Quotes about distinction (1236 quotes, page 3)

“Such a tendency has the slave-trade to debauch men's minds, and harden them to every feeling of humanity! For I will not suppose that the dealers in slaves are born worse than other men—No; it is the fatality of this mistaken avarice, that it corrupts the milk of human kindness and turns it into gall. And, had the pursuits of those men been different, they might have been as generous, as tender-hearted and just, as they are unfeeling, rapacious and cruel. Surely this traffic cannot be good, which spreads like a pestilence, and taints what it touches! which violates that first natural right of mankind, equality and independency, and gives one man a dominion over his fellows which God could never intend! For it raises the owner to a state as far above man as it depresses the slave below it; and, with all the presumption of human pride, sets a distinction between them, immeasurable in extent, and endless in duration! Yet how mistaken is the avarice even of the planters? Are slaves more useful by being thus humbled to the condition of brutes, than they would be if suffered to enjoy the privileges of men? The freedom which diffuses health and prosperity throughout Britain answers you—No. When you make men slaves you deprive them of half their virtue, you set them in your own conduct an example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest or faithful! You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are incapable of learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or moor, that culture would be lost on them; and that they come from a climate, where nature, though prodigal of her bounties in a degree unknown to yourselves, has left man alone scant and unfinished, and incapable of enjoying the treasures she has poured out for him!—An assertion at once impious and absurd. Why do you use those instruments of torture? Are they fit to be applied by one rational being to another? And are ye not struck with shame and mortification, to see the partakers of your nature reduced so low? But, above all, are there no dangers attending this mode of treatment? Are you not hourly in dread of an insurrection? […] But by changing your conduct, and treating your slaves as men, every cause of fear would be banished. They would be faithful, honest, intelligent and vigorous; and peace, prosperity, and happiness, would attend you.”

Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797) African abolitionist

Chap. V
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)

Men , God , War , Health

“A passion for the infinite is daily presented as a sign of moral distinction, when in fact it can only occur in disturbed minds which accord the status of a norm to the very disturbance from which they are suffering.”

Émile Durkheim book Suicide

Suicide (1897)

Suffering , Passion

“Taxation and representation are inseparable… whatever is a man's own, is absolutely his own; no man has a right to take it from him without his consent, either expressed by himself or representative; whoever attempts to do it, attempts an injury; whoever does it, commits a robbery; he throws down and destroys the distinction between liberty and slavery.”

Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden (1714–1794) English lawyer, judge and Whig politician

Speech in the House of Lords, on the taxation of Americans by the British parliament, 7 March 1766; as reported in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1990), 2nd edn., p. 60.

“In the service no distinction should be made between man and man. We have to serve all, be he a Christian or a Muslim, or a human being of any other persuasion; for calamities, distress and misfortunes make no such distinction but afflict all alike. And in serving to relieve the sufferings of man, let it not be in a spirit of condescension or mere compassion, but in the true spirit of our dharma of surrendering our all in the humble service of Lord who abides in the hearts of all beings.”

M. S. Golwalkar (1906–1973) second head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

Quoted from Talreja, K. M. (2000). Holy Vedas and holy Bible: A comparative study. New Delhi: Rashtriya Chetana Sangathan.

Affliction , Suffering , Heart

“The division of distinctive social roles and tasks, based upon both inherited and socially acquired individual differences, is called social differentiation.”

Walter F. Buckley (1922–2006) American sociologist

Source: Class and society (1959), p. 4.

“Although the capacity to become schizophrenic may well be within all of us, there is no question that certain persons have distinctive genes predisposing them to the condition.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.3 Development

Question , Personality

“The forces of being remain. They are what the writer, as distinct from the contemporary popular mythmaker, still engage today, as myth in its ancient form attempted to do.”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South african Nobel-winning writer

Writing and Being (1991)

“What [Nietzsche] calls slave morality is to him purely spite-morality; and this spite-morality gave new names to all ideals. Thus impotence, which offers no reprisal, became goodness; craven baseness became humility; submission to him who was feared became obedience; inability to assert one’s self became reluctance to assert one’s self, became forgiveness, love of one’s enemies. Misery became a distinction”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), pp. 31-32

Love , Fear , Forgiveness

“One might almost say that the plant is the framework, the foundation of the animal, and that to form the animal it sufficed to cover this foundation with a system of organs fitted to establish relations consists forms with the world outside. It follows of the succession substance of the animal form two quite distinct classes. One class in a continual into its own assimilation molecules that the functions and of excretion; through these functions the animal incessantly transsurrounding bodies, later to reject these molecules when they have become heterogeneous to it. Through this first class of functions the animal exists only within itself; through the other class it exists outside; it is an inhabitant of the world, and not, like the plant, of the place which saw its birth. The animal feels and perceives its surroundings, reflects its sensations, moves of its own will under their influence, and, as a rule, can communicate by its voice its desires and its fears, its pleasures or its pains. I call organic life the sum of the functions of the former class, for all organised creatures, plants or animals, possess them to a more or less marked degree, and organised structure is the sole condition necessary to their exercise. The combined functions of the second class form the ' animal' life named because it is the exclusive attribute of the animal kingdom.”

Marie François Xavier Bichat (1771–1802) French anatomist and physiologist

Original: (fr) On dirait que le végétal est l'ébauche, le canevas de l'animal, et que, pour former ce dernier, il n'a fallu que revêtir ce canevas d'un appareil d'organes extérieurs, propres à établir des relations. Il résulte de là que les fonctions de l'animal forment deux classes très-distinctes. Les unes se composent d'une succession habituelle d'assimilation et d'excrétion ; par elles il transforme sans cesse en sa propre substance les molécules des corps voisins, et rejette ensuite ces molécules, lorsqu'elles lui sont devenues hétérogènes. Il ne vit qu'en lui, par cette classe de fonctions ; par l'autre il existe hors de lui : il est l'habitant du monde, et non, comme le végétal, du lieu qui le vit naître. Il sent et aperçoit ce qui l'entoure, réfléchit ses sensations, se meut volontairement d'après leur influenc, et le plus souvent peut communiquer par la voix, ses désirs et ses craintes, ses plaisirs ou ses peines. J'appelle vie organique l'ensemble des fonctions de la première classe, parce que tous les êtres organisés, végétaux ou animaux, en jouissent à un degré plus ou moins marqué, et que la texture organique est la seule condition nécessaire à son exercice. Les fonctions réunies de la seconde classe forment la vie animale, ainsi nommée, parce qu'elle est l'attribut exclusif du règne animal. Recherches Physiologiques sur la Vie et la Mort (1800) Translation: [Russell, E. S., Form and Function: A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology, 1916, London, 28,

https://archive.org/details/formfunctioncont00russ/page/n5/mode/2up]

Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Xavier Bichat / Quotes

Animals , Birth , World , Pain

“This is especially important when addressing less statistically savvy audiences. Such audiences could perhaps be encouraged to think of two normal distributions, one representing males and the other females. Instead of imagining that natural selection creates two distinct psychological types — a male type and a female type, described by the mean values for each group — they could be encouraged to imagine that natural selection pushes the male and female distributions closer together or further apart. This simple expedient may help people to visualize the effects of natural selection on average sex differences without at the same time losing sight of the variation within each sex.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: The Ape that Kicked the Hornet's Nest (2013), p. 268

People , Sex , Imagination , Nature

“Specks—specks all over the third panel, see?—no, that one—the second one up from the floor and I wanted to point this out to someone yesterday but a photo shoot intervened and Yaki Nakamari or whatever the hell the designer's name is—a master craftsman not—mistook me for someone else so I couldn't register the complaint, but, gentlemen—and ladies—there they are: specks, annoying, tiny specks, and they don't look accidental but like they were somehow done by a machine—so I don't want a lot of description, just the story, streamlined, no frills, the lowdown: who, what, where, when and don't leave out why, though I'm getting the distinct impression by the looks on your sorry faces that why won't get answered—now, come on, goddamnit, what's the story?”

Bret Easton Ellis book Glamorama

Glamorama (1998)

Photo , Hell

“Apprentices and servants are characters perfectly distinct: the one receives instruction, the other a stipulated price for his labour.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

The King v. Inhabitants of St. Paul's, Bedford (1797), 6 T. R. 454.

“The guts of honey bee workers contain a distinctive community of bacterial species. They are microaerophilic or anaerobic, and were not clearly deliniated by earlier studies relying on laboratory culture of isolates under atmospheric oxygen levels. Recently, a more complete picture of the potential metabolism and functions of these bacteria have been possible, using genomic approaches based on metagenomic samples, as well as cultured isolates. Of these, most are host-restricted and are generally absent outside adult guts.”

Nancy A. Moran (1954) American biologist

[Current Opinion in Insect Science, 10, August 2015, 22–28, Genomics of the honey bee microbiome, 10.1016/j.cois.2015.04.003]

Communication , Study , Bee

“Harmonizing opposites by going back to their source is the distinctive quality of the Zen attitude, the Middle Way: embracing contradictions, making a synthesis of them, achieving balance.”

Taisen Deshimaru (1914–1982) Japanese Buddhist monk

As quoted in Zen and the Art of Systems Analysis : Meditations on Computer Systems Development (2002) by Patrick McDermott, p. xix

Way

“The extent of our country was so great, and its former division into distinct States so established, that we thought it better to confederate as to foreign affairs only. Every State retained its self-government in domestic matters, as better qualified to direct them to the good and satisfaction of their citizens, than a general government so distant from its remoter citizens, and so little familiar with the local peculiarities of the different parts. […] There are now twenty-four of these distinct States, none smaller perhaps than your Morea, several larger than all Greece. Each of these has a constitution framed by itself and for itself, but militating in nothing with the powers of the General Government in its appropriate department of war and foreign affairs. These constitutions being in print and in every hand, I shall only make brief observations on them, and on those provisions particularly which have not fulfilled expectations, or which, being varied in different States, leave a choice to be made of that which is best. You will find much good in all of them, and no one which would be approved in all its parts. Such indeed are the different circumstances, prejudices, and habits of different nations, that the constitution of no one would be reconcilable to any other in every point. A judicious selection of the parts of each suitable to any other, is all which prudence should attempt […].”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1820s, Letter to A. Coray (1823)

War , Distant , Parting , Country

“At the heart of multiculturalism lies a radical egalitarianism by which everyone's culture and lifestyle has equal validity and moral stature. The consequence is that people are increasingly unable to make moral distinctions based on behaviour. Instead, minorities of all kinds -- ethnic, religious, sexual -- are not held responsible for their misdeeds because they are perceived as a victim class. So the majority are held responsible instead.”

Melanie Phillips (1951) British journalist

"The Country That Hates Itself" http://www.melaniephillips.com/the-country-that-hates-itself (June 16, 2006)

People , Heart

“Here the reason
no less than all separate acts
Must give way,
For our powers become simple in Love;
They are silent
And In the most secret part of the understanding, the simple eye is ever open. It contemplates and gazes at the Light with a pure sight that is lit by the Light itself: eye to eye, mirror to mirror, image to image. The sight of the simple eye is a living mirror bowed down in the Presence of the Father.
And this revelation of the Father
Lifts the soul above the reason
Into the Imageless Nudity.
There the soul is simple, pure, spotless,
Empty of all things;
And it is in this state of perfect emptiness
That the Father manifests His Divine radiance.
To this radiance neither reason nor sense,
Observation nor distinction,
Can attain.
All this must stay below;
For the measureless radiance
Blinds the eyes of the reason,
They cannot bear the Incomprehensible Light.
But above the reason,
In the most secret part of the understanding,
The simple eye is ever open.
It contemplates and gazes at the Light
With a pure sight that is lit by the Light itself:
Eye to eye,
Mirror to mirror,
Image to image.
This threefold act makes us like God,
And unites us to Him;
For the sight of the simple eye is a living mirror,
Which God has made for His image,
And whereon He has impressed it.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

A Mirror of Eternal Blessedness

Love , God , Secret , Way

“Creatures really have divergent and conflicting desires. Their distinct motives are not (usually) wishes for survival or for means-to-survival, but for various particular things to be done and obtained while surviving. And these can always conflict. Motivation is fundamentally plural.”

Mary Midgley (1919–2018) British philosopher and ethicist

Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979). 168.
Context: Creatures really have divergent and conflicting desires. Their distinct motives are not (usually) wishes for survival or for means-to-survival, but for various particular things to be done and obtained while surviving. And these can always conflict. Motivation is fundamentally plural. It must be so because, in evolution, all sorts of contingincies and needs arise, calling for all sorts of different responses. An obsessive creature, constantly dominated by one kind of motive, would not survive.

Motivation

“Even things without life that give sound, whether pipe or harp, except they give a distinction of sounds, how shall it be known what is piped or harped? For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? So likewise you, except you utter by the tongue plain speech, how shall it be known what is said? For you shall be speaking into the air.”

Paul of Tarsus book First Epistle to the Corinthians

1 Corinthians 14:7-9 (as quoted in Catholic Bible Douay-Rehims http://www.biblebible.com/text-bible/Catholic-Bible/1_corinthians_14.asp)
First Epistle to the Corinthians

Life

“The modern Communist, looking upon this world with its interesting distinctions and its prolific rewards and pleasures, may be compared to Satan peering into the Garden.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

“Life without prejudice,” p. 5.
Life Without Prejudice (1965)

Pleasure , World

“The term spirituality is misleading. It gives the impression that we are concerned only with the soul and its activities like prayer and contemplation. The realm of the spirit is thought of as distinct from the material realm, the realm of work, of science and economics. Underlying this dichotomy is the Greek understanding of the human person as a composite of soul and body or as a soul temporarily housed in the body. The classical example of this is Plato’s image of the human person as the charioteer in the chariot.”

