Quotes about distinction
page 8

Theo van Doesburg photo

“Quite possibly this aesthetic contemplation coincides with religious feeling or with the uplift of the religious spirit, since in a work of art it is the deepest inwardness that expresses itself. It is necessary however, to bear in mind the essential distinction that the contemplation or uplift in art – i. e., the experience of pure art – contains nothing dreamy or vague. It is exactly the contrary; true artistic experience is altogether real and conscious”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote from 'Grundbegriffe der neuen Gestaltenden Kunst', essay by Van Doesburg (published between 1921-23 in De Stijl) - last Chapter; as quoted in 'Fifty Years of Accomplishment, From Kandinsky to Jackson Pollock', by Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co. 1964, p. 86
1920 – 1926

Robert Brustein photo
Robert Burton photo

“Hannibal, as he had mighty virtues, so had he many vices; he had two distinct persons in him.”

The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Democritus Junior to the Reader

Judea Pearl photo

“The biological organism and the social persona are profoundly different social constructions. The different systems of social practices, including discourse practices, through which these two notions are constituted, have their meanings, and are made use of, are radically incommensurable. The biological notion of a human organism as an identifiable individual unit of analysis depends on the specific scientific practices we use to construct the identity, the boundedness, the integrity, and the continuity across interactions of this unit. The criteria we use to do so: DNA signatures, neural micro-anatomy, organism-environment boundaries, internal physiological interdependence of subsystems, external physical probes of identification at distinct moments of physical time -- all depend on social practices and discourses profoundly different from those in terms of which we define the social person.
The social-biographical person is also an individual insofar as we construct its identity, boundedness, integrity, and continuity. But the social practices and discourses we deploy in these constructions are quite different. We define the social person in terms of social interactions, social roles, socially and culturally meaningful behavior patterns. We construct from these notions of the personal identity of an individual the separateness and independence of that individual from the social environment with which it transacts, the internal unity or integrity of the individual as a consistent persona, and the continuity of that persona across social interactions.”

Jay Lemke (1946) American academic

Source: Textual politics: Discourse and social dynamics, 1995, p. 68

Andrew Dickson White photo
Annie Besant photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
David Eugene Smith photo
Georges Bataille photo
Michael Badnarik photo
William Lloyd Garrison photo
Max Horkheimer photo

“Factors involved in producing job satisfaction were separate and distinct from the factors that led to job dissatisfaction.”

Frederick Herzberg (1923–2000) American psychologist

Source: Work and the nature of man, 1966, p. 75-76

Henryk Sienkiewicz photo
Robert Owen photo
Glen Cook photo

“He had a distinct problem imagining minds working differently from his own.”

Source: She Is the Darkness (1997), Chapter 12 (p. 314)

Luther Burbank photo

“It is increasingly necessary to impress the fact that there are two distinct lines in the improvement of any race: the environment which brings individuals up to their best possibilities; the other, ten thousand times more important and effective, selection of the best individuals through a series of generations.”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

Jordan's Commentary: These two lines correspond respectively to Galton's two elements in individual development, "Nurture" and "Nature."
How Plants are Trained to Work for Man (1921) Vol. 1 Plant Breeding

William James photo

“An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: "There is very little difference between one man and another; but what little there is, is very important." This distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

"The Importance of Individuals"
1890s, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

Theodore Dreiser photo

“Literature, outside of the masters, has given us but one idea of the mistress, the subtle, calculating siren who delights to prey on the souls of men. The journalism and the moral pamphleteering of the time seem to foster it with almost partisan zeal. It would seem that a censorship of life had been established by divinity, and the care of its execution given into the hands of the utterly conservative. Yet there is that other form of liaison which has nothing to do with conscious calculation. In the vast majority of cases it is without design or guile. The average woman, controlled by her affections and deeply in love, is no more capable than a child of anything save sacrificial thought—the desire to give; and so long as this state endures, she can only do this. She may change—Hell hath no fury, etc.—but the sacrificial, yielding, solicitous attitude is more often the outstanding characteristic of the mistress; and it is this very attitude in contradistinction to the grasping legality of established matrimony that has caused so many wounds in the defenses of the latter. The temperament of man, either male or female, cannot help falling down before and worshiping this nonseeking, sacrificial note. It approaches vast distinction in life. It appears to be related to that last word in art, that largeness of spirit which is the first characteristic of the great picture, the great building, the great sculpture, the great decoration—namely, a giving, freely and without stint, of itself, of beauty.”

