Quotes about difference
page 74

Michael von Faulhaber photo

“The God of the New Testament is not a different God from the God of the Old”

Michael von Faulhaber (1869–1952) German Roman Catholic Cardinal

Sermon 1
Context: In the Gospel of the New Testament the ancient conception of God is perfected and fulfilled... The same God who spoke from the bush on Mount Horeb had now appeared visibly in the Person of Emmanuel, God with us... The God of the New Testament is not a different God from the God of the Old.

Herbert Read photo

“Art differs from nature not in its organic form, but in its human origins: in the fact that it is not God or a machine that makes a work of art, but an individual”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

The Origins of Art (1966)
Other Quotes
Context: What I am searching for... is some formula that would combine individual initiative with universal values, and that combination would give us a truly organic form. Form, which we discover in nature by analysis, is obstinately mathematical in its manifestations—which is to say that creation in art requires thought and deliberation. But this is not to say that form can be reduced to a formula. In every work of art it must be re-created, but that too is true of every work of nature. Art differs from nature not in its organic form, but in its human origins: in the fact that it is not God or a machine that makes a work of art, but an individual with his instincts and intuitions, with his sensibility and his mind, searching relentlessly for the perfection that is neither in mind nor in nature, but in the unknown. I do not mean this in an other-worldly sense, only that the form of the flower is unknown to the seed.

Alexander Berkman photo

“The social revolution means much more than the reorganization of conditions only: it means the establishment of new human values and social relationships, a changed attitude of man to man, as of one free and independent to his equal; it means a different spirit in individual and collective life, and that spirit cannot be born overnight. It is a spirit to be cultivated, to be nurtured and reared, as the most delicate flower it is, for indeed it is the flower of a new and beautiful existence.”

Alexander Berkman (1870–1936) anarchist and writer

What Is Anarchism? (1929), Ch. 26: "Preparation" http://libcom.org/library/what-is-anarchism-alexander-berkman-26
Context: If your object is to secure liberty, you must learn to do without authority and compulsion. If you intend to live in peace and harmony with your fellow-men, you and they should cultivate brotherhood and respect for each other. If you want to work together with them for your mutual benefit, you must practice cooperation. The social revolution means much more than the reorganization of conditions only: it means the establishment of new human values and social relationships, a changed attitude of man to man, as of one free and independent to his equal; it means a different spirit in individual and collective life, and that spirit cannot be born overnight. It is a spirit to be cultivated, to be nurtured and reared, as the most delicate flower it is, for indeed it is the flower of a new and beautiful existence.

Albert Jay Nock photo

“It may now be easily seen how great the difference is between the institution of government, as understood by Paine and the Declaration of Independence, and the institution of the State. … The nature and intention of government … are social. Based on the idea of natural rights, government secures those rights to the individual by strictly negative intervention, making justice costless and easy of access; and beyond that it does not go.”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

Source: Our Enemy, the State (1935), p. 49
Context: It may now be easily seen how great the difference is between the institution of government, as understood by Paine and the Declaration of Independence, and the institution of the State. … The nature and intention of government … are social. Based on the idea of natural rights, government secures those rights to the individual by strictly negative intervention, making justice costless and easy of access; and beyond that it does not go. The State, on the other hand, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.

Mikhail Gorbachev photo

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

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

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

Calvin Coolidge photo

“If we are to have that harmony and tranquility, that union of spirit which is the foundation of real national genius and national progress, we must all realize that there are true Americans who did not happen to be born in our section of the country, who do not attend our place of religious worship, who are not of our racial stock, or who are not proficient in our language. If we are to create on this continent a free Republic and an enlightened civilization that will be capable of reflecting the true greatness and glory of mankind, it will be necessary to regard these differences as accidental and unessential. We shall have to look beyond the outward manifestations of race and creed. Divine Providence has not bestowed upon any race a monopoly of patriotism and character. The same principle that it is necessary to apply to the attitude of mind among our own people it is also necessary to apply to the attitude of mind among the different nations.”

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

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)
Context: If we are to have that harmony and tranquility, that union of spirit which is the foundation of real national genius and national progress, we must all realize that there are true Americans who did not happen to be born in our section of the country, who do not attend our place of religious worship, who are not of our racial stock, or who are not proficient in our language. If we are to create on this continent a free Republic and an enlightened civilization that will be capable of reflecting the true greatness and glory of mankind, it will be necessary to regard these differences as accidental and unessential. We shall have to look beyond the outward manifestations of race and creed. Divine Providence has not bestowed upon any race a monopoly of patriotism and character. The same principle that it is necessary to apply to the attitude of mind among our own people it is also necessary to apply to the attitude of mind among the different nations. During the war we were required not only to put a strong emphasis on everything that appealed to our own national pride but an equally strong emphasis on that which tended to disparage other peoples. There was an intensive cultivation of animosities and hatreds and enmities, together with a blind appeal to force, that took possession of substantially all the peoples of the earth. Of course, these ministered to the war spirit. They supplied the incentive for destruction, the motive for conquest. But in time of peace these sentiments are not helps but hindrances; they are not constructive.

“We have to look beyond the politicians to see a different future.”

Charles A. Reich (1928–2019) American lawyer

The Liberals' Mistake (1987)
Context: All of us are responding to the fact there is no system that can keep any promises. Everybody is fighting each other under the illusion that it is the "other people" that are causing the problem. We don't realize that we are all in the same boat. We are all suffering from the absence of a system that can pull us together and assure us that the results of each person's work will come back to him and enhance his life in some way.
Neither Democrats nor Republicans today offer any vision of how we can overcome our present difficulties and build a more satisfying life. Both offer merely palliatives and, at best, a holding pattern. We have to look beyond the politicians to see a different future.

Vitruvius photo

“The properties of the soil are as different and unlike as are the various countries.”

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter VI, Sec. 5
Context: There will still be the question why Tuscany, although it abounds in hot springs, does not furnish a powder out of which, on the same principle, a wall can be made which will set fast under water.... The properties of the soil are as different and unlike as are the various countries.... Hence it is not in all the places where boiling springs of hot water abound that there is the same combination of favourable circumstances... For things are produced in accordance with the will of nature; not to suit man's pleasure, but as it were by a chance distribution.

C. J. Cherryh photo

“Save one, whose patience or whose pride was more than all the rest.
So one place, one untouched place in all the world remained, a rather smallish forest near the sea and near humankind, keeping a time different than elsewhere.”

The Dreamstone, Book One : The Gruagach, Ch. 1 : Of Fish and Fire
Arafel's Saga (1983)
Context: Men changed whatever they set hand to. They wrought their magic on beasts, to make them dull and patient. They brought fire and the reek of smoke to the dales. They brought lines and order to the curve of the hills. Most of all they brought the chill of iron, to sweep away the ancient shadows.
But they took the brightness too. It was inevitable, because that brightness was measured against that dark. Men piled stone on stone and made warm homes, and tamed some humbler, quieter things, but the darkest burrowed deep and the brightest went away, heartbroken.
Save one, whose patience or whose pride was more than all the rest.
So one place, one untouched place in all the world remained, a rather smallish forest near the sea and near humankind, keeping a time different than elsewhere.

Barry Goldwater photo

“Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.”

Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) American politician

Acceptance Speech http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/may98/goldwaterspeech.htm as the Republican Presidential candidate, San Francisco (July 1964)
Unsourced variant: Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth, and let me remind you they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny.
Context: Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed. Their mistaken course stems from false notions of equality, ladies and gentlemen. Equality, rightly understood, as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences. Wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.

Angus King photo

“One of the real benefits of any travel is gaining some perspective. You see things from different points of view.”

Angus King (1944) United States Senator from Maine

Bowdoin Academic Spotlight interview (2011)
Context: One of the real benefits of any travel is gaining some perspective. You see things from different points of view. That came home to me in a variety of ways: politically, economically, seeing what was going on in other states.