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, K. (ed) (2006) Life in Abundance: Indian Christian Reflections on Spirituality. Mumbai: St Pauls
On Spirituality

Soul , Understanding , Science , Housing

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

Aberjhani (1957) author

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

Color , Way , Behavior

“When I was 17, I saw a program on television about African Elephants and how they were endangered at that time. It really struck a chord with me. It awoken something inside of me, a sensitivity, that had been suppressed by my schooling, family and upbringing. … Since then, that sensitivity has always been a part of me, admittedly, it was a part of me that I lost and buried away and suppressed myself in many years of self-denial and self-loathing, but that I am very happy to have regained. … I first went Vegan in 1991 or so. I had been leaning towards that type of lifestyle before I’d ever even heard the word. My own sensitivity and understanding of myself was what initially lead me in that direction. I was a vegetarian between 1987 and 1999 but then I lost my way. In 2013, I found myself outside the walls of a pig slaughterhouse in Louisville, Kentucky. The screams that I heard will haunt me forever. They were distinct, individual voices screaming out in sheer terror and pain. It woke me up.”

Mike Vallely (1970) American skateboarder and singer

"Pro Skater Mike Vallely On Being Vegan" https://www.punkglobe.com/mikevallelyinterview0816.php, interview with Punk Globe (August 2016).

Pain , School , Family , Way

“A word — a name —
Conjures the past before me, till it grows
More actual than the present : that — I see
But with the common eyes of daily life,
Imperfect and impatient; but the past
Out of imagination works its truth,
And grows distinct with poetry.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(1836-2) (Vol.47) Subjects for Pictures
The Monthly Magazine

Life , Truth , Imagination , Past

“The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American.”

Patrick Henry (1736–1799) attorney, planter, politician and Founding Father of the United States

Speech in the First Continental Congress, Philadelphia (14 October 1774). Compare: "I was born an American; I will live an American; I shall die an American!", Daniel Webster, Speech, July 17, 1850.
1770s, Speech in the First Continental Congress (1774)

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

Arthur Schopenhauer book On the Basis of Morality

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

Love , Life , Wisdom , Truth

“Because free countries have affirmed many years ago that a compulsory church rate is immoral and oppressive, for the sake of the burden laid upon individual consciences; and in affirming this truth they have unconsciously affirmed the wider truth, that every tax or rate, forcibly taken from an unwilling person, is immoral and oppressive. The human conscience knows no distinction between church rates and other compulsory rates and taxes. The sin lies in the disregarding of each other's convictions, and is not affected by the subject matter of the tax.”

Auberon Herbert (1838–1906) British politician

The Principles of Voluntaryism and Free Life

Truth , Personality , Country

“One area which shows how unknowingly predictable we are, is the way we decorate our houses. We all feel we make unique and distinct choices, yet we all conform to a cultural standard.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Way , Feeling , Housing

“I am almost amazed that you consider a professional philosopher capable of no confusion in concepts and definitions. Such things are nowhere more at home than among philosophers who are not mathematicians, and Wolff was no mathematician, even though he made cheap compen- diums. Look around among the philosophers of today, among Schelling, Hegel, Nees von Esenbeck, and their like; doesn t your hair stand on end at their definitions? Read in the history of ancient philosophy what kinds of definitions the men of that day, Plato and others, gave (I except Aristotle). But even in Kant it is often not much better; in my opinion his distinction between analytic and synthetic theorems is such a one that either peters out in a triviality or is false.”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist

As quoted in Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science (1955) by Guy Waldo Dunnington. p. 362

Men , Home , History , Reading

“I must also call your attention to the fact that it is crucial for my viewpoint that human behavior is to a large extent charged with a considerable amount of energy, but that in contrast to Freud I do not consider this energy to be sexual, but the vital energy within any organism which, according to biological laws, gives man the desire to live, and that means to adapt himself to the social necessities of his society. To go back to what I consider to be the misunderstanding, it has never been my position that society only deforms or manifests that which is already there. If we make the distinction between human necessities in general and human desires in particular then indeed, society creates particular desires which, however, follow the general laws of the necessities rooted in human nature.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Human Nature and Social Theory (1969)

Law , Behavior , Nature

“The term architecture is used here to describe the attributes of a system as seen by the programmer, i. e., the conceptual structure and functional behavior, as distinct from the organization of the data flow and controls, the logical design, and the physical implementation. i. Additional details concerning the architecture”

Fred Brooks (1931) American computer scientist

Gene Amdahl, Gerrit Blaauw, and Fred Brooks (1964) "Architecture of the IBM System." in: IBM Journal of Research and Development Vol 8 (2) p. 87-101.

Behavior

“It is only he, possessed of all sagely qualities that can exist under heaven, who shows himself quick in apprehension, clear in discernment, of far-reaching intelligence, and all-embracing knowledge, fitted to exercise rule; magnanimous, generous, benign, and mild, fitted to exercise forbearance; impulsive, energetic, firm, and enduring, fitted to maintain a firm hold; self-adjusted, grave, never swerving from the Mean, and correct, fitted to command reverence; accomplished, distinctive, concentrative, and searching, fitted to exercise discrimination. All-embracing is he and vast, deep and active as a fountain, sending forth in their due season his virtues. All-embracing and vast, he is like Heaven. Deep and active as a fountain, he is like the abyss. He is seen, and the people all reverence him; he speaks, and the people all believe him; he acts, and the people all are pleased with him.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean

People , Exercises , Search , Intelligence

“(The) pattern of consumption is markedly more equal than in Britain. ‘Prestige-goods’ are widely distributed, and there is less conspicuous contrast between the standard of living of different income-groups. To take the most obvious example, almost every family owns a car; and this is significant not only because a car is the most conspicuous of all consumption goods, but also because universal car-ownership leads to the universal consumption of other conspicuous or semi-luxury goods – holidays, hotels, middle-class habits of shopping, etc. But the lack of external class-distinctions can be observed in many other spheres: e. g. clothes, eating-habits, drug-stores, the ownership of consumer durables, and so on.”

Anthony Crosland book The Future of Socialism

The Future of Socialism by Anthony Crosland.
The Future of Socialism (1956)

Family , Cars , Universe , Holiday

“The wretched consciousness shrinks from it own annihilation, and just as an animal spirit newly severed from the womb of the world, finds itself confronted with the world and knows itself distinct from it, so consciousness must needs desire to possess another life than that of the world itself.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), III : The Hunger of Immortality

Life , World , Animals

“We are driven to confess that we actually care more for religion than we do for religious theories and ideas: and in merely making that distinction between religion and its doctrine-elements, have we not already relegated the latter to an external and subordinate position? Have we not asserted that "religion itself" has some other essence or constitution than mere idea or thought?”

