quarter-century's experience of life since then has added nothing to what I knew. The one difference is that at seventeen I had no 'realism'.”

“You don't have to believe in my miracles. You can call them accidents or coincidences, if you must. But don't pity me for my faith. And don't presume that you're better, just because you believe something different.”

“Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.”

“When our mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters are considered both different and inferior in the eyes of the God we worship, this belief tends to permeate society and everyone suffers.”

“It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go. The difference is that you can compel your car to go to a garage, but you cannot compel Hitler to go to a psychiatrist.”

“Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams — they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do — they all contain truths”

“The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.”

“I didn't say I liked it Harry. I said it fascinated me. There is a great difference.”

“Men know life too early. Women know life too late. That is the difference between men and women.”

“Do you know the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

"Wrong. That's the definition of determination.”

“A world of happier men and happier women who are truer to themselves. And this is how to start: We must raise our daughters differently. We must also raise our sons differently.”

“When God puts love and compassion in your heart toward someone, He’s offering you an opportunity to make a difference in that person’s life. You must learn to follow that love. Don’t ignore it. Act on it. Somebody needs what you have.”

“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—'tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.”

“I want to be important. By being different. And these girls are all the same.”

“The sole difference between myself and a madman is the fact that I am not mad!”

“I have discovered with advancing years that few things are entirely black or white, but more often different shades of grey.”

“What you want, my lad, and what you're going to get are two very
different things.”

“We all have a Monster within; the difference is in degree, not in kind.”