Gustave Moreau photo

“I have designed a decorative and monumental work as a group of subjects representing the three ages of sacred and profane mythology: the Golden Age, the Silver Age and the Iron Age. I have symbolised these different ages by dividing each one into compositions representing the three phases of the day: morning, noon and evening.
The Golden Age comprises three compositions (Adam and childhood):
:1. Prayer at sunrise.
:2. A walk in Paradise or the ecstasy before nature.
:3. All nature asleep.
The Silver Age. The second phase is taken from pagan mythology (Orpheus and youth):
:1. The dream nature is revealed to the senses of the inspired poet.
:2. The song.
: 3. Orpheus in the forest, his lyre broken and he longs for unknown countries and immortality.
The Iron Age (Cain and the maturity of man):
:1. The Sower making the earth productive (production).
:2. The Ploughman (work).
:3. Death (Cain and Abel).
Fourth panel:
The Triumph of Christ.
These three periods of humanity also correspond to the three periods in the life of a man:
The purity of childhood: Adam –
The poetic and unhappy aspirations of youth: Orpheus –
The grievous sufferings and death of mature age: Cain with the redemption of Christ.
D— thought it was an extremely ingenious and intelligent device to have used a figure from pagan antiquity for the cycle of youth and poetry instead of a Biblical figure, because intelligence and poetry are far better personified in these periods which were devoted to art and the imagination than in the Bible which is all sentiment and religiosity.
The Golden Age: the beginning of the world, naïveté, candour, purity. The morning: prayer. Noon: ecstasy and evening: sleep. No passion, nothing but elementary feelings. —
The Silver Age, corresponding to the civilization of humanity, already begins to feel emotion; it is the age of poets. I can only find this cycle in Greece. The morning: inspiration. Noon: song. Evening: tears. —
The Iron Age. Decadence and fall of humanity. I shall represent Cain ploughing and Abel sowing. Noon: Cain rests while Abel tends the altar of the Lord from which smoke, a symbol of purity, rises straight to the heavens. The evening: death at the hands of Cain.
The first death corresponds to the other deaths in the two other paintings: sleep and death of the senses; tears and the death of the heart. Do you understand the progression?
Sleep, though sad, is gentler than tears which, though painful, are gentler than death. Ecstasy is more delightful than song, which is gentler than work. Prayer is superior to dreaming which is more elevated than manual work.”

Gustave Moreau (1826–1898) French painter

Notes to his mother, on The Life of Humanity (1884-6) http://www.wikiart.org/en/gustave-moreau/humanity-the-golden-age-depicting-three-scenes-from-the-lives-of-adam-and-eve-the-silver-age-1886, his composition of a ten image polyptych, p. 48 ·  Photo of its exhibition on the 3rd Floor of Musée National Gustave Moreau http://en.musee-moreau.fr/house-museum/studios/third-floor
Gustave Moreau (1972)

Lily Tomlin photo

“Nobody is here without a reason. … I always had a different sensibility. I like a huge range of comedy — from broad and farcical, the most sensitive, the most understated — but I always wanted my comedy to be more embracing of the species rather than debasing of it.”

Lily Tomlin (1939) American actress, comedian, writer, and producer

Metro Weekly interview (2006)
Context: It's a more ridiculing, divisive humor today, especially with the advent of political incorrectness, which is a license to be as ridiculing and awful about certain groups... There should be room for everybody, absolutely, and then the culture is going to decide the prevailing weight. We can't decide it individually. Nobody is here without a reason. … I always had a different sensibility. I like a huge range of comedy — from broad and farcical, the most sensitive, the most understated — but I always wanted my comedy to be more embracing of the species rather than debasing of it.

Baba Hari Dass photo

“God is the only lover and He loves in different forms - parents, husband, wife, friend, children, animals. All are His forms and He, Himself, has no form.”

Baba Hari Dass (1923–2018) master yogi, author, builder, commentator of Indian spiritual tradition

Source: Silence Speaks, from the chalkboard of Baba Hari Dass, 1977, p.9

Albert Hofmann photo

“As a path to the perception of a deeper, comprehensive reality, in which the experiencing individual is also sheltered, meditation, in its different forms, occupies a prominent place today.”

Albert Hofmann (1906–2008) Swiss chemist

Source: LSD : My Problem Child (1980), Ch. 11 : LSD Experience and Reality
Context: As a path to the perception of a deeper, comprehensive reality, in which the experiencing individual is also sheltered, meditation, in its different forms, occupies a prominent place today. The essential difference between meditation and prayer in the usual sense, which is based upon the duality of creator-creation, is that meditation aspires to the abolishment of the I-you-barrier by a fusing of object and subject, of sender and receiver, of objective reality and self.
Objective reality, the world view produced by the spirit of scientific inquiry, is the myth of our time. It has replaced the ecclesiastical-Christian and mythical-Apollonian world view.
But this ever broadening factual knowledge, which constitutes objective reality, need not be a desecration. On the contrary, if it only advances deep enough, it inevitably leads to the inexplicable, primal ground of the universe: the wonder, the mystery of the divine — in the microcosm of the atom, in the macrocosm of the spiral nebula; in the seeds of plants, in the body and soul of people.

Harry Emerson Fosdick photo
Kenneth Chenault photo

“I was a history major at Bowdoin and as I looked at different movements in different stages in history, it was clear to me that it was important to have some segments of any particular group work within the system. These people could bring an enlightened view or a different set of perspectives.”

Kenneth Chenault (1951) American business executive

A Principled Leader (2004)
Context: I was a history major at Bowdoin and as I looked at different movements in different stages in history, it was clear to me that it was important to have some segments of any particular group work within the system. These people could bring an enlightened view or a different set of perspectives. I thought to work totally outside the system was destructive and counter-productive in the long term. … what I think was unique about Bowdoin — and maybe it was the size of the school and its environment — is that you couldn’t isolate yourself. We had real discourse, real debate on the issues. At the same time, there was also respect. As a result, people saw you on a personal level, not just as a representative of a certain group or of certain ideas. And I think that was quite important.

Jimmy Carter photo

“What a difference these few months of extremism have made.
The United States has alienated its allies, dismayed its friends, and inadvertently gratified its enemies by proclaiming a confused and disturbing strategy of preemptive war.”

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

Post-Presidency, DNC address (2004)
Context: After 9/11, America stood proud -- wounded, but determined and united. A cowardly attack on innocent civilians brought us an unprecedented level of cooperation and understanding around the world. But in just 34 months, we have watched with deep concern as all this good will has been squandered by a virtually unbroken series of mistakes and miscalculations.
Unilateral acts and demands have isolated the United States from the very nations we need to join us in combating terrorism.
Let us not forget that the Soviets lost the Cold War because the American people combined the exercise of power with adherence to basic principles, based on sustained bipartisan support.
We understood the positive link between the defense of our own freedom and the promotion of human rights.
But recent policies have cost our nation its reputation as the world's most admired champion of freedom and justice.
What a difference these few months of extremism have made.
The United States has alienated its allies, dismayed its friends, and inadvertently gratified its enemies by proclaiming a confused and disturbing strategy of preemptive war.

Robert H. Jackson photo
Carl Sagan photo

“There is a myth about such highs: the user has an illusion of great insight, but it does not survive scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that this is an error, and that the devastating insights achieved when high are real insights; the main problem is putting these insights in a form acceptable to the quite different self that we are when we're down the next day.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Essay as "Mr. X" (1969)
Context: When I'm high I can penetrate into the past, recall childhood memories, friends, relatives, playthings, streets, smells, sounds, and tastes from a vanished era. I can reconstruct the actual occurrences in childhood events only half understood at the time. Many but not all my cannabis trips have somewhere in them a symbolism significant to me which I won't attempt to describe here, a kind of mandala embossed on the high. Free-associating to this mandala, both visually and as plays on words, has produced a very rich array of insights.
There is a myth about such highs: the user has an illusion of great insight, but it does not survive scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that this is an error, and that the devastating insights achieved when high are real insights; the main problem is putting these insights in a form acceptable to the quite different self that we are when we're down the next day.

“It seems to me that the United States and France can learn from each other. French universalism, or its equivalent, is a powerful weapon against racism, which is based on the belief in innate unalterable differences among human groups. Stressing what rights all people have because of what they have in common remains at the heart of anti-racism. A stronger awareness of such human commonality may be needed in the United States at a time when a stress on diversity and ethnic particularism may deprive us of any compelling vision of the larger national community and impede cooperation in the pursuit of a free and just society.”