William Ernest Hocking (1873–1966) American philosopher

Source: The Meaning of God in Human Experience (1912), Ch. IV : The Retirement of the Intellect, p. 38.

Religion , Idea

“We must take note of the fact that the artist nowadays is occupied with painting flags, posters, pots and pans textiles and things like that. What is referred to as 'artistic work' has on the vast majority of occasions nothing whatever to do with creative effort: and the term 'artistic work' is used in order to demonstrate the 'sacredness' of the work which the artist does at his easel. The conception of 'artistic work' presupposes a distinction between useful and useless work and as there are only a few artists buyers can be found even for their useless products. The artist's work lies beyond the boundaries of the useful and the useless.”

El Lissitsky (1890–1941) Soviet artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer and architect

1915 - 1925, Suprematism' in World Reconstruction (1920)

Effort , Painting

“Everyone must remove differences/distinctions from their hearts. There must be more stress on unity. (…)”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

21 December 1983.
The Teachings of Babaji

Heart

“I am about to take a rapid review of the history of the French Revolution, which began the era of new societies in Europe, as the English Revolution had begun the era of new governments. This revolution not only modified the political power, but it entirely changed the internal existence of the nation. The forms of the society of the Middle Ages still remained. The land was divided into hostile provinces, the population into rival classes. The nobility had lost all their powers, but still retained all their distinctions: the people had no rights, royalty no limits; France was in an utter confusion of arbitrary administration, of class legislation and special privileges to special bodies. For these abuses the revolution substituted a system more conformable with justice, and better suited to our times. It substituted law in the place of arbitrary will, equality in that of privilege; delivered men from the distinctions of classes, the land from the barriers of provinces, trade from the shackles of corporations and fellowships, agriculture from feudal subjection and the oppression of tithes, property from the impediment of entails, and brought everything to the condition of one state, one system of law, one people.”

François Mignet (1796–1884) French historian and journalist

History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 http://clc-library-org-docs.angelfire.com/hfrr.html, Introduction

Men , Hostility , People , Age

“Institutionalism purportedly represents a distinctive approach to the study of social, economic, and political phenomena; yet it is often easier to gain agreement about what it is not than about what it is.”

Paul DiMaggio (1951) American sociologist

Source: Introduction to The New Institutionalism and Organizational Analysis, 1991, p. 1

Study

“In the course of life, all such systems (i. e., the different evolutionary ridges) are somewhat functionally interdependent, as are components within each system (i. e., the different programs, schema, modules). Nevertheless, each system and system component has a somewhat distinct evolutionary history and time line. There is no single origin of religion, nor any necessary and sufficient set of functions that religion serves. Rather, there is a family of evolutionary-compatible functions that all societies more or less realize but that no one society need realize in full.”

Scott Atran (1952) Anthropologist

Introduction: an evolutionary riddle, p. 12
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002)

Life , Family , Religion , History

“Does knowledge rest on construction in the sense that it only functions because the knowing system is operatively closed, therefore: because it can maintain no operative contact with the outside world; and because it therefore remains dependent, for everything that it constructs, on its own distinction between self-reference and allo-reference?”

Niklas Luhmann (1927–1998) German sociologist, administration expert, and social systems theorist

Luhmann (1991) “Wie lassen sich latente Strukturen beobachten?,” in Paul Watzlawick, Peter Krieg (eds.), Das Auge des Betrachters: Beiträge zum Konstruktivismus. Festschrift für Heinz von Foerster, Piper, München-Zürich, p. 71; cited in: Heinz von Foerster (1993) " For Niklas Luhmann: “How Recursive is Communication?” http://e1020.pbworks.com/f/fulltext-2.pdf". Translated by Richard Howe.

World , Knowledge , Sense , Dependency

“Every social system is a functioning entity. That is, it is a system of interdependent structures and processes such that it tends to maintain a relative stability and distinctiveness of pattern and behaviour as an entity by contrast with its - social or other - environment, and with it a relative independence from environmental forces. It "responds", to be sure, to the environmental stimuli, but is not completely assimilated to its environment, maintaining rather an element of distinctiveness in the face of variations in environmental conditions. To this extent it is analogous to an organism”

Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) American sociologist

Talcott Parsons (1942) "Propaganda and Social Control". in: Parsons (1954) Essays in sociological theory http://archive.org/details/sociologicaltheo00pars , p. 143

“Doth the reality of sensible things consist in being perceived? or, is it something distinct from their being perceived, and that bears no relation to the mind?”

George Berkeley book Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous

Philonous to Hylas.
Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713)

Reality

““Travel in the old ruts,” quotes my friend Meredith; some ancient Chinese maxim. The way lain down by elders. Pathways through the world, pathways through the mind—it’s a shame that these days we so seldom have a guide. That our atomized worldview, mimicking scientific doctrine, sees us as separate, distinct, alone, orbiting in space, touching only an infinite void.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

World , Way , Travel , Quotes

“The dialectical critique of positivist habits of mind … is interested only in behaviour which is ‘important’ to the actor; that is, behaviour which is emotionally charged to the degree that it is either frequently recalled, reflected upon, or day-dreamed about. … That science which is less discriminating in the behaviour it chooses to investigate gains clarity and distinctiveness at the cost of confining itself to the trivial.”

John Carroll (1944) Australian professor and author

Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 168

Dreams , Science

“I shall call Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) a certain number of realities which present themselves to the immediate observer in the form of distinct and specialized institutions:…
:*the religious ISA (the system of the different churches),
:*the educational ISA (the system of the different public and private ‘schools’),
:*the family ISA,
:*the legal ISA,
:*the political ISA (the political system, including the different parties),
:*the trade-union ISA,
:*the communications ISA (press, radio and television, etc.),
:*the cultural ISA (literature, the arts, sports, etc.).”

Louis Althusser book Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays

Source: Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968), "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses", p. 96

Education , School , Family , Art

“It is basically a bad idea to take some area of human thought and experience that has been the locus of careful analyses and subtle distinctions for centuries, and start again, as it were, from scratch. What in fact happens when this is done is that some ideas from that tradition re-emerge, but are isolated from the context in which they were embedded in the preceding conversation.”

John E. Hare (1949) British philosopher

Source: “Evolutionary Theory and Theological Ethics” (2012), p. 245

Idea

“Bernard Mickey Wrangle had developed a psychological test of his own. It was short, simple, and infallible. To administer the test, merely ask the subject to name his or her favorite Beatle. If you are at all familiar with the distinct separate public images of the four Beatles, then you'll recognize that the one chosen reveals as much about the subject's personality as most of us will ever hope to know.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

Hope , Personality

“I see it as part of the development of the field. I would always emphasize how much I share with other linguists: I've never either felt particularly distinct or wanted to be distinct. I never saw myself as a theorist; I only became interested in theory, in the first place, because, in the theoretical approaches that I had access to, I didn't find certain areas developed enough to enable me to explore the questions that I was interested in.”

