Distinction Quotes - Page 19

• I typically don't use the distinction 'positive' and 'negative' liberty, because negative sounds bad and positive sounds good, and I don't think that the terminology ought to prejudice us one way or the other. So I think the more descriptive term is 'liberty rights' versus 'welfare rights'. So, liberty rights are freedom-of-action type rights, and welfare rights are rights-to-stuff, of various kinds...And, property rights are not rights-to-stuff. I think that's one of the key misunderstandings about property. Property rights are the rights to liberty within your jurisdiction.

  Randy Barnett

  Thinking, Keys, Rights

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• A lot of the distinctions that we make between drama and documentary are spurious. We're deeply confused about these issues. About the difference between the two, about where documentary ends and drama begins.

  Errol Morris

  Confused, Drama, Two

  Interview with Nick Poppy, www.believermag.com. April 2004.

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• It's important to make a distinction between becoming more precise and becoming better.

  Adrian Tomine

  Becoming Better, Important, Becoming More

  Interview with Nicole Rudick, believermag.com. October 1, 2007.

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• I found it really disturbing to see a novelist writing a diatribe about Islam and Muslim radical extremists, blurring the distinction between the two.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Writing, Two, Islam

  Interview with Sarah Fay, staging.believermag.com. March 2007.

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• I make no distinction between writing and storytelling; I've always wanted to tell stories.

  Damon Lindelof

  Writing, Stories, Storytelling

  "Damon Lindelof on Struggling With Depression and Why Knowing J.J. Abrams is 'A Bit of a Curse'". Interview with Stephen Galloway, www.hollywoodreporter.com. November 8, 2015.

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• Could you tell night from day? No, I regard all such distinctions as logically impossible.

  Heraclitus

  Night, Impossible, Regard

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• An important distinction can be made between religion and spirituality. Religion [is] concerned with faith in the claims to salvation of one faith tradition... Spirituality is concerned with qualities of the human spirit, love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony, that bring happiness both to self.

  Dalai Lama

  Responsibility, Compassion, Self

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• Nothing is more common than for men to make partial and absurd distinctions between vices of equal enormity, and to observe some of the divine commands with great scrupulousness, while they violate others, equally important, without any concern, or the least apparent conciousness of guilt. Alas, it is only wisdom which perceives this tragedy.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Important, Tragedy

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• The foolish being who lives making even the slightest distinction between the supreme Self and his own self will always be subject to fear.

  Swami Muktananda

  Self, Foolish, Subjects

  Swami Muktananda (2000). “Play of Consciousness: A Spiritual Autobiography”, Siddha Yoga Publication

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• Refined and delicate natures understand the cat. Women, poets, and artists hold it in great esteem, for they recognize the exquisite delicacy of its nervous system; indeed, only coarse natures fail to discern the natural distinction of the cat.

  Champfleury

  Cat, Artist, Delicacy

  Champfleury (1885). “The Cat, Past and Present”

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• I want to get totally rid of class distinction. As someone put it one of the papers this morning: Marks and Spencer have triumphed over Karl Marx and Engels.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Morning, Class, Paper

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• I'm an indoors person. I'm not afraid of the outdoors and I penetrate it easily and cheerfully. However, I must admit I like Central Park better than the wilderness, and I like the canyons of Manhattan better than Central Park, and I like the interior of my apartment better than the canyons of Manhattan, and I like my two rooms better with the shades down at all times than with the shades up. I'm not an agoraphobe at all, but I am a claustrophile, if you see the distinction.

  Isaac Asimov

  Central Park, Two, Parks

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• This is an important distinction, because most of the modern philosophies that deny that we can know reality, and ultimately truth, make the mistake of constructing epistemological systems to explain how we know reality without first acknowledging the fact that we do know reality. After they begin within the mind and find they can't construct a bridge to reality, they then declare that we can't know reality. It is like drawing a faulty road map before looking at the roads, then declaring that we can't know how to get from Chicago to New York!

  Josh McDowell

  New York, Mistake, Philosophy

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• It is getting to the point where the mark of international distinction and service to humanity is no longer the Nobel Peace Price, but an espionage indictment from the US Department of Justice.

  Julian Assange

  Justice, Humanity, Nobel

  "Support NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, says Julian Assange" by Tom Dart, www.theguardian.com. June 22, 2013.

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• There is no moral distinction between petty thievery and 'from each according to ability, to each according to need.'

  Leonard Read

  Needs, Moral, Thievery

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• There is no moral distinction between the act of a pickpocket and the progressive income tax.

  Leonard Read

  Income, Libertarian, Moral

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• The class distinctions simply result from the different degrees of success with which men have availed themselves of the chances which were presented to them. Instead of endeavoring to redistribute the acquisitions which have been made between the existing classes, our aim should be to increase, multiply, and extend the chances.

  William Graham Sumner

  Men, Class, Degrees

  William Graham Sumner (1903). “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other”, p.144, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• After all, [female genital mutilation is] a key pillar of institutional misogyny in Islam: its entire purpose is to deny women sexual pleasure. True, a lot of us hapless western men find we deny women sexual pleasure without even trying, but we don't demand genital mutilation to guarantee it. On such slender distinctions does civilization rest.

  Mark Steyn

  Men, Keys, Civilization

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• The modern age has a false sense of superiority, because of the great mass of data at its disposal. But the valid criterion of distinction is rather the extent to which man knows how to form and master the material at his command.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Data, Age

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• As the consumer is the public general, without distinction of rank or fortune, the free market is the most obvious expression of the sovereignty of the people and the best guarantee of democracy.

  Faustino Ballve

  Expression, People, Democracy

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• Hiding behind such sacred terms as human rights and distributive justice, politicians and intellectuals alike have perpetrated a gargantuan ruse on humankind: they have convinced us that mass homogeneity is more essential for the betterment of society than is individual initiative, and they have adorned this dubious assumption with assurances that by leveling all distinctions between human beings, collective peace and unity will result as a matter of course, just as water runs downhill or the cart follows the ox.

  Gonzalo Fernandez de la Mora

  Running, Rights, Justice

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• We each create our world by what we choose to notice, creating a world of distinction that makes sense to us. We then 'see' the world through the self we have created.

  Margaret J. Wheatley

  Our World, Self, Creating

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• The Holy Scriptures do not know any distinctions. They enjoin that all lead the life of monks.

  Saint John Chrysostom

  Scripture, Monk, Holy

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• I really think there is a very large distinction between synthetic and naturally occurring drugs. ... I think that these plants 'take people' as much as people take the plants. ... When you take one of these ancient, ancient hallucinogens you are locking in to the morphogenetic fields of all the people who ever took it.

  Terence McKenna

  Thinking, People, Drug

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• Unlike furious thin-lipped feminists, I tend not to draw distinctions between men and women, apart from in bed where you really do need to spot the difference.

  Jeremy Clarkson

  Men, Differences, Feminist

  "Jeremy Clarkson: TV obsessed with hiring 'black Muslim lesbians" by Steve Busfield, www.theguardian.com. October 9, 2009.

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