George M. Fredrickson (1934–2008) American professor and historian

2000s, National Identity in France and the United States (2003)
Context: It seems to me that the United States and France can learn from each other. French universalism, or its equivalent, is a powerful weapon against racism, which is based on the belief in innate unalterable differences among human groups. Stressing what rights all people have because of what they have in common remains at the heart of anti-racism. A stronger awareness of such human commonality may be needed in the United States at a time when a stress on diversity and ethnic particularism may deprive us of any compelling vision of the larger national community and impede cooperation in the pursuit of a free and just society. On the other hand the identification of such universalism with a particular national identity and with specific cultural traits that go beyond essential human rights can lead to an intolerance of the Other that approaches color-coded racism in its harmful effects.

“I said, "I have an extremely wide repertory. What would you like — sex, revolution, or mysticism?" She looked up and said quietly, "What’s the difference?"”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

"The Libertarian Circle"
An Autobiographical Novel (1991)
Context: I was giving a reading at some university. Down in the front row of the auditorium was a young lady in a leather microskirt and a leather microbolero, tied with a leather bootlace, and nothing else whatever. I said, "I have an extremely wide repertory. What would you like — sex, revolution, or mysticism?" She looked up and said quietly, "What’s the difference?"

George Henry Lewes photo

“It is only because men have been attracted by the differences that they have overlooked the not less important affinities.”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

The Principles of Success in Literature (1865)
Context: In Science the paramount appeal is to the Intellect — its purpose being instruction; in Art, the paramount appeal is to the Emotions — its purpose being pleasure. A work of Art must of course indirectly appeal to the Intellect, and a work of Science will also indirectly appeal to the Feelings; nevertheless a poem on the stars and a treatise on astronomy have distinct aims and distinct methods. But having recognised the broadly-marked differences, we are called upon to ascertain the underlying resemblances. Logic and Imagination belong equally to both. It is only because men have been attracted by the differences that they have overlooked the not less important affinities.

Brook Taylor photo

“I make no difference between the Plane of the Horizon, and any other Plane whatsoever; for since Planes, as Planes, are alike in Geometry, it is most proper to consider them as so”

Brook Taylor (1685–1731) English mathematician

New Principles of Linear Perspective (1715, 1749)
Context: I make no difference between the Plane of the Horizon, and any other Plane whatsoever; for since Planes, as Planes, are alike in Geometry, it is most proper to consider them as so, and to explain their Properties in general, leaving the Artist himself to apply them in particular Cases, as Occasion requires.

John F. Kennedy photo

“We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history of the last 18 years been different.”

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

1963, American University speech
Context: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the cold war, remembering that we are not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history of the last 18 years been different. We must, therefore, persevere in the search for peace in the hope that constructive changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a way that it becomes in the Communists' interest to agree on a genuine peace. Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy — or of a collective death-wish for the world. To secure these ends, America's weapons are nonprovocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter, and capable of selective use. Our military forces are committed to peace and disciplined in self- restraint. Our diplomats are instructed to avoid unnecessary irritants and purely rhetorical hostility. For we can seek a relaxation of tension without relaxing our guard. And, for our part, we do not need to use threats to prove that we are resolute. We do not need to jam foreign broadcasts out of fear our faith will be eroded. We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people — but we are willing and able to engage in peaceful competition with any people on earth.

Bill Bailey photo
Starhawk photo

“Our goal is not to get out of the world or to get out of life, but to integrate it, to celebrate it, to embrace it fully, and to embrace all the different cycles within it”

Starhawk (1951) American author, activist and Neopagan

Bodhi Tree lecture (1999)
Context: The Goddess religion asserts that the earth is alive, and that everything on the earth is part of a living being. We believe that you can celebrate life in many different images and forms, that life moves in cycles of birth and growth and death and rebirth, and that the same spirit moves through nature, through the cycles of the seasons, through the birth and growth and death of plants and animals, and through our lives as human beings. There is a multiplicity of images that you can draw upon for understanding and power, but the reason we focus on the goddess is partly to counterbalance the 5,000 years worth of focus on male holy images, and partly to affirm that bringing life into the world is sacred. Our goal is not to get out of the world or to get out of life, but to integrate it, to celebrate it, to embrace it fully, and to embrace all the different cycles within it

Adlai Stevenson photo

“I think that one of our most important tasks is to convince others that there's nothing to fear in difference; that difference, in fact, is one of the healthiest and most invigorating of human characteristics without which life would become meaningless.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

As quoted in Challenge of a Liberal Faith (1988), by George N. Marshall, Ch. 3 : A Contemporary Religion, p. 34
Context: I think that one of our most important tasks is to convince others that there's nothing to fear in difference; that difference, in fact, is one of the healthiest and most invigorating of human characteristics without which life would become meaningless. Here lies the power of the liberal way: not in making the whole world Unitarian, but in helping ourselves and others to see some of the possibilities inherent in viewpoints other than one's own; in encouraging the free interchange of ideas; in welcoming fresh approaches to the problems of life; in urging the fullest, most vigorous use of critical self-examination.

Robert H. Jackson photo
Martin Firrell photo

“Different is not wrong.”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

Quoted in Time Out (17 November 2006).

James Branch Cabell photo

“People progressed from the kindergarten to the cemetery assuming that their emotion at every crisis was what books taught them was the appropriate emotion, and without noticing that it was in reality something quite different.”

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 27 : Evolution of a Vestryman
Context: The purblind majority quite honestly believed that literature was meant to mimic human life, and that it did so. And in consequence, their love-affairs, their maxims, their so-called natural ties and instincts, and above all, their wickedness, became just so many bungling plagiarisms from something they had read, in a novel or a Bible or a poem or a newspaper. People progressed from the kindergarten to the cemetery assuming that their emotion at every crisis was what books taught them was the appropriate emotion, and without noticing that it was in reality something quite different. Human life was a distorting tarnished mirror held up to literature: this much at least of Wilde's old paradox — that life mimicked art — was indisputable. Human life, very clumsily, tried to reproduce the printed word.

Salma Hayek photo

“The difference is very easy to understand. If you enjoy the process, it's your dream. … If you are enduring the process, just desperate for the result, it's somebody else's dream.”

Salma Hayek (1966) Mexican-American actress and producer

O interview (2003)
Context: I wanted to have a voice, and it was okay if I wasn't going to be so famous or so rich. And this the one thing I learned: How do you recognize what's your true dream and what is the dream that you are dreaming for other people to love you? … The difference is very easy to understand. If you enjoy the process, it's your dream. … If you are enduring the process, just desperate for the result, it's somebody else's dream.

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

“Reading is an active and elusive experience. Every reader, reading exactly the same text, will have a slightly different reading experience depending on what s/he projects into the words s/he sees, what strings of meaning and association those words call up in his/her (always) private mind.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

The Vorkosigan Companion (2008)
Context: Reading is an active and elusive experience. Every reader, reading exactly the same text, will have a slightly different reading experience depending on what s/he projects into the words s/he sees, what strings of meaning and association those words call up in his/her (always) private mind. One can never therefore, talk about the quality of a book separately from the quality of the mind that is creating it by reading it, in the only place books live, in the secret mind.

"'A Conversation With Lois McMaster Bujold", an interview with Lillian Stewart Carl, p. 52

Thomas More photo

“There are several sorts of religions, not only in different parts of the island, but even in every town; some worshipping the sun, others the moon or one of the planets.”

Source: Utopia (1516), Ch. 9 : Of the Religions of the Utopians
Context: There are several sorts of religions, not only in different parts of the island, but even in every town; some worshipping the sun, others the moon or one of the planets. Some worship such men as have been eminent in former times for virtue or glory, not only as ordinary deities, but as the supreme god. Yet the greater and wiser sort of them worship none of these, but adore one eternal, invisible, infinite, and incomprehensible Deity; as a Being that is far above all our apprehensions, that is spread over the whole universe, not by His bulk, but by His power and virtue; Him they call the Father of All, and acknowledge that the beginnings, the increase, the progress, the vicissitudes, and the end of all things come only from Him; nor do they offer divine honours to any but to Him alone. And, indeed, though they differ concerning other things, yet all agree in this: that they think there is one Supreme Being that made and governs the world, whom they call, in the language of their country, Mithras. They differ in this: that one thinks the god whom he worships is this Supreme Being, and another thinks that his idol is that god; but they all agree in one principle, that whoever is this Supreme Being, He is also that great essence to whose glory and majesty all honours are ascribed by the consent of all nations.