Michael Halliday (1925–2018) Australian linguist

Michael Halliday in: G. Thompson (1998) " Interview with M. A. K. Halliday, Cardiff, July 1998 http://www.scielo.br/pdf/delta/v17n1/a06v17n1.pdf". Answer to the question, how he saw his own work as fitting into the development of linguistics.
1970s and later

Question , Parting

“The Empty Quarter offered me the chance to win distinction as a traveller; but I believed that it could give me more than this, that in those empty wastes I could find the peace that comes with solitude, and, among the Bedu, comradeship in a hostile world. Many who venture into dangerous places have found this comradeship among members of their own race; a few find it more easily among people from other lands, the very differences which separate them binding them ever more closely. I found it among the Bedu. Without it these journeys would have been a meaningless penance.”

Wilfred Thesiger book Arabian Sands

Source: Arabian Sands (1959), p. 4.

Hostility , People , World , Peace

“The conventional model for explaining the uniqueness of American democracy is its division between executive, legislative, and judicial functions. It was the great contribution of Frank J. Goodnow to codify a less obvious, but no less profound element: the distinction between politics and policies, principles and operations. He showed how the United States went beyond a nation based on government by gentlemen and then one based on the spoils system brought about by the Jacksonian revolt against the Eastern Establishment, into a government that separated political officials from civil administrators.
Goodnow contends that the civil service reformers persuasively argued that the separation of administration from politics, far from destroying the democratic links with the people, actually served to enhance democracy. While John Rohr, in his outstanding new introduction carefully notes loopholes in the theoretical scaffold of Goodnow's argument, he is also careful to express his appreciation of the pragmatic ground for this new sense of government as needing a partnership of the elected and the appointed.
Goodnow was profoundly influenced by European currents, especially the Hegelian. As a result, the work aims at a political philosophy meant to move considerably beyond the purely pragmatic needs of government. For it was the relationships, the need for national unity in a country that was devised to account for and accommodate pluralism and diversity, that attracted Goodnow's legal background and normative impulses alike. That issues of legitimacy and power distribution were never entirely resolved by Goodnow does not alter the fact that this is perhaps the most important work, along with that of James Bryce, to emerge from this formative period to connect processes of governance with systems of democracy.”

Frank Johnson Goodnow (1859–1939) American historian

Abstract, 2009 edition:
Politics and Administration (1900)

People , Democracy , Sense , Partnership

“The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possession of family wealth and of the distinction which attends hereditary possessions (as most concerned in it,) are the natural securities for this transmission.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Family , Nature , Wealth

“There is a distinct reluctance, almost an unwillingness, on the part of Torah to grant man the privilege to consume meat. Man as an animal-eater is looked at askance by the Torah. There are definitive vegetarian tendencies in the Bible.”

Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903–1993) American theologian

Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Emergence of Ethical Man https://books.google.it/books?id=rIhh_Rx7utwC&pg=PA0, p. 31 (2005)

Animals , Parting

“Let me tell you the story of the most successful organism of all time: this is the story of the parasite. … Early on, evolution branched into two distinct paths: independent organisms—those that exist on their own in the natural world—and parasites—organisms that live on other organisms. And it was, by far, the parasites that proved the more successful of the two branches. Today, for every independent organism in nature, there exist three parasites. … These two strains of evolution have been locked in a primordial arms race, constantly evolving to best each other for supremacy of this planet. As parasites evolve to perfect their systems against a species of host, the host evolves to evade their attack. Scientists call this theory of an eternal genetic struggle the Red Queen Hypothesis—a name taken from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass.”

Daniel Suarez Daemon

Source: Daemon (2006), Chapter 31: Red Queen Hypothesis, Character: Sobol

World , Nature , Time , Success

“Darwinism is still very much alive, utterly dominating biology. Despite the fact that no one has ever been able to prove the creation of a single distinct species by Darwinist means, Darwinism dominates the academy and the media.”

Ben Stein (1944) actor, writer, commentator, lawyer, teacher, humorist

Darwinism: The Imperialism of Biology?, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, 31 October 2007, 2008-02-26 http://expelledthemovie.com/blog/page/3/,

“Creativity thinks up new things. Innovation does new things. The difference speaks for itself. Yet the fluent advisers to business seldom make the distinction. They tend to rate ideas more by their novelty than by their practicability.”

Theodore Levitt (1925–2006) American economist and professor at Harvard Business School

Theodore Levitt (1974). Marketing for business growth, p. 71

Idea , Business , Thinking

“Eichmann, much less intelligent and without any education to speak of, at least dimly realized that it was not an order but a law which had turned them all into criminals. The distinction between an order and the Führer's word was that the latter's validity was not limited in time and space, which is the outstanding characteristic of the former. This is also the true reason why the Führer's order for the Final Solution was followed by a huge shower of regulations and directives, all drafted by expert lawyers and legal advisors, not by mere administrators; this order, in contrast to ordinary orders, was treated as a law. Needless to add, the resulting legal paraphernalia, far from being a mere symptom of German pedantry and thoroughness, served most effectively to give the whole business its outward appearance of legality.And just as the law in civilized countries assumes that the voice of conscience tells everybody, "Thou shalt not kill," even though man's natural desires and inclinations may at times be murderous, so the law of Hitler's land demanded that the voice of conscience tell everybody: "Thou shalt kill," although the organizers of the massacres knew full well that murder is against the normal desires and inclinations of most people. Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it — the quality of temptation.”

Hannah Arendt book Eichmann in Jerusalem

Source: Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), Ch. VIII.

People , Education , Law , Intelligence

“Scots have also for these past three hundred been part of a political union - the United Kingdom. Some of you may argue this is three hundred years too long. Others may disagree. But Scotland has played its full part in the Union - meeting our obligations and advancing the common good, without ever losing sight of our distinctive identity and values. And our destiny.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Vision for Scotland in the European Union (December 12, 2007)

Past , Parting

“The distinctive thing in the idea for which the pronouns of the first person are names is apparently a characteristic kind of feeliing which may be called the my-feeling or sense of appropriation. Almost any sort of ideas may be associated with this feeling, and so come to be named "I" or "mine," but the feeling, and that alone it would seem, is the determining factor in the matter. As Professor James says in his admirable discussion of the self, the words "me" and "self" designate "all the things which have the power to produce in a stream of consciousness excitement of a certain peculiar sort."”

Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American sociologist

Source: Human Nature and the Social Order, 1902, p. 168-9

Feeling , Idea , Sense , Personality

“I may begin by laying down as a principle that ‘all pain of human or rational beings is to be avoided’; and then afterwards may be led to enunciate the wider rule that ‘all pain is to be avoided’; it being made evident to me that the difference of rationality between two species of sentient beings is no ground for establishing a fundamental ethical distinction between their respective pains.”

Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900) English philosopher

"The Establishment of Ethical First Principles" (1879), in Essays on Ethics and Method (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), p. 30 https://books.google.it/books?id=Ci9x5WY3NesC&pg=PA30

Pain

“The unerring signs of truth and falsehood are clear, distinct consistency and contradiction. This is also the case with revelation, in so far as that it must, in common with other truths, be free from contradiction. And just as little as miracles can prove that twice two are five or that a triangle has four angles, can a contradiction lying in the history and dogmas of Christianity be removed by any number of miracles.”

Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768) German philosopher

Source: Fragments from Reimarus: Consisting of Brief Critical Remarks on the Object of Jesus and His Disciples as Seen in the New Testament, p. 75

Truth , History , Lying

“The judicial ought to be kept entirely distinct from the legislative and executive power in the State. This separation is necessary both to secure the independence of the judicial functions and to prevent their being influenced by the interests of party or by the voice of the people.”

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868) English barrister, politician, and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain

The British Constitution (1844), 322, 323; reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 2-8.

People

“Socialists do not propose to substitute the domination of society by one privileged class for that of another. They seek to abolish class distinctions altogether. The abolition of classes is fundamental to the Socialist conception of society.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The Labour Party in Perspective (Left Book Club, 1937), p. 145.
1930s

“Arbitrariness and true liberty are as distinct from each other that the empirical nature is distinct from the higher nature of man.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 50.

Nature

“For human nature, being more highly pitched, selved, and distinctive than anything in the world, can have been developed, evolved, condensed, from the vastness of the world not anyhow or by the working of common powers but only by one of finer or higher pitch and determination than itself.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

Comments on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola

World , Nature

“But your own vegetarianism, Mrs. Costello,” says President Garrard, pouring oil on troubled waters: “it comes out of moral conviction, does it not?”
“No, I don't think so,” says his mother. “It comes out of a desire to save my soul.”
Now there truly is a silence, broken only by the clink of plates as the waitresses set baked Alaskas before them.
“Well, I have a great respect for it,” says Garrard. “As a way of life.”
“I'm wearing leather shoes,” says his mother. “I'm carrying a leather purse. I wouldn't have overmuch respect if I were you.”
“Consistency,” murmurs Garrard. “Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. Surely one can draw a distinction between eating meat and wearing leather.”

J.M. Coetzee book The Lives of Animals

“Degrees of obscenity,” she replies.
Source: The Lives of Animals (1999), pp. 43-44

Life , Shoe , Way , Soul

“While the Christian apostles preached their ideal in the open, the Talmud hides; and its two appendages, the Kahal and Freemasonry, are even more invisible. The three of them use, in order to remain in the dark, a scabrous and accursed means, namely the lie. In other words, the lie is the basis of the system used by Jews, to whom one can say.. 'You speak, therefore you be.' But the lie has a mortal enemy, namely the truth. For truth is the distinctive trait of Christianity.”

Nicolae Paulescu (1869–1931) Romanian academic

From Fiziologia Filozofică: Spitalul, Coranul, Talmudul, Cahalul, Franc-Masoneria ("Philosophic Physiology: The Hospital, the Koran, the Talmud, the Kahal and Freemasonry"), vol. II., Bucharest, 1913.

Truth , Lie

“To conclude: there are two well-known minor ways in which language has mattered to philosophy. On the one hand there is a belief that if only we produce good definitions, often marking out different senses of words that are confused in common speech, we will avoid the conceptual traps that ensnared our forefathers. On the other hand is a belief that if only we attend sufficiently closely to our mother tongue and make explicit the distinctions there implicit, we shall avoid the conceptual traps. One or the other of these curiously contrary beliefs may nowadays be most often thought of as an answer to the question Why does language matter to philosophy? Neither seems to me enough.”

Ian Hacking (1936) Canadian philosopher

Ian Hacking (1975), Why Does Language Matter to Philosophy?, p. 7.

Way , Question , Sense

“I do not mean to suggest that all those who call themselves monetarists make this unconscious assumption that an inflation involves this uniform rise of prices. But we may distinguish two schools of monetarism. The first would prescribe a monthly or annual increase in the stock of money just sufficient, in their judgment, to keep prices stable. The second school (which the first might dismiss as mere inflationists) wants a continuous increase in the stock of money sufficient to raise prices steadily by a "small" amount—2 or 3 per cent a year. These are the advocates of a "creeping" inflation. … I made a distinction earlier between the monetarists strictly so called and the "creeping inflationists." This distinction applies to the intent of their recommended policies rather than to the result. The intent of the monetarists is not to keep raising the price "level" but simply to keep it from falling, i. e., simply to keep it "stable." But it is impossible to know in advance precisely what uniform rate of money-supply increase would in fact do this. The monetarists are right in assuming that in a prospering economy, if the stock of money were not increased, there would probably be a mild long-run tendency for prices to decline. But they are wrong in assuming that this would necessarily threaten employment or production. For in a free and flexible economy prices would be falling because productivity was increasing, that is, because costs of production were falling. There would be no necessary reduction in real profit margins. The American economy has often been prosperous in the past over periods when prices were declining. Though money wage-rates may not increase in such periods, their purchasing power does increase. So there is no need to keep increasing the stock of money to prevent prices from declining. A fixed arbitrary annual increase in the money stock "to keep prices stable" could easily lead to a "creeping inflation" of prices.”

Henry Hazlitt (1894–1993) American journalist

Where the Monetarists Go Wrong (1976)

Money , School , Past

“The mind's ability to attend to its own representing activity is a distinct ability, logically presupposed as a condition of experience. (We couldn't be representing objects unless, in all cases of such representing, we could also become conscious of our representing.) … All consciousness … is a species of self-consciousness, representing objects is at the same time attending to the mind's activities.”

Robert B. Pippin (1948) American philosopher

Source: Hegel's Idealism: The Satisfactions of Self-Consciousness (1989), p. 20

Time

“There is, however, no doubt that the various races, when carefully compared and measured, differ much from each other,—as in the texture of the hair, the relative proportions of all parts of the body,2 the capacity of the lungs, the form and capacity of the skull, and even in the convolutions of the brain.3 But it would be an endless task to specify the numerous points of structural difference. The races differ also in constitution, in acclimatisation, and in liability to certain diseases. Their mental characteristics are likewise very distinct; chiefly as it would appear in their emotional, but partly in their intellectual, faculties. Every one who has had the opportunity of comparison, must have been struck with the contrast between the taciturn, even morose, aborigines of S. America and the light-hearted, talkative negroes. There is a nearly similar contrast between the Malays and the Papuans,4 who live under the same physical conditions, and are separated from each other only by a narrow space of sea.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume I, chapter VII: "On the Races of Man", page 216 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=238&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image
The Descent of Man (1871)