Source: The Financier (1912), Ch. XXIII

Joe Biden photo
Karl Mannheim photo
George Holmes Howison photo
Berthe Morisot photo

“Music and painting should never be literary, a very subtle distinction according to Renoir. As soon as I try to represent an individual, their physiognomy and attitudes, I become a literary artist.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

Quote in a notebook, after having visited Renoir; as cited in Berthe Morisot, ed. Delafond and Genet-Bondeville, 1997, p. 54
undated quotes

Harry V. Jaffa photo

“Hodgson, a man of steadfast integrity and strong personality, possessed true distinction.”

Ralph Hodgson (1871–1962) British writer

Martin Seymour-Smith Guide to Modern World Literature (London: Hodder & Stoughton, [1973] 1975) vol. 1, p. 237.
Criticism

“Now, there is a genuine social justice which proceeds not from the principle of equality, but from the principle: Suum cuique — to each his own. It is true that to deprive the workman of his just wage is not only a sin, but a sin that cries to heaven for vengeance. When one hinders social advance by putting barriers in the way of the diligent and the talented, one not only commits a personal injustice, but damages the common good of the whole nation, which always requires a genuine elite of ability and the contribution of extraordinary brainpower in every walk of life. And it would be socially unjust if a few individuals or certain groups had so much material wealth that, in consequence of this concentration of property and income, other classes had to live not only in povery, but in misery. Whoever lives in real abundance has a Christian duty to assist those living in wrechedness. Before we proceed, however, let us affirm that the notion of misery is different from that of poverty. Péguy has already drawn the distinction between pauvreté and misère. To live in misery means to suffer genuine physical privation: to know cold and hunger, to have no proper dwelling, to be dressed in rags, to be unable to secure medical attention. The poor, by contrast, have the necessities of life, but scarcely any more. They can borrow books, no doubt, but cannot buy them; they can hear music on the radio, but cannot afford a ticket to a concert; they cannot indulge in little extras of food and drink, but should, by self-discipline, be able to save a little. The poor have, therefore, the normal material preconditions for happiness — unless plagued by acquisitiveness or even envy, which has become a political force in the same measure as people have lost their faith. The fact that there are happy poor (alongside unhappy rich people) is beside the point. Demagogues know how to stir up terrible and murderous unrest even among the happy poor, as has been demonstrated clearly by the history of the left from Marat to Marx to Lenin to Hitler.”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

Pgs 53-54
The Timeless Christian (1969)

William Hazlitt photo

“The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On the Ignorance of the Learned"
Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Charles Darwin photo

“It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant.”

volume I, chapter VII: "On the Races of Man", page 225 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=238&itemID=F937.1&viewtype=image
The Descent of Man (1871)

Lotfi A. Zadeh photo

“It was a biologist — Ludwig von Bertalanffy — who long ago perceived the essential unity of system concepts and techniques in the various fields of science and who in writings and lectures sought to attain recognition for “general systems theory” as a distinct scientific discipline. It is pertinent to note, however, that the work of Bertalannfy and his school, being motivated primarily by problems arising in the study of biological systems, is much more empirical and qualitative in spirit than the work of those system theorists who received their training in exact sciences.
In fact, there is a fairly wide gap between what might be regarded as “animate” system theorists and “inanimate” system theorists at the present time, and it is not at all certain that this gap will be narrowed, much less closed, in the near future.
There are some who feel this gap reflects the fundamental inadequacy of the conventional mathematics—the mathematics of precisely defined points, functions, sets, probability measures, etc.—for coping with the analysis of biological systems, and that to deal effectively with such systems, we need a radically different kind of mathematics, the mathematics of fuzzy or cloudy quantities which are not describable in terms of probability distributions. Indeed the need for such mathematics is becoming increasingly apparent even in the realms of inanimate systems”

Lotfi A. Zadeh (1921–2017) Electrical engineer and computer scientist

Zadeh (1962) "From circuit theory to system theory", Proceedings I.R.E., 1962, 50, 856-865. cited in: Brian R. Gaines (1979) " General systems research: quo vadis? http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~gaines/reports/SYS/GS79/GS79.pdf", General Systems, Vol. 24 (1979), p. 12
1960s

Kamal Haasan photo

“To have won a place in his heart among all those he has mentored and created, itself is a distinction.”