Brian Greene photo

“All species of particles are unified in superstring theory since each arises from a different vibrational pattern executed by the same underlying entity.”

The Fabric of the Cosmos : Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality (2004), p. 17
Context: Superstring theory starts off by proposing a new answer to an old question: what are the smallest, indivisible constituents of matter? For many decades, the conventional answer has been that matter is composed of particles... that can be modeled as dots that are indivisible and that have no size and no internal structure. Conventional theory claims, and experiments confirm, that these particles combine in various ways to produce protons, neutrons, and a wide variety of atoms and molecules... Superstring theory tells a different story.... it does claim that these particles are not dots. Instead... every particle is composed of a tiny filament of energy, some hundred billion billion times smaller than a single atomic nucleus, which is shaped like a string. And just as a violin string can vibrate in different patterns, each of which produces a different musical tone, the filaments of superstring theory can also vibrate in different patterns. But these vibrations... produce different particle properties.... All species of particles are unified in superstring theory since each arises from a different vibrational pattern executed by the same underlying entity.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo

“This power…reveals itself in the balance or reconcilement of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the general with the concrete; the idea with the image; the individual with the representative”

Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. XIV.
Context: This power... reveals itself in the balance or reconcilement of opposite or discordant qualities: of sameness, with difference; of the general with the concrete; the idea with the image; the individual with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness with old and familiar objects; a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order; judgment ever awake and steady self-possession with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement; and while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial, still subordinates art to nature; the manner to the matter; and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry.

Clive Staples Lewis photo

“There are two parodies of the truth which different sets of Christians have, in the past, been accused by other Christians of believing: perhaps they may make the truth clearer.”

Book III, Chapter 12, "Faith"
Mere Christianity (1952)
Context: There are two parodies of the truth which different sets of Christians have, in the past, been accused by other Christians of believing: perhaps they may make the truth clearer. One set were accused of saying, "Good actions are all that matters. The best good action is charity. The best kind of charity is giving money. The best thing to give money to is the Church. So hand us over ₤10,000 and we will see you through." The answer to that nonsense, of course, would be that good actions done for that motive, done with the idea that Heaven can be bought, would not be good actions at all, but only commercial speculations. The other set were accused of saying, "Faith is all that matters. Consequently, if you have faith, it doesn't matter what you do. Sin away, my lad, and have a good time and Christ will see that it makes no difference in the end." The answers to that nonsense is that, if what you call your "faith" in Christ does not involve taking the slightest notice of what he says, then it is not Faith at all—not faith or trust in Him, but only intellectual acceptance of some theory of Him.

John James Audubon photo

“I presume the love of the mothers for their young is much the same as the love of woman for her offspring. There is but one kind of love; God is love, and all his creatures derive theirs from his; only it is modified by the different degrees of intelligence in different beings and creatures.”

John James Audubon (1785–1851) American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter

Source: The Life and Adventures of John James Audubon, the Naturalist (1868), Ch. X, p. 139
Context: Captain Hall expressed some doubts as to my views respecting the affection and love of pigeons, as if I made it human, and raised the possessors quite above the brutes. I presume the love of the mothers for their young is much the same as the love of woman for her offspring. There is but one kind of love; God is love, and all his creatures derive theirs from his; only it is modified by the different degrees of intelligence in different beings and creatures.

Francis Bacon photo

“There is a great difference between the Idols of the human mind and the Ideas of the divine.”

Aphorism 23
Novum Organum (1620), Book I
Context: There is a great difference between the Idols of the human mind and the Ideas of the divine. That is to say, between certain empty dogmas, and the true signatures and marks set upon the works of creation as they are found in nature.

Albert Einstein photo

“I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force. I also consider that plain living is good for everybody, physically and mentally.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1930s, Mein Weltbild (My World-view) (1931)
Context: I am strongly drawn to the simple life and am often oppressed by the feeling that I am engrossing an unnecessary amount of the labour of my fellow-men. I regard class differences as contrary to justice and, in the last resort, based on force. I also consider that plain living is good for everybody, physically and mentally.

Vincent Van Gogh photo

“I see completely different things in the Bible than Pa sees”

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

1880s, 1881
Context: Whenever I tell Pa anything, it's all just idle talk to him, and certainly no less so to Ma, and I also find Pa and Ma’s sermons and ideas about God, people, morality, virtue, almost complete nonsense. I also read the Bible sometimes, just as I sometimes read Michelet or Balzac or Eliot, but I see completely different things in the Bible than Pa sees, and I can't agree at all with what Pa makes of it in his petty, academic way.

Vitruvius photo

“The stone in quarries is found to be of different and unlike qualities. In some it is soft… in others it is medium… in still others it is hard as in lava quarries. There are also numerous other kinds:”

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter VII, Sec. 1
Context: The stone in quarries is found to be of different and unlike qualities. In some it is soft... in others it is medium... in still others it is hard as in lava quarries. There are also numerous other kinds: for instance, in Campania, red and black tufas; in Umbria, Picenum, and Venetia, white tufa which can be cut with a toothed saw like wood.

Aimee Mann photo

“I thought my life would be different somehow
I thought my life would be better by now
But it's not, and I don't know where to turn”

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

"31 Today" · Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqOcADEZSxI
Song lyrics, @#%&*! Smilers (2008)

Rutherford B. Hayes photo

“Is there anything in which the people of this age and country differ more from those of other lands and former times than in this — their ability to preserve order and protect rights without the aid of government?”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Diary (23 July 1851)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
Context: Is there anything in which the people of this age and country differ more from those of other lands and former times than in this — their ability to preserve order and protect rights without the aid of government? … We are realizing the paradox, “that country is governed best which is governed least.” I no longer fear lynch law. Let the people be intelligent and good, and I am not sure but their impulsive, instinctive verdicts and sentences and executions, unchecked by the rules and technicalities of law, are more likely to be according to substantial justice than the decisions of courts and juries.

Aristotle photo

“There is… something which is in energy only; and there is something which is both in energy and capacity. …of relatives, one is predicated as according to excess and defect: another according to the effective and passive, and, in short, the motive, and that which may be moved… Motion, however, has not a substance separate from things… But each of the categories subsists in a twofold manner in all things. Thus… one thing pertaining to it is form, and another privation. …So the species of motion and mutation are as many as those of being. But since in every genus of things, there is that which is in entelecheia, and that which is in capacity; motion is the entelecheia of that which is in capacity… That there is energy, therefore, and that a thing then happens to be moved, when this energy exists, and neither prior nor posterior to it, is manifest. … [N]either motion nor mutation can be placed in any other genus; nor have those who have advanced a different opinion concerning it spoken rightly. …for by some motion is said to be difference, inequality, and non-being; though it is not necessary that any of these should be moved… Neither is mutation into these, nor from these, rather than from their opposites. …The cause, however, why motion appears to be indefinite, is because it can neither be simply referred to the capacity, nor to the energy of beings. …[I]t is difficult to apprehend what motion is: for it is necessary to refer it either to privation, or to capacity, or to simple energy; but it does not appear that it can be any of these. The above-mentioned mode, therfore remains, viz. that it is a certain energy; but… difficult to be perceived, but which may have a subsistence.”