Disease , Light , Appearance , Heart

“To tell the indigenous inhabitants of Brixton or Southall or Leicester or Bradford or Birmingham or Wolverhampton, to tell the pensioners ending their days in streets of nightly terror unrecognisable as their former neighbourhoods, to tell the people of towns and cities where whole districts have been transformed into enclaves of foreign lands, that "the man with a coloured face could be an enrichment to my life and that of my neighbours" is to drive them beyond the limits of endurance. It is not so much that it is obvious twaddle. It is that it makes cruel mockery of the experience and fears of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of ordinary, decent men and women…In understanding this matter, the beginning of wisdom is to grasp the law that in human societies power is never left unclaimed and unused. It does not blow about, like wastepaper on the streets, ownerless and inert. Men's nature is not only, as Thucydides long ago asserted, to exert power where they have it: men cannot help themselves from exerting power where they have it, whether they want to or not…It is the business of the leaders of distinct and separate populations to see that the power which they possess is used to benefit those for whom they speak. Leaders who fail to do so, or to do so fast enough, find themselves outflanked and superseded by those who are less squeamish. The Gresham's Law of extremism, that the more extreme drives out the less extreme, is one of the basic rules of political mechanics which operate in this field: it is a corollary of the general principle that no political power exist without being used. Both the general law and its Gresham's corollary point, in contemporary circumstances, towards the resort to physical violence, in the form of firearms or high explosive, as being so probable as to be predicted with virtual certainty. The experience of the last decade and more, all round the world, shows that acts of violence, however apparently irrational or inappropriate their targets, precipitate a frenzied search on the part of the society attacked to discover and remedy more and more grievances, real or imaginary, among those from whom the violence is supposed to emanate or on whose behalf it is supposed to be exercised. Those commanding a position of political leverage would then be superhuman if they could refrain from pointing to the acts of terrorism and, while condemning them, declaring that further and faster concessions and grants of privilege are the only means to avoid such acts being repeated on a rising scale. This is what produces the gearing effect of terrorism in the contemporary world, yielding huge results from acts of violence perpetrated by minimal numbers. It is not, I repeat again and again, that the mass of a particular population are violently or criminally disposed. Far from it; that population soon becomes itself the prisoner of the violence and machinations of an infinitely small minority among it. Just a few thugs, a few shots, a few bombs at the right place and time – and that is enough for disproportionate consequences to follow.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the Stretford Young Conservatives (21 January 1977), from A Nation or No Nation? Six Years in British Politics (Elliot Right Way Books, 1977), pp. 168-171
1970s

Life , Wisdom , Women , Men

“Through the means just specified, aided perhaps by others as yet undiscovered, man has been raised to his present state. But since he attained to the rank of manhood, he has diverged into distinct races, or as they may be more appropriately called sub-species. Some of these, for instance the Negro and European, are so distinct that, if specimens had been brought to a naturalist without any further information, they would undoubtedly have been considered by him as good and true species. Nevertheless all the races agree in so many unimportant details of structure and in so many mental peculiarities, that these can be accounted for only through inheritance from a common progenitor; and a progenitor thus characterised would probably have deserved to rank as man.”

Charles Darwin book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

volume II, chapter XXI: "General Summary and Conclusion", page 388 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=405&itemID=F937.2&viewtype=image
The Descent of Man (1871)

“The Chinese do not draw any distinction between food and medicine.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. IX : The Enjoyment of Living, p. 249

Food , Drawing

“Akbar was the first emperor to abolish Jizyah with one stroke of pen, along with all its associations and implications, including the distinction of Muslim and Dhimmî into the bargain. His son and grandson followed his example in regard to Jizyah, generally speaking, but reimposed upon the Hindus all the other restrictions and disabilities suffered by them before.”

Harsh Narain (1921–1995) Indian writer

Jizyah and the spread of Islam, 1990, chapter 3.

Suffering

“We have two distinct types of political organization to take into account; and clearly, too, when their origins are considered, it is impossible to make out that the one is a mere perversion of the other. Therefore when we include both types under a general term like government, we get into logical difficulties; difficulties of which most writers on the subject have been more or less vaguely aware, but which, until within the last half-century, none of them has tried to resolve.”

Albert Jay Nock (1870–1945) American journalist

Source: Our Enemy, the State (1935), p. 38

“Titian, Tintoretto, and Paul Veronese absolutely enchanted me, for they took away all sense of subject. … It was the poetry of color which I felt, procreative in its nature, giving birth to a thousand things which the eye cannot see, and distinct from their cause.”

Washington Allston (1779–1843) American artist

Washington Allston, as quoted in The Quotable Artist (2002) by Peggy Hadden, p. 20

Color , Birth , Nature , Sense

“If, as I have said, the things already listed were all we had had to contribute, America would have made no distinctive and unique gift to mankind. But there has been also the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

James Truslow Adams (1878–1949) American writer and historian

Adams first coined the phrase http://memory.loc.gov/learn/lessons/97/dream/thedream.html "the American dream" in The Epic of America (2nd ed., Greenwood Press, 1931), p. 404

Life , Dreams , Cars , Birth

“In America, more than anywhere else in the world, care has been taken constantly to trace clearly distinct spheres of action for the two sexes, and both are required to keep in step, but along paths that are never the same.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book Three, Chapter XII.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three

World , Sex

“I will remark again, however, as a fact not unimportant to be understood, that the different sphere constitutes the grand origin of such distinction; that the Hero can be Poet, Prophet, King, Priest or what you will, according to the kind of world he finds himself born into. I confess, I have no notion of a truly great man that could not be all sorts of men.”

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

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

Men , World

“I answer that, It was necessary for woman to be made, as the Scripture says, as a "helper" to man; not, indeed, as a helpmate in other works, as some say, since man can be more efficiently helped by another man in other works; but as a helper in the work of generation. This can be made clear if we observe the mode of generation carried out in various living things. Some living things do not possess in themselves the power of generation, but are generated by some other specific agent, such as some plants and animals by the influence of the heavenly bodies, from some fitting matter and not from seed: others possess the active and passive generative power together; as we see in plants which are generated from seed; for the noblest vital function in plants is generation. Wherefore we observe that in these the active power of generation invariably accompanies the passive power. Among perfect animals the active power of generation belongs to the male sex, and the passive power to the female. And as among animals there is a vital operation nobler than generation, to which their life is principally directed; therefore the male sex is not found in continual union with the female in perfect animals, but only at the time of coition; so that we may consider that by this means the male and female are one, as in plants they are always united; although in some cases one of them preponderates, and in some the other. But man is yet further ordered to a still nobler vital action, and that is intellectual operation. Therefore there was greater reason for the distinction of these two forces in man; so that the female should be produced separately from the male; although they are carnally united for generation. Therefore directly after the formation of woman, it was said: "And they shall be two in one flesh"”

Thomas Aquinas book Summa Theologica

Gn. 2:24
I, q. 92, art. 1 (Whether the Woman should have been made in the first production of things?)
Summa Theologica (1265–1274)

Life , Sex , Time , Help

“My wish [c. 1911].... of compiling a book (a kind of Almanac) in which all the contributions should be written by artists. I dreamt primarily of painters and musicians. The ruinous separation of the arts from each other, and of 'Art' from folk-art and from children's art, the distinction between 'Art' and 'Ethnography' [folk-art].... the solid walls erected between phenomena that in my eyes were so closely related, even identical: in a word, the potentialities for synthesis left me no peace. It may well seem strange today [1930] that for a long time I could not find any co-workers or any means to promote this idea..”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

as quoted by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 102
1920 - 1930

Children , Books , Peace , Art

“Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), p. 135; Ch. 17, December 15, 1939.