Kamal Haasan (1954) Indian actor

About his relationship with Balachander, in “His Master's voice 1 September 2010”

Robert Sheckley photo
Harlan F. Stone photo
José Rizal photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Desmond Tutu photo

“In many ways it is true to say that syntax is mathematical logic, semantics is philosophy or philosophy of science, and pragmatics is psychology, but these fields are not really all distinct.”

Frank Honywill George (1921–1997) British psychologist

Source: The Brain As A Computer (1962), p.42 as cited in: Sica Pettigiani (1996) La comunicazione interumana. p.48

W.E.B. Du Bois photo

“The most ordinary Negro is a distinct gentleman, but it takes extraordinary training and opportunity to make the average white man anything but a hog.”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

Interview with Ralph McGill, quoted in The Atlantic Monthly (November 1965)

“In fact, their contempt for the native converts was deeper than that for their Hindu subjects. They had all along looked down upon the native converts as Ajlãf (low-born) and Arzãl (base-born) as compared to the Ashrãf (exalted) which distinctive designation they had reserved for themselves….. It was at this critical juncture that the frustrated fraternity of foreign Muslims took a very strategic step. They started swearing by a solidarity with the native Muslims whom they had despised so far. They let loose on the native Muslims an army of mercenary Mullahs recruited, mostly from their own ranks. These Mullahs went about broadcasting the message that ‘Islam was in danger’, and that ‘Hindus were out to enslave and exploit the Muslim minority’. It was in this manner that the residues of Islamic imperialism managed to ‘merge’ themselves with the native converts, and to present themselves at the head of a strong phalanx pitted against whatever historical forces threatened their unjust privileges. Hitherto, the haughty Ashrãf had stood strictly aloof from the abject Ajlãf and the despised Arzãl. Now all of a sudden the latter became the former’s ‘brothers in faith’. This was a tremendous transformation of the political scene in the second decade of the 20th century. … The British never attached more than a nuisance value to this noisy fraternity which had to be befriended or ignored according to the needs of British policy at any time. It was the national leadership which was impressed by this mobilisation of the ‘Muslim masses’ and the pathos of ‘Muslim plight’. They accepted not only separate electorates but also weightages for the ‘Muslim minority’ in many provinces.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

Mohammad Hidayatullah photo

“In the most inalienable of such rights a distinction must be made between possession of a right and its exercise. The first is fixed and the latter controlled by justice and necessity.”

Mohammad Hidayatullah (1905–1992) 11th Chief Justice of India

His further views on Fundamental Rights
Full Court Reference in Memory of The Late Justice M. Hidayatullah

Paul Krugman photo
Mahatma Gandhi photo

“This shifted the centre of a truly Hellenic civilization to the east, to the Aegean, the Ionian littoral of Asia Minor and to Constantinople. It also meant that modem Greeks could hardly count as being of ancient Greek descent, even if this could never be ruled out.’ There is a sense in which the preceding discussion is both relevant to a sense of Greek identity, now and earlier, and irrelevant. It is relevant in so far as Greeks, now and earlier, felt that their ‘Greekness’ was a product of their descent from the ancient Greeks (or Byzantine Greeks), and that such filiations made them feel themselves to be members of one great ‘super-family’ of Greeks, shared sentiments of continuity and membership being essential to a lively sense of identity. It is irrelevant in that ethnies arc constituted, not by lines of physical descent, but by the sense of continuity, shared memory and collective destiny, i. e. by lines of cultural affinity embodied in distinctive myths, memories, symbols and values retained by a given cultural unit of population. In that sense much has been retained, and revived, from the extant heritage of ancient Greece. For, even at the time of Slavic migrations, in Ionia and especially in Constantinople, there was a growing emphasis on the Greek language, on Greek philosophy and literature, and on classical models of thought and scholarship. Such a ‘Greek revival’ was to surface again in the tenth and fourteenth centuries, as well as subsequently, providing a powerful impetus to the sense of cultural affinity with ancient Greece and its classical heritage.”