Book III, Ch. I, pp. 137-147.
Physics

Stephen A. Douglas photo

“Thus you see, that when addressing the Chicago Abolitionists he declared that all distinctions of race must be discarded and blotted out, because the negro stood on an equal footing with the white man; that if one man said the Declaration of Independence did not mean a negro when it declared all men created equal, that another man would say that it did not mean another man; and hence we ought to discard all difference between the negro race and all other races, and declare them all created equal”

Stephen A. Douglas (1813–1861) American politician

Sixth Lincoln-Douglas debate https://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/race-and-slavery-north-and-south-some-logical-fallacies/#comment-47553, (13 October 1860), Quincy, Illinois
1860s
Context: You know that in his Charleston speech, an extract from which he has read, he declared that the negro belongs to an inferior race; is physically inferior to the white man, and should always be kept in an inferior position. I will now read to you what he said at Chicago on that point. In concluding his speech at that place, he remarked, 'My friends, I have detained you about as long as I desire to do, and I have only to say let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man-this race and that race, and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position, discarding our standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal'. Thus you see, that when addressing the Chicago Abolitionists he declared that all distinctions of race must be discarded and blotted out, because the negro stood on an equal footing with the white man; that if one man said the Declaration of Independence did not mean a negro when it declared all men created equal, that another man would say that it did not mean another man; and hence we ought to discard all difference between the negro race and all other races, and declare them all created equal.

Isaac Asimov photo

“How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection.”

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

Source: The Roving Mind (1983), Ch. 25
Context: How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. An artist is emotional, they think, and uses only his intuition; he sees all at once and has no need of reason. A scientist is cold, they think, and uses only his reason; he argues carefully step by step, and needs no imagination. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.

“Rhetoric is a dangerous art. It is the manipulation of the difference, one might say the distance, between truth and image […] And in our times, that distance has become the means by which power is exercised”

Nick Drake (poet) (1961) British writer

ibid
The Rahotep series, Book 2: Tutankhamun
Context: Rhetoric is a dangerous art. It is the manipulation of the difference, one might say the distance, between truth and image [... ] And in our times, that distance has become the means by which power is exercised [... ] Rhetoric has been a force for persuasion since man began to speak, and to convince his enemy that he was indeed his friend.

William Crookes photo

“No incident in my scientific career is more widely known than the part I took many years ago in certain psychic researches. Thirty years have passed since I published an account of experiments tending to show that outside our scientific knowledge there exists a Force exercised by intelligence differing from the ordinary intelligence common to mortals.”

William Crookes (1832–1919) British chemist and physicist

This fact in my life is, of course, well understood by those who honored me with the invitation to become your president. Perhaps among my audience some may feel curious as to whether I shall speak out or be silent. I elect to speak, although briefly. … To ignore the subject would be an act of cowardice — an act of cowardice I feel no temptation to commit.
To stop short in any research that bids fair to widen the gates of knowledge, to recoil from fear of difficulty or adverse criticism, is to bring reproach on science. There is nothing for the investigator to do but to go straight on; "to explore up and down, inch by inch, with the taper his reason; "to follow the light wherever it may lead, even should it at times resemble a will-o'-the-wisp. I have nothing to retract. I adhere to my already published statements. Indeed, I might add much thereto. I regret only a certain crudity in those early expositions which, no doubt justly, militated against their acceptance by the scientific world. My own knowledge at that time scarcely extended beyond the fact that certain phenomena new to science had assuredly occurred, and were attested by my own sober senses and, better still, by automatic record. I was like some two-dimensional being who might stand at the singular point of a Riemann's surface, and thus find himself in infinitesimal and inexplicable contact with a plane of existence not his own.
I think I see a little farther now. I have glimpses of something like coherence among the strange elusive phenomena; of something like continuity between those unexplained forces and laws already known. This advance is largely due to the labors of another association, of which I have also this year the honor to be president — the Society for Psychical Research. And were I now introducing for the first time these inquiries to the world of science I should choose a starting point different from that of old. It would be well to begin with telepathy; with the fundamental law, as I believe it to be, that thoughts and images may be transferred from one mind to another without the agency of the recognized organs of sense — that knowledge may enter the human mind without being communicated in any hitherto known or recognized ways.
Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1898)

“Greenberg and I are simply playing different games”

Paul K. Benedict (1912–1997) American anthropologist, mental health professional, and linguist

Context: As I see it, Greenberg and I are simply playing different games and the contrast in our approaches reflects that basic difference. … I play one game and am intrigued by the other but I do keep wondering whether that other game has any rules or whether a computerized robot might not be rather better at it all. But long live both games!

Al Gore photo

“Television's quasi-hypnotic effect is one reason that the political economy supported by the television industry is as different from the vibrant politics of America's first century as those politics were different from the feudalism that thrived on the ignorance of the masses of people in the Dark Ages.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes, The Assault on Reason (2007)
Context: Television's quasi-hypnotic effect is one reason that the political economy supported by the television industry is as different from the vibrant politics of America's first century as those politics were different from the feudalism that thrived on the ignorance of the masses of people in the Dark Ages.
Our systematic exposure to fear and other arousal stimuli on television can be exploited by the clever public relations specialist, advertiser, or politician.

Carl Sagan photo

“I find that most of the insights I achieve when high are into social issues, an area of creative scholarship very different from the one I am generally known for.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Essay as "Mr. X" (1969)
Context: Incidentally, I find that reasonably good insights can be remembered the next day, but only if some effort has been made to set them down another way. If I write the insight down or tell it to someone, then I can remember it with no assistance the following morning; but if I merely say to myself that I must make an effort to remember, I never do.
I find that most of the insights I achieve when high are into social issues, an area of creative scholarship very different from the one I am generally known for.

Mary Parker Follett photo

“The essence of society is difference, related difference.”

Source: The New State, 1918, p. 33
Context: We see now that the process of the many becoming one is not a metaphysical or mystical idea; psychological analysis shows us how we can at the same moment be the self and the other, it shows how we can be forever apart and forever united. It is by the group process that the transfiguration of the external into the spiritual takes place, that is, that what seems a series becomes a whole. The essence of society is difference, related difference. "Give me your difference" is the cry of society to-day to every man.

Arsène Wenger photo

“But there are not many players in the world who will make a real difference.”

Arsène Wenger (1949) French footballer and manager

Joint Interview with The Times and Daily Mail (2009)
Context: OK, I’m not against that [spending £100m]. If you have the money and you find the one player who can make you win and make the difference, no matter how expensive he is you should do it. But there are not many players in the world who will make a real difference.

T.S. Eliot photo

“We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet's difference from his predecessors”

Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
Context: We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet's difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously. And I do not mean the impressionable period of adolescence, but the period of full maturity.

Robert Southey photo

“Agreed to differ.”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

Life of Wesley (1820).

James D. Watson photo

“This is not a discussion about superiority or inferiority, it is about seeking to understand differences, about why some of us are great musicians and others great engineers.”

James D. Watson (1928) American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist.

To question genetic intelligence is not racism (2007)
Context: We do not yet adequately understand the way in which the different environments in the world have selected over time the genes which determine our capacity to do different things. The overwhelming desire of society today is to assume that equal powers of reason are a universal heritage of humanity. It may well be. But simply wanting this to be the case is not enough. This is not science.
To question this is not to give in to racism. This is not a discussion about superiority or inferiority, it is about seeking to understand differences, about why some of us are great musicians and others great engineers. It is very likely that at least some 10 to 15 years will pass before we get an adequate understanding for the relative importance of nature versus nurture in the achievement of important human objectives. Until then, we as scientists, wherever we wish to place ourselves in this great debate, should take care in claiming what are unarguable truths without the support of evidence.

P. J. O'Rourke photo
Walter Rauschenbusch photo

“This Christian ceremonial system does not differ essentially from that against which the prophets protested; with a few verbal changes their invectives would still apply.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.1 The Historical Roots of Christianity the Hebrew Prophets, p. 7
Context: Christian ritual grew up not as the appropriate and aesthetic expression of spiritual emotions, but as the indispensable means of pleasing and appeasing God, and of securing his favors, temporal and eternal, for those who put their heart into these processes. This Christian ceremonial system does not differ essentially from that against which the prophets protested; with a few verbal changes their invectives would still apply.

Eric Hoffer photo

“There is a fundamental difference between the appeal of a mass movement and the appeal of a practical organization. The practical organization offers opportunities for self-advancement, and its appeal is mainly to self-interest.”

