Classification Quotes

• It is clear that there is no classification of the Universe that is not arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what kind of thing the universe is.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Knowledge, Simple, Arbitrary

  "The Analytical Language of John Wilkins" by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Will Fitzgerald, 1952.

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• All classifications in this world lack sharp boundaries, and all transitions are gradual.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Transition, World, Boundaries

  Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, Anne Applebaum (2007). “The Gulag Archipelago Volume 2: An Experiment in Literary Investigation”, Harper Perennial Modern Classics

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• A classification is a definition comprising a system of definitions.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Definitions

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• Science is the systematic classification of experience.

  George Henry Lewes

  Science, Experience, Systematic

  George Henry Lewes (1891). “The Physical Basis of Mind: Being the Second Series of Problems of Life and Mind”

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• In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights.

  Desmond Tutu

  Country, Children, Rights

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• You ask what is the use of classification, arrangement, and systemization? I answer you: order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject - the actual enemy is the unknown.

  Thomas E. Mann

  Order, Enemy, Firsts

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• The classifications made by philosophers and psychologists are like trying to classify clouds by their shape.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Clouds, Trying, Shapes

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• Crude classifications and false generalizations are the curse of the organized life.

  H. G. Wells

  Life, History, Curse

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• On those remote pages [of 'a certain Chinese encyclopedia'] it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f ) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush, (l) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Dog, Distance, Flower

  "The Analytical Language of JohnWilkins" (1942) (translation by Ruth L. C. Simms)

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• I think people are as individual as snowflakes, they kinda look alike but no two are the exactly the same, and all classification is the root of prejudice.

  Craig Ferguson

  Thinking, Two, Roots

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• Without the discovery of uniformities there can be no concepts, no classifications, no formulations, no principles, no laws; and without these no science can exist.

  Clyde Kluckhohn

  Science, Discovery, Law

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• Reality is infinitely diverse, compared with even the subtlest conclusions of abstract thought, and does not allow of clear-cut and sweeping distinctions. Reality resists classification.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Cutting, Reality, Doe

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• To be beyond any existing classification has always pleased me.

  Boyd Rice

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• Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive.

  Roland Barthes

  Speech, Language, Forget

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• The higher the classification of secrecy, the quicker you will report it.

  George P. Shultz

  Secrecy, Higher, Reports

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• Natural bodies are divided into three kingdomes of nature: viz. the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. Minerals grow, Plants grow and live, Animals grow, live, and have feeling.

  Carl Linnaeus

  Nature, Science, Animal

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• Nomenclature, the other foundation of botany, should provide the names as soon as the classification is made... If the names are unknown knowledge of the things also perishes... For a single genus, a single name.

  Carl Linnaeus

  Knowledge, Science, Names

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• The first thing the intellect does with an object is to class it along with something else. But any object that is infinitely important to us and awakens our devotion feels to us also as if it must be sui generis and unique. Probably a crab would be filled with a sense of personal outrage if it could hear us class it without ado or apology as a crustacean, and thus dispose of it. 'I am no such thing,' it would say; 'I am MYSELF, MYSELF alone.

  William James

  Science, Apology, Unique

  William James (2013). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.9, Courier Corporation

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• Should we even have the classification system? Why shouldn't these things be open? There are things you want to keep secret, like the characteristics of your latest fighter plane or something like that.

  Noam Chomsky

  Secret, Want, Fighter

  Interview with Jegan Vincent de Paul, chomsky.info. August 15, 2012.

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• Physics admits of a lovely unification, not just at the level of fundamental forces, but when considering its extent and implications. Classifications like "optics" or "thermodynamics" are just straitjackets, preventing physicists from seeing countless intersections.

  Ted Chiang

  Lovely, Fundamentals, Levels

  Ted Chiang (2016). “Arrival (Stories of Your Life MTI)”, p.52, Vintage

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• It is once again the vexing problem of identity within variety; without a solution to this disturbing problem there can be no system, no classification.

  Roman Jakobson

  Identity, Problem, Solutions

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• Perhaps as good a classification as any of the main types is that of the three lusts distinguished by traditional Christianity - the lust of knowledge, the lust of sensation, and the lust of power.

  Irving Babbitt

  Lust, Three, Christianity

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• And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, "Use it well, use it wisely.

  John Steinbeck

  Hands, Eden, Soldier

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.25, Penguin

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• Taxonomy (the science of classification) is often undervalued as a glorified form of filing-with each species in its folder, like a stamp in its prescribed place in an album; but taxonomy is a fundamental and dynamic science, dedicated to exploring the causes of relationships and similarities among organisms. Classifications are theories about the basis of natural order, not dull catalogues compiled only to avoid chaos.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Order, Dull, Causes

  Stephen Jay Gould (1990). “Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History”, p.98, W. W. Norton & Company

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• From the first dawn of life, all organic beings are found to resemble each other in descending degrees, so that they can be classed in groups under groups. This classification is evidently not arbitrary like the grouping of stars in constellations.

  Charles Darwin

  Inspirational, Life, Stars

  Charles Darwin (1861). “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection; Or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”, p.358

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