Distinction Quotes - Page 36

• A woman who deliberately destroys a fetus is answerable for murder. And any fine distinction as to its being completely formed or unformed is not admissible amongst us.

  Saint Basil

  Abortion, Fetus, Murder

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• Attorney General John Ashcroft has earned himself a remarkable distinction as the Torquemada of American law. Tomás de Torquemada...was largely responsible for...[the] torture and the burning of heretics — Muslims in particular. Now, of course, I am not accusing the Attorney General of pulling out anyone's fingernails or burning people at the stake (at least I don't know of any such cases). But one does get the sense these days that the old Spaniard's spirit is comfortably at home in Ashcroft's Department of Justice.

  Walter Cronkite

  Home, Law, People

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• Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Real, Men, Intellect

  H. P. Lovecraft (2014). “The Tomb”, p.4, Simon and Schuster

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• In truth, I am nothing but a plodding mediocrity — please observe, a plodding mediocrity — for a mere mediocrity does not go very far, but a plodding one gets quite a distance. There is joy in that success, and a distinction can come from courage, fidelity and industry.

  Benjamin Cardozo

  Distance, Joy, Doe

  "Nine Old Men". Book by Drew Pearson and Robert Sharon Allen, 1936.

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• Some people draw a comforting distinction between force and violence. I refuse to cloud the issue by such word-play. The power which establishes a state is violence; the power which maintains it is violence; the power which eventually overthrows it is violence. Call an elephant a rabbit only if it gives you comfort to feel that you are about to be trampled to death by a rabbit.

  Kenneth Kaunda

  Power, Elephants, Issues

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• So here we are in a country with more wheat and corn and more money in the bank, more cotton, more everything in the world-there's not a product that you can name that we haven't got more of than any other country ever had on the face of the earth-and yet we've got people starving. We'll hold the distinction of being the only nation in the history of the world that ever went to the poor house in an automobile.

  Will Rogers

  Country, Names, People

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• The mediocre mind has no capacity for understanding. It is stuck somewhere near thirteen years in its mental age, or even below it. The person may be forty, fifty, seventy years old - that does not matter, that is the physical age. He has been growing old, but he has not been growing up. You should note the distinction. Growing old, every animal does. Growing up, only a few human beings manage.

  Rajneesh

  Motivational, Growing Up, Animal

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• There is a very important distinction between a critical attitude of mind (or critical faculty) and a sceptical attitude.

  William Beveridge

  Attitude, Mind, Important

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• I've always longed for the theatre and acting to be popular. No actor wants to play to an empty house. We only do it for an audience. The more the merrier. I don't make any distinction between a popular TV series or blockbuster film and doing Shakespeare. They're different, but as long as the material is good and the intention is honourable, it's all the same to me.

  Ian Mckellen

  Play, Long, House

  "Sir Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart on Waiting For Godot". Interview with Dominic Cavendish, www.telegraph.co.uk. March 31, 2009.

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• One of the most important virtues of the American character is our ability to approach the complexities that life presents us with common sense and decency, .. The considered judgment of the American people is not going to rise or fall on the fine distinctions of a legal argument but on straight talk and the truth. It is time for the president and the Congress to follow that common sense for the good of the country.

  Dick Gephardt

  Country, Fall, Character

  "Top Democrats rip Clinton's defense strategy". www.cnn.com. September 14, 1998.

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• I had had enough and I quit, and there is a distinction…You retire when the game has had enough of you. You quit when you have had enough of the game.

  Mercury Morris

  Games, Had Enough, Quitting

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• Joy, like love, is an impenetrable, God-given state of being. The distinctions between joy and happiness and love and affection are important ones under the notion that happiness is an 'iffy' emotion, a highly dependent feeling both aroused and destroyed by external conditions apart from God. And the distinction between love and affection is parallel to such.

  Criss Jami

  Love Is, Like Love, Joy

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.63, Criss Jami

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• When it comes to world news, attitude is what marks the distinction between justice and vengeance. Justice is pure, but vengeance brings more ruin.

  Criss Jami

  Attitude, Justice, World News

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.104, Criss Jami

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• For those who need consolation no means of consolation is so effective as the assertion that in their case no consolation is possible: it implies so great a degree of distinction that they at once hold up their heads again.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Mean, Degrees, Needs

  Friedrich Nietzsche, Maudemarie Clark, Brian Leiter (1997). “Nietzsche: Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality”, p.171, Cambridge University Press

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• Beauty can afford to laugh at distinctions: it is itself the greatest distinction.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Beauty, Laughing

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• Ethics occupies a central place in philosophy because it is concerned with sin, with the origin of good and evil and with moral valuations. And since these problems have a universal significance, the sphere of ethics is wider than is generally supposed. It deals with meaning and value and its province is the world in which the distinction between good and evil is drawn, evaluations are made and meaning is sought.

  Nikolai Berdyaev

  Philosophy, Evil, World

  "The Destiny of Man". Book by Nikolai Berdyaev, 1931.

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• Others - as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders - serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few - as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men - serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part.

  Henry David Thoreau

  God, Hero, Men

  Henry David Thoreau, Nancy L. Rosenblum (1996). “Thoreau: Political Writings”, p.3, Cambridge University Press

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• Instead of old spiritual distinctions you have new spiritual distinctions, instead of old worships you have new worships. You are all depending for your spirituality on someone else, for your happiness on someone else, for your enlightenment on someone else.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Spiritual, Worship You, Enlightenment

  "Truth is a pathless land". Jiddu Krishnamurti's specch at the opening day of the annual Star Camp at Ommen, Holland, www.jkrishnamurti.org. August 3, 1929.

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• Most of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talks that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence. Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend. There are periods in the most thrilling day during which nothing happens, and though we continue to exclaim, "I do enjoy myself", or , "I am horrified," we are insincere.

  E. M. Forster

  Pain, Book, Interesting

  'A Passage to India' (1924) ch. 14

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• There are things that I would like to do, but I make a big distinction between liking to do something and wanting to do something. If there's something that I want to do I've done it. If there's something that comes up that I want to do I will do it.

  Morgan Freeman

  Done, Want, Bigs

  "Morgan Freeman Talks Lucky Number Slevin". MovieWeb Interview, movieweb.com. March 31, 2006.

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• People should make distinctions between the office of the presidency and the person who occupies it. You can respect the office even as you lose respect for the individual.

  David Greenberg

  People, Office, Individual

  Source: www.slate.com

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• The critical sense is so far from frequent that it is absolutely rare, and the possession of the cluster of qualities that minister to it is one of the highest distinctions... In this light one sees the critic as the real helper of the artist, a torchbearing outrider, the interpreter, the brother... Just in proportion as he is sentient and restless, just in proportion as he reacts and reciprocates and penetrates, is the critic a valuable instrument.

  Henry James

  Brother, Real, Artist

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• Why, then, does water-form the very basis of life in all life's various manifestations? Because water embraces everything is in and all through everything; because it rises above the distinctions between plants and animals and human beings; because it is a universal element shared by all; itself undetermined, yet determining; because, like the primal mother it is, it supplies the stuff of life to everything living.

  Theodor Schwenk

  Mother, Animal, Water

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• People have no clue that they’re in prison, they don’t know that there is an ego, they don’t know the distinction.

  Leonard Jacobson

  People, Ego, Clue

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• If it is a distinction to have written a good book, it is also a disgrace to have written a bad one.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Book, Writing, Disgrace

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