Section 7
The True Believer (1951), Part One: The Appeal of Mass Movements
Context: There is a fundamental difference between the appeal of a mass movement and the appeal of a practical organization. The practical organization offers opportunities for self-advancement, and its appeal is mainly to self-interest. On the other hand, a mass movement, particularly in its active, revivalist phase, appeals not to those intent on bolstering and advancing a cherished self, but to those who crave to be rid of an unwanted self. A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.

Alan Watts photo
Karl Mannheim photo

“When we attribute to one historical epoch one intellectual world and to ourselves another one, or if a certain historically determined social stratum thinks in categories other than our own, we refer not to the isolated cases of thought-content, but to fundamentally divergent thought-systems and to widely differing modes of experience and interpretation.”

Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) Hungarian sociologist

Ideology and Utopia (1929)
Context: The particular conception of "ideology" makes its analysis of ideas on a purely psychological level. If it is claimed for instance that an adversary is lying, or that he is concealing or distorting a given factual situation, it is still nevertheless assumed that both parties share common criteria of validity — it is still assumed that it is possible to refute lies and eradicate sources or error by referring to accepted criteria of objective validity common to both parties. The suspicion that one's opponent is the victim of an ideology does not go so far as to exclude him from discussion on the basis of a common theoretical frame of reference. The case is different with the total conception of ideology. When we attribute to one historical epoch one intellectual world and to ourselves another one, or if a certain historically determined social stratum thinks in categories other than our own, we refer not to the isolated cases of thought-content, but to fundamentally divergent thought-systems and to widely differing modes of experience and interpretation.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah photo

“Hindus and Mussalmans (Muslims) derive their inspiration from different sources of history”

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

Presidential Address to All India Muslim League's Session on March 22, 1940
Context: It is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism. They are not religions in the strict sense of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders, and it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality, and this misconception of one Indian nation has troubles and will lead India to destruction if we fail to revise our notions in time. The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, litterateurs. They neither intermarry nor interdine together and, indeed, they belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspect on life and of life are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and Mussalmans (Muslims) derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, different heroes, and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other and, likewise, their victories and defeats overlap. To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built for the government of such a state.

“Legally defined categories for race differ from one country to another, and they change over time depending largely on the social and political realities of a particular society or nation”

Daniel J. Fairbanks (1956) American artist

Source: Everyone is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race (2015), p. 11.
Context: Classification is real, but it is based much more on a set of social definitions than on genetic distinctions. Legally defined categories for race differ from one country to another, and they change over time depending largely on the social and political realities of a particular society or nation. The notion of discrete racial categories arose mostly as an artifact of centuries-long immigration history coupled with overriding worldviews that white superiority was inherent, a purported genetic destiny that has no basis in modern science.

Sylvia Plath photo

“Instead of the world being divided up into Catholics and Protestants or Republicans and Democrats or white men and black men or even men and women, I saw the world divided into people who had slept with somebody and people who hadn't, and this seemed the only really significant difference between one person and another.”

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 7
Context: Instead of the world being divided up into Catholics and Protestants or Republicans and Democrats or white men and black men or even men and women, I saw the world divided into people who had slept with somebody and people who hadn't, and this seemed the only really significant difference between one person and another. I thought a spectacular change would come over me the day I crossed the boundary line.

Paul of Tarsus photo

“Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.
And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord.
And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.”

1 Corinthians 12:4-11 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+12&version=KJV;SBLGNT<!-- also quoted in An Essay for the Understanding of St. Paul's Epistles https://books.google.com/books?id=13VHAQAAMAAJ by John Locke (1812 edition) pp.165-166 -->
First Epistle to the Corinthians
Context: Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.
And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord.
And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.
But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man, to profit withal.
For to one is given, by the Spirit, the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge, by the same Spirit;
To another, faith by the same Spirit; to another, the gifts of healing, by the same Spirit;
To another, the working of miracles; to another, prophecy; to another, discerning of spirits; to another, divers kinds of tongues; to another, the interpretation of tongues.
But all these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally, as he will.

Haile Selassie photo

“In the mystic traditions of the different religions we have a remarkable unity of spirit.”

Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

Words of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, quoted by Haile Selassie in an address http://www.jah-rastafari.com/selassie-words/show-jah-word.asp?word_id=radhakrishan during the Indian President's state visit to Ethiopia (13 October 1965), quoted in Foreign Affairs Record Vol. 11-12 (1965-1966) by India Ministry of External Affairs, p. 266; Radhakrishnan is also quoted as having made these remarks in The Visva-Bharati Quarterly Vol. 5 (1939-1940)
Misattributed
Context: In the mystic traditions of the different religions we have a remarkable unity of spirit. Whatever religion they may profess, they are spiritual kinsmen. While the different religions in their historic forms bind us to limited groups and militate against the development of loyalty to the world community, the mystics have already stood for the fellowship of humanity in harmony with the spirit of the mystics of ages gone by.

P. J. O'Rourke photo
Jocelyn Bell Burnell photo

“One of the things women bring to a research project, or indeed any project, is they come from a different place, they've got a different background.”

Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943) British scientist

Beautiful Minds (2010)
Context: One of the things women bring to a research project, or indeed any project, is they come from a different place, they've got a different background. Science has been named, developed, interpreted by white males for decades and women view the conventional wisdom from a slightly different angle — and that sometimes means they can clearly point to flaws in the logic, gaps in the argument, they can give a different perspective of what science is.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah photo

“Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, litterateurs”

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

Presidential Address to All India Muslim League's Session on March 22, 1940
Context: It is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism. They are not religions in the strict sense of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders, and it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality, and this misconception of one Indian nation has troubles and will lead India to destruction if we fail to revise our notions in time. The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, litterateurs. They neither intermarry nor interdine together and, indeed, they belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspect on life and of life are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and Mussalmans (Muslims) derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, different heroes, and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other and, likewise, their victories and defeats overlap. To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built for the government of such a state.

Neil Gaiman photo

“The world doesn't have to be like this. Things can be different.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)
Context: You're also finding out something as you read vitally important for making your way in the world. And it's this: The world doesn't have to be like this. Things can be different.

Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“The difference between men is in their principle of association.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), History
Context: The difference between men is in their principle of association. Some men classify objects by color and size and other accidents of appearance; others by intrinsic likeness, or by the relation of cause and effect. The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance.

“If I hadn't been lying in a hole I'd dug with my hands and helmet, that shell would probably have finished me off. The hole was only six or eight inches deep, but that makes an awful lot of difference, and it looked like a canyon.”

James Jones (1921–1977) American author

Letter to his brother Jeff from Guadalcanal (28 January 1943); p. 25
To Reach Eternity (1989)
Context: I wasn't hit very badly — a piece of shrapnel went thru my helmet and cut a nice little hole in the back of my head. It didn't fracture the skull and is healed up nicely now. I don't know what happened to my helmet; the shell landed close to me and when I came to, the helmet was gone. The concussion together with the fragment that hit me must have broken the chinstrap and torn it off my head. It also blew my glasses off my face. I never saw them again, either, but I imagine they are smashed to hell. If I hadn't been lying in a hole I'd dug with my hands and helmet, that shell would probably have finished me off. The hole was only six or eight inches deep, but that makes an awful lot of difference, and it looked like a canyon.

Richard Wright photo
Richard Feynman photo

“It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

Rogers Commission Report (1986)
Context: It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from management. What are the causes and consequences of this lack of agreement? Since 1 part in 100,000 would imply that one could put a Shuttle up each day for 300 years expecting to lose only one, we could properly ask "What is the cause of management's fantastic faith in the machinery?"
We have also found that certification criteria used in Flight Readiness Reviews often develop a gradually decreasing strictness. The argument that the same risk was flown before without failure is often accepted as an argument for the safety of accepting it again. Because of this, obvious weaknesses are accepted again and again, sometimes without a sufficiently serious attempt to remedy them, or to delay a flight because of their continued presence.