Intelligence

“The natural history of these islands is eminently curious, and well deserves attention. Most of the organic productions are aboriginal creations, found nowhere else; there is even a difference between the inhabitants of the different islands; yet all show a marked relationship with those of America, though separated from that continent by an open space of ocean, between 500 and 600 miles in width. The archipelago is a little world within itself, or rather a satellite attached to America, whence it has derived a few stray colonists, and has received the general character of its indigenous productions. Considering the small size of these islands, we feel the more astonished at the number of their aboriginal beings, and at their confined range. Seeing every height crowned with its crater, and the boundaries of most of the lava-streams still distinct, we are led to believe that within a period, geologically recent, the unbroken ocean was here spread out. Hence, both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhat near to that great fact — that mystery of mysteries — the first appearance of new beings on this earth.”

Charles Darwin book The Voyage of the Beagle

Source: The Voyage of the Beagle (1839), chapter XVII: "Galapagos Archipelago" (second edition, 1845), entry for 8 October 1835, pages 377-378 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=390&itemID=F14&viewtype=image

World , Feeling , History , Nature

“When we examine this suggestion, we see that it is no more than a formal acknowledgement of a problem, the problem of how (by what institutional arrangement, by what organization of affairs) the equilibrium prices are to be discovered. Repeated trial and error, while the market stands in suspense awaiting the outcome, is not a practical resort. The number of distinct trials, even if confined to discrete steps of price and quantity, would be so immense that the necessary 'market day' would extend beyond human life-times… [The] theoretical ideal applies to mutually isolated days or moments, each to be treated as perfectly self-contained and looking to no yesterday and no tomorrow. But the real market is dealing with goods inherited from yesterday, and in means of production whose products will not be ready till tomorrow. Meanwhile the non-economic circumstances are changing and rendering each successive equilibrium obsolete.”

G. L. S. Shackle (1903–1992) British economist

Source: Epistemics and Economics. (1972), p. 150

Life , Error , Problem , Change

“The term architecture is used here to describe the attributes of a system as seen by the programmer, i. e., the conceptual structure and functional behavior, as distinct from the organization of the data flow and controls, the logical design, and the physical implementation. i. Additional details concerning the architecture”

Gene Amdahl (1922–2015) American physicist

Gene Amdahl, Gerrit Blaauw, and Fred Brooks (1964) " Architecture of the IBM System http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.72.7974&rep=rep1&type=pdf." in: IBM Journal of Research and Development Vol 8 (2) p. 87-101

Behavior

“The powers of the legislature are defined, and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written. To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction, between a government with limited and unlimited powers, is abolished, if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed, are of equal obligation. It is a proposition too plain to be contested, that the constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it; or, that the legislature may alter the constitution by an ordinary act.”

John Marshall (1755–1835) fourth Chief Justice of the United States

5. U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 177
Marbury v. Madison (1803)

Time , Personality

“Don't let yourself become cynical. Cynicism is a cheap emotion, a craven substitute for thought and action. Cynicism corrodes the will, dulls the conscience, blunts your sense of right and wrong… Stay alert to fine distinctions: become a pessimist like me.”

Edward Abbey book Hayduke Lives

Hayduke Lives (1990)

Sense

“Americans, sadly, are now victims who have turned into perpetrators. Indeed, since September 2001, the war on terror has claimed more innocent victims than those terrorist attacks. This fact is unrecognized at home because the victims of the war on terror are not Americans. But the rest of the world does not draw the same distinction, and world opinion has turned against America.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

"How Terrorism's Victims Became Perpetrators" (April 2004) http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/soros26

War , World , Home , Drawing

“"The poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he…" [Colonel Thomas Rainsborough, Putney Debates 1647] This is one Liberal Text. And it is more distinctive than may at first appear. It asserts the individual and the value of any individual - even the poorest He. But it asserts it without envy. It does not demand that the rich be made poor - nor even claim that the poor are more deserving than the rich. It demands equality in one thing only, the right to live one's own life.”

Jo Grimond (1913–1993) British soldier, politician and academic

The Liberal Future (London: Faber and Faber, 1959), p. 12.

Life , Appearance , Envy

“War as the most extreme political means discloses the possibility which underlies every political idea, namely, the distinction of friend and enemy.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)

War , Idea

“There is no distinction between a good jury and a common jury.”

Sir Francis Buller, 1st Baronet (1746–1800) British judge

King v. Perry (1793), 5 T. R. 460.

“But it was found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposition, nor will it bear it even at this day. Yet the day is not distant when it must bear and adopt it, or worse will follow. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion have drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Autobiography (1821) in notes describing some of the debates of 1779 on slavery.
1820s

Fate , People , Books , Nature

“In organization it means the graduation of duties, not according to differentiated functions, for this involves another and distinct principle of organization, but simply according to degrees of authority and corresponding responsibility.”

James D. Mooney (1884–1957) American businessman

Source: Onward Industry!, 1931, p. 31

“There can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign, oppressive British presence is removed, leaving all the Irish people as a unit to control their own affairs and determine their own destinies as a sovereign people, free in mind and body, separate and distinct physically, culturally and economically.”

Bobby Sands (1954–1981) Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army

Vol. Bobby Sands, Provisional Irish Republican Army (1981)
Other writings

People , Peace

“Every person, every race, every nation, has its own particular keynote which it brings to the general chord of life and of humanity. Life is not a monotone but a many-stringed harmony, and to this harmony is contributed a distinctive note by each individual.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

The Birth of New India: A Collection of Writings and Speeches on Indian Affairs http://books.google.co.in/books?id=n7ZMF8Mjh2oC, p. 85

Life , Personality

“This art is music. It stands quite apart from all the others. In it we do not recognize the copy, the repetition, of any Idea of the inner nature of the world. Yet it is such a great and exceedingly fine art, its effect on man's innermost nature is so powerful, and it is so completely and profoundly understood by him in his innermost being as an entirely universal language, whose distinctness surpasses even that of the world of perception itself, that in it we certainly have to look for more than that exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi [exercise in arithmetic in which the mind does not know it is counting] which Leibniz took it to be.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book The World as Will and Representation

Vol. I, Ch. III, The World As Representation: Second Aspect, as translated by Eric F. J. Payne (1958)
The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)

World , Art , Music , Exercises