Anthony D. Smith (1939–2016) British academic

Source: National Identity (1991), p. 29: About Ethnic Change, Dissolution and Survival

Maimónides photo
Sister Nivedita photo
C. N. R. Rao photo

“The only part of the early concept of the elements that has survived is that elements have distinctive properties.”

C. N. R. Rao (1934) Indian chemist

Source: Understanding Chemistry (1999), p. 8

Augustus De Morgan photo
African Spir photo
George Long photo
Friedrich Wilhelm Schulz photo

“Consideration has not been given … to this big distinction as to how far men work through machines or as machines.”

Friedrich Wilhelm Schulz (1797–1860) German politician and publisher

Movement of Production (1843), as translated in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (1988), p. 30

Keshub Chunder Sen photo

“Her (India’s) great curse is caste; but English education has already proved a tremendous power in levelling the injurious distinctions of caste.”

Keshub Chunder Sen (1838–1884) Indian academic

Speech at Hannover Square Rooms on the occasion of a Soiree held to welcome him on 12th April 1870.

Gloria Estefan photo

“Now in addition to being applauded as a five-time Grammy-Award-winning artist, Gloria now has the distinction of being titled a two-time New York Times best-selling author!”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

comment by Frank Amadeo, president of EEI, after Estefan's second children's book, "Noelle's Treasure Tale," debuted in third position on The New York Times children's picture book best seller list for the week of October 29, 2006
2007, 2008

Larry Wall photo

“I don't like this official/unofficial distinction. It sound, er, officious.”

Larry Wall (1954) American computer programmer and author, creator of Perl

[199702221943.LAA20388@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997

Friedrich Hayek photo
Narendra Modi photo
Akbar photo
Jiddu Krishnamurti photo
Carl Schmitt photo

“The systematic principle is based upon the hypothesis that there is a structure in the real world that transcends the distinctions of subjective and objective experience.”

John G. Bennett (1897–1974) British mathematician and author

J.G. Bennett (1963) " Geo-physics and Human History: New Light on Plato's Atlantis and the Exodus http://www.systematics.org/journal/vol1-2/geophysics/systematics-vol1-no2-127-156.htm." Systematics vol 1, no 2 (1963): p. 127–156.

Gerald James Whitrow photo
Ellen G. White photo

“God has set up a high standard of righteousness. He has made plain a distinction between human and divine wisdom. All who work on Christ's side must work to save, not to destroy.”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

Medical Ministry (1932), p. 133

Henry Fielding photo

“Distinction without a difference.”

Henry Fielding (1707–1754) English novelist and dramatist

Book VI, Ch. 13
The History of Tom Jones (1749)

Frederick Buechner photo
James Burnett, Lord Monboddo photo
Eric R. Kandel photo
James Jeans photo
Warren Farrell photo
Carl Friedrich Gauss photo
George Berkeley photo
R. Venkataraman photo
Rajiv Gandhi photo
Max Beerbohm photo
Henry Adams photo
Julia Serano photo
Charles Lamb photo
Michael Halliday photo

“Any text in spoken English is organized into what may be called 'information units'. (…) this is not determined (…) by constituent structure. Rather could it be said that the distribution of information specifies a distinct structure on a different plan. (…) Information structure is realized phonologically by 'tonality', the distribution of the text into tone groups.”

Michael Halliday (1925–2018) Australian linguist

Michael Halliday Notes on transitivity and theme in English: Part 2, 1967. p. 200 cited in: Klaus von Heusinger "Information Structure and the Partition of Sentence Meaning". In: Eva Hajičová (2002) Form, Meaning and Function. p. 287
1950s–1960s

Miguel de Unamuno photo

“To know something is to make this something that I know myself; but to avail myself of it, to dominate it, it has to remain distinct from myself.”

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

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VI : In the Depths of the Abyss

Michael Polanyi photo
Halldór Laxness photo

“All creation complains and moans, my dear lord Commissarius. Complaint is its distinctive sound.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

the bishop of Skálholt
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part II: The Fair Maiden

Joseph Priestley photo