Ted Hughes photo

“I’ve sometimes wondered if it wouldn’t be a good idea to write under a few pseudonyms. Keep several quite different lines of writing going. Like Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese poet who tried four different poetic personalities.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

The Paris Review interview
Context: I’ve sometimes wondered if it wouldn’t be a good idea to write under a few pseudonyms. Keep several quite different lines of writing going. Like Fernando Pessoa, the Portuguese poet who tried four different poetic personalities. They all worked simultaneously. He simply lived with the four. What does Eliot say? “Dance, dance, / Like a dancing bear, / Cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape, / To find expression.” It’s certainly limiting to confine your writing to one public persona, because the moment you publish your own name you lose freedom.

Alan Moore photo

“As I understand, or as I hallucinate conceptual space, nearly all form in conceptual space is language, I might even say all the form in non-conceptual space is language, I’m not even sure of what the difference between physical space and conceptual space is anymore, in the interface. All form is language.”

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

De Abaitua interview (1998)
Context: As I understand, or as I hallucinate conceptual space, nearly all form in conceptual space is language, I might even say all the form in non-conceptual space is language, I’m not even sure of what the difference between physical space and conceptual space is anymore, in the interface. All form is language. The forms that we see, or imagine, or perceive, or whatever it is Remote Viewers are doing, in conceptual space are mindforms made from language, and by language I also mean images, sounds. We dress these basic ideas in language we can understand. Sometimes there are sizable errors of translation.

John Maynard Keynes photo

“Leninism is a combination of two things which Europeans have kept for some centuries in different compartments of the soul — religion and business.”

Essays in Persuasion (1931), A Short View of Russia (1925)
Context: Leninism is a combination of two things which Europeans have kept for some centuries in different compartments of the soul — religion and business. We are shocked because the religion is new, and contemptuous because the business, being subordinated to the religion instead of the other way round, is highly inefficient.

Václav Havel photo

“They are periods when there is a tendency to quote, to imitate, and to amplify, rather than to state with authority or integrate. New meaning is gradually born from the encounter, or the intersection, of many different elements.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World (1994)
Context: Periods of history when values undergo a fundamental shift are certainly not unprecedented. This happened in the Hellenistic period, when from the ruins of the classical world the Middle Ages were gradually born. It happened during the Renaissance, which opened the way to the modern era. The distinguishing features of such transitional periods are a mixing and blending of cultures and a plurality or parallelism of intellectual and spiritual worlds. These are periods when all consistent value systems collapse, when cultures distant in time and space are discovered or rediscovered. They are periods when there is a tendency to quote, to imitate, and to amplify, rather than to state with authority or integrate. New meaning is gradually born from the encounter, or the intersection, of many different elements.

Meher Baba photo

“The Avatar appears in different forms, under different names, at different times, in different parts of the world.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

Statement of 1938, as quoted in Meher Baba On War : And Other Relevant Messages (1972); also Discourses (1987), p. 268<!-- 1938, India, MJ 1:1 p 4-7 -->
General sources
Context: The Avatar appears in different forms, under different names, at different times, in different parts of the world. As his appearance always coincides with the spiritual birth of man, so the period immediately preceding his manifestation is always one in which humanity suffers from the pangs of the approaching birth.

“There might be one little thing that makes all the difference, one note or one word. The fine-tuning is all important, and you've got to stay there until you get it right … That's why it can take years.”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

The Times Magazine interview (2005)
Context: There might be one little thing that makes all the difference, one note or one word. The fine-tuning is all important, and you've got to stay there until you get it right... That's why it can take years.

Daniel Kahneman photo

“People who make a difference do not die alone. Something dies in everyone who was affected by them.”

Daniel Kahneman (1934) Israeli-American psychologist

About the death of his long-time collaborator Amos Tversky on 5 June 1996. Nobel Prize Autobiographical Information http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2002/kahneman-bio.html (2002).
Context: People who make a difference do not die alone. Something dies in everyone who was affected by them. Amos made a great deal of difference, and when he died, life was dimmed and diminished for many of us. There is less intelligence in the world. There is less wit. There are many questions that will never be answered with the same inimitable combination of depth and clarity. There are standards that will not be defended with the same mix of principle and good sense. Life has become poorer. There is a large Amos-shaped gap in the mosaic, and it will not be filled. It cannot be filled because Amos shaped his own place in the world, he shaped his life, and even his dying. And in shaping his life and his world, he changed the world and the life of many around him.

Noam Chomsky photo

“I just compared that with standard Leninist views on vanguard parties, which are about the same. About the only difference is that McNamara brought God in”

Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, Class Warfare, 1995
Context: I compared some passages http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/other/intellectuals-state.html of articles of [Robert McNamara] in the late 1960s, speeches, on management and the necessity of management, how a well-managed society controlled from above was the ultimate in freedom. The reason is if you have really good management and everything's under control and people are told what to do, under those conditions, he said, man can maximize his potential. I just compared that with standard Leninist views on vanguard parties, which are about the same. About the only difference is that McNamara brought God in, and I suppose Lenin didn't bring God in. He brought Marx in.

Aristotle photo
D.H. Lawrence photo

“Sex is the balance of male and female in the universe, the attraction, the repulsion, the transit of neutrality, the new attraction, the new repulsion, always different, always new.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1929)
Context: Sex is the balance of male and female in the universe, the attraction, the repulsion, the transit of neutrality, the new attraction, the new repulsion, always different, always new. The long neuter spell of Lent, when the blood is low, and the delight of the Easter kiss, the sexual revel of spring, the passion of midsummer, the slow recoil, revolt, and grief of autumn, greyness again, then the sharp stimulus of winter of the long nights. Sex goes through the rhythm of the year, in man and woman, ceaselessly changing: the rhythm of the sun in his relation to the earth. Oh, what a catastrophe for man when he cut himself off from the rhythm of the year, from his unison with the sun and the earth. Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and the setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and the equinox! This is what is the matter with us. We are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of Life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilised vase on the table.

Edwin Abbott Abbott photo

“With Women, we speak of "love", "duty", "right", "wrong", "pity", "hope", and other irrational and emotional conceptions, which have no existence, and the fiction of which has no object except to control feminine exuberances; but among ourselves, and in our books, we have an entirely different vocabulary and I may almost say, idiom. "Love" then becomes "the anticipation of benefits"; "duty" becomes "necessity" or "fitness"; and other words are correspondingly transmuted.”

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 12. Of the Doctrine of our Priests
Context: About three hundred years ago, it was decreed by the Chief Circle that, since women are deficient in Reason but abundant in Emotion, they ought no longer to be treated as rational, nor receive any mental education. The consequence was that they were no longer taught to read, nor even to master Arithmetic enough to enable them to count the angles of their husband or children; and hence they sensibly declined during each generation in intellectual power. And this system of female non-education or quietism still prevails.My fear is that, with the best intentions, this policy has been carried so far as to react injuriously on the Male Sex.For the consequence is that, as things now are, we Males have to lead a kind of bi-lingual, and I may almost say bi-mental, existence. With Women, we speak of "love", "duty", "right", "wrong", "pity", "hope", and other irrational and emotional conceptions, which have no existence, and the fiction of which has no object except to control feminine exuberances; but among ourselves, and in our books, we have an entirely different vocabulary and I may almost say, idiom. "Love" then becomes "the anticipation of benefits"; "duty" becomes "necessity" or "fitness"; and other words are correspondingly transmuted. Moreover, among Women, we use language implying the utmost deference for their Sex; and they fully believe that the Chief Circle Himself is not more devoutly adored by us than they are: but behind their backs they are both regarded and spoken of — by all except the very young — as being little better than "mindless organisms".

James Branch Cabell photo

“I am Manuel. I have lived in the loneliness which is common to all men, but the difference is that I have known it.”

Manuel, in Ch. XXXIX : The Passing of Manuel
Figures of Earth (1921)
Context: I am Manuel. I have lived in the loneliness which is common to all men, but the difference is that I have known it. Now it is necessary for me, as it is necessary for all men, to die in this same loneliness, and I know that there is no help for it.

Aristotle photo
Andy Goldsworthy photo

“Ideas must be put to the test. That's why we make things, otherwise they would be no more than ideas. There is often a huge difference between an idea and its realisation. I've had what I thought were great ideas that just didn't work.”

Andy Goldsworthy (1956) British sculptor and photographer

Interview with Conrad Bodman, curator at the Barbican Arts Centre (2001)
Context: Ideas must be put to the test. That's why we make things, otherwise they would be no more than ideas. There is often a huge difference between an idea and its realisation. I've had what I thought were great ideas that just didn't work. Sometimes it's difficult to say if something has worked or not. Photography is a way of putting distance between myself and the work which sometimes helps me to see more clearly what it is that I have made.

Muhammad Ali photo

“We all have the same God, we just serve him differently.”

Source: The Soul of a Butterfly (2004), p. xvii
Context: We all have the same God, we just serve him differently. Rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, oceans all have different names, but they all contain water. So do religions have different names, and they all contain truth, expressed in different ways forms and times. It doesn't matter whether you're a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew. When you believe in God, you should believe that all people are part of one family. If you love God, you can't love only some of his children.

Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“Every sect is a certificate that God has not plainly revealed his will to man. To each reader the Bible conveys a different meaning.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Some Mistakes of Moses (1879) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38802/38802-h/38802-h.htm#link0002.
Context: Every sect is a certificate that God has not plainly revealed his will to man. To each reader the Bible conveys a different meaning. About the meaning of this book, called a revelation, there have been ages of war, and centuries of sword and flame. If written by an infinite God, he must have known that these results must follow; and thus knowing, he must be responsible for all.

Albert Pike photo

“Life is what we make it, and the world is what we make it. The eyes of the cheerful and of the melancholy man are fixed upon the same creation; but very different are the aspects which it bears to them.”

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. XXII : Grand Master Architect, p. 193
Context: Life is what we make it, and the world is what we make it. The eyes of the cheerful and of the melancholy man are fixed upon the same creation; but very different are the aspects which it bears to them. To the one, it is all beauty and gladness; the waves of ocean roll in light, and the mountains are covered with day. Life, to him, flashes, rejoicing, upon every flower and every tree that trembles in the breeze. There is more to him, everywhere, than the eye sees; a presence of profound joy, on hill and valley, and bright, dancing water. The other idly or mournfully gazes at the same scene, and everything wears a dull, dim, and sickly aspect. The murmuring of the brooks is a discord to him, the great roar of the sea has an angry and threatening emphasis, the solemn music of the pines sings the requiem of his departed happiness, the cheerful light shines garishly upon his eyes and offends him. The great train of the seasons passes before him like a funeral procession; and he sighs, and turns impatiently away. The eye makes that which it looks upon; the ear makes its own melodies and discords: the world without reflects the world within.

Ward Cunningham photo

“I wanted to invent some software that was completely different, that would grow and change as it was used. That’s how wiki came about.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

"Startup mines for riches in collaboration software" in The Portland Tribune (4 March 2008) http://www.portlandtribune.com/rethinking/story.php?story_id=120430910578805900
Context: When I was at Tek, I was frustrated that computer hardware was being improved faster than computer software. I wanted to invent some software that was completely different, that would grow and change as it was used. That’s how wiki came about.

Wesley Clark photo

“Ultimately, your generation will have the decisive voice. You will determine whether rage or reason guides the United States in the struggle to come. You will choose whether we are known for revenge or compassion. You will choose whether we, too, will kill in the name of God, or whether in His Name, we can find a higher civilization and a better means of settling our differences.
And this is not a new choice, not for your generation — it is a choice that many others have faced throughout history. Only now, we can hope that with your help and engagement we can find a new answer.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

Seton Hall Address (2002)
Context: They killed in the name of God. But they are not the first. This began in pre-history; the tragedy is that it persists today.
Some would characterize the events of 9-11 as a clash of civilizations, and a conflict of religions. And to many it seems a simple and satisfying explanation.
But others would suggest, correctly in my view, that such an interpretation is both wrong-headed and dangerous. They recognize a civil war within Islam itself, as contending factions compete for power. They would argue that we must influence the struggle where we can, by supporting greater attention to the secular structures in the Islamic world, and by encouraging our own American Islamic community to speak out in support of America’s democratic values.
Ultimately, your generation will have the decisive voice. You will determine whether rage or reason guides the United States in the struggle to come. You will choose whether we are known for revenge or compassion. You will choose whether we, too, will kill in the name of God, or whether in His Name, we can find a higher civilization and a better means of settling our differences.
And this is not a new choice, not for your generation — it is a choice that many others have faced throughout history. Only now, we can hope that with your help and engagement we can find a new answer.

Harry V. Jaffa photo

“Well, it was not a semantic difference, it was a fundamental difference”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Right of Secession Is Not the Right of Revolution
Context: DiLorenzo in his book thinks that the right of secession and the right of revolution—that that's a semantic difference. Well, it was not a semantic difference, it was a fundamental difference. The right of revolution is referred to in the Declaration of Independence when it says, “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, the people have a right to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.” That is what has been referred to ever since as the right of revolution. It’s the right to resist intolerable oppression. It's the right to prevent anyone from being reduced under absolute despotism, which is what the Declaration of Independence says. And this Declaration gives a long catalog of the abuses, of usurpations of power practiced by the King and Parliament of Great Britain, which justified the colonies in their rebellion.

“Aristotle …who summarized the theories of earlier thinkers, developed the view that all substances were made of a primary matter… On this, different forms could be impressed… so the idea of the transmutation of the elements arose. Aristotle's elements are really fundamental properties of matter”

J. R. Partington (1886–1965) British chemist

A Short History of Chemistry (1937)
Context: The first clear expression of the idea of an element occurs in the teachings of the Greek philosophers.... Aristotle... who summarized the theories of earlier thinkers, developed the view that all substances were made of a primary matter... On this, different forms could be impressed... so the idea of the transmutation of the elements arose. Aristotle's elements are really fundamental properties of matter... hotness, coldness, moistness, and dryness. By combining these in pairs, he obtained what are called the four elements, fire, air, earth and water... a fifth, immaterial, one was added, which appears in later writings as the quintessence. This corresponds with the ether. The elements were supposed to settle out naturally into the earth (below), water (the oceans), air (the atmosphere), fire and ether (the sky and heavenly bodies).

Khalil Gibran photo

“In truth we gaze but do not see, and hearken but do not hear; we eat and drink but do not taste. And there lies the difference between Jesus of Nazareth and ourselves.”

A Philosopher: On Wonder And Beauty
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)
Context: In truth we gaze but do not see, and hearken but do not hear; we eat and drink but do not taste. And there lies the difference between Jesus of Nazareth and ourselves.
His senses were all continually made new, and the world to Him was always a new world.

George Eliot photo

“A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.”

Daniel Deronda (1876), Bk. 2, Ch. 15

Henry George photo

“Protective tariffs are as much applications of force as are blockading squadrons, and their object is the same—to prevent trade. The difference between the two is that blockading squadrons are a means whereby nations seek to prevent their enemies from trading; protective tariffs are a means whereby nations attempt to prevent their own people from trading. What protection teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.”

Henry George (1839–1897) American economist

Source: Protection or Free Trade? (1886), Ch. 6
Context: Free trade consists simply in letting people buy and sell as they want to buy and sell. It is protection that requires force, for it consists in preventing people from doing what they want to do. Protective tariffs are as much applications of force as are blockading squadrons, and their object is the same—to prevent trade. The difference between the two is that blockading squadrons are a means whereby nations seek to prevent their enemies from trading; protective tariffs are a means whereby nations attempt to prevent their own people from trading. What protection teaches us, is to do to ourselves in time of peace what enemies seek to do to us in time of war.

Haile Selassie photo

“The true leader is a different sort; he seeks effective activity which has a truly beneficient purpose. He inspires others to follow in his wake, and holding aloft the torch of wisdom, leads the way for society to realize its genuinely great aspirations.”

Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

Speech on Leadership in Speeches Delivered on Various Occasions, May 1957-December 1959 (1960), p. 138.
Context: Leadership does not mean domination. The world is always well supplied with people who wish to rule and dominate others.
The true leader is a different sort; he seeks effective activity which has a truly beneficient purpose. He inspires others to follow in his wake, and holding aloft the torch of wisdom, leads the way for society to realize its genuinely great aspirations.