Distinction Quotes - Page 9

• The State is only one of the forms assumed by society in the course of history. Why then make no distinction between what is permanent and what is accidental?

  Peter Kropotkin

  States, Form, Courses

  "The State - Its Historic Role". Book by Peter Kropotkin, 1897.

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• Nice distinctions are troublesome. It is so much easier to say that a thing is black, than to discriminate the particular shade of brown, blue, or green, to which it really belongs. It is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbour is good for nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to modify that opinion.

  George Eliot

  Nice, Blue, Mind

  George Eliot (1858). “Scenes of Clerical Life”, p.72

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• How much reverence has a noble man for his enemies!--and such reverence is a bridge to love.--For he desires his enemy for himself, as his mark of distinction; he can endure no other enemy than one in whom there is nothing to despise and very much to honor! In contrast to this, picture "the enemy" as the man of ressentiment conceives him--and here precisely is his deed, his creation: he has conceived "the evil enemy," "the Evil One," and this in fact is his basic concept, from which he then evolves, as an afterthought and pendant, a "good one"--himself!

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Men, Noble Man, Bridges

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2009). “Basic Writings of Nietzsche”, p.475, Modern Library

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• It is only when it takes the form of physical addiction that sex is evil. It is also evil when it manifests itself as a way of satisfying the lust for power or the climber's craving for position and social distinction.

  Aldous Huxley

  Sex, Evil, Addiction

  Aldous Huxley (1937). “Ends and Means: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Ideals and Into the Methods Employed for Their Realization”, p.358, Transaction Publishers

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• The distinction between private and public undermines the unity of spiritual strength, draining the public of the transcendent energies while trivializing them because the merely private life provides no proper stage for their action.

  Allan Bloom

  Spiritual, Unity, Energy

  "Giants and Dwarfs". Book by Allan Bloom. Chapter: "Commerce and Culture," p. 280, 1990.

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• The distinction between the world of commerce and that of "culture" quickly became the distinction between infrastructure and superstructure, with the former clearly determining the latter.

  Allan Bloom

  Culture, World, Infrastructure

  "Giants and Dwarfs". Book by Allan Bloom. Chapter: "Commerce and Culture," p. 281, 1990.

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• It's misleading to suppose there's any basic difference between education & entertainment. This distinction merely relieves people of the responsibility of looking into the matter.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Responsibility, Differences, People

  "Classroom Without Walls". Explorations Magazine, Volume 7, 1957; reprinted in "Explorations in Communication" edited by E. Carpenter and M. McLuhan, 1960, and in "McLuhan: Hot and Cool" edited by Gerald Emanuel Stearn, 1967.

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• The true distinction ... between what is called a fine Regiment, and an indifferent one will ever, upon investigation, be found to originate in, and depend upon the care, or the inattention, of the Officers belonging to them.

  George Washington

  Care, Inattention, Fine

  George Washington, David Maydole Matteson, United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission (1931). “The writings of George Washington from the original manuscript sources, 1745-1799”

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

  Lin Yutang

  Medicine, Chinese, Draws

  The Importance of Living ch. 9 (1938)

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• Kant ... was also quite aware that "the urgent need" of reason is both different from and "more than mere quest and desire for knowledge." Hence, the distinguishing of the two faculties, reason and intellect, coincides with a distinction between two altogether different mental activities, thinking and knowing.

  Hannah Arendt

  Thinking, Two, Knowing

  Hannah Arendt (1981). “The Life of the Mind”, p.30, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• What our view of the effectiveness of religion in history does at once make evident as to its nature is--first, its necessary distinction; second, its necessary supremacy. These characters though external have been so essential to its fruitfulness, as to justify the statement that without them religion is not religion. A merged religion and a negligible or subordinate religion are no religion.

  William Ernest Hocking

  Character, Views, Effectiveness

  William Ernest Hocking (1916). “The meaning of God in human experience: philosophic study of religion”

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• 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

  Religious, Essence, Ideas

  "The Meaning of God in Human Experience". Book by William Ernest Hocking, Ch. IV : The Retirement of the Intellect, p. 38, 1912.

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• Tardiness is next to wickedness in a society relentless in its consumption of time as both a good and a service--as tweet and Instagram, film clip and sound bite, as sporting event, investment opportunity, Tinder hookup, and interest rate--its value measured not by its texture or its substance but by the speed of its delivery, a distinction apparent to Andy Warhol when he supposedly said that any painting that takes longer than five minutes to make is a bad painting.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Opportunity, Substance, Texture

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• I recognise a distinction between dream life and real life, between appearances and actualities. I confess to an over-powering desire to know whether I am asleep or awake--whether the environment and laws which affect me are external and permanent, or the transitory products of my own brain.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Dream, Real, Law

  H. P. Lovecraft (2010). “Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft”, p.17, Lulu.com

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• 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

  Humility, Self, Names

  Georg Brandes (2015). “Friedrich Nietzsche (English Edition)”, p.17, WILLIAM HEINEMANN

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• Gender is not something that one is, it is something one does, an act... a "doing" rather than a "being". There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results. If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called 'sex' is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.

  Judith Butler

  Sex, Character, Expression

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• 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

  Men, Roots, Differences

  William James (2010). “The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy”, p.284, The Floating Press

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• The only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of conformity.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Democracy, Degrees, Rewards

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Epigrams by Ambrose Bierce”, p.10, e-artnow

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• What a woman most admires in a man is distinction among men. What a man most admires in a woman is devotion to himself.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Men, Devotion, Admire

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2690, Delphi Classics

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• People always make this totally artificial distinction between what is commercial and what is good. They quote that maxim "Nobody ever lost money underestimating the public's taste" and I think that's very wrongheaded. I like to believe the audience is actually intelligent, because it's made up of other people like yourself.

  Douglas Adams

  Believe, Intelligent, Thinking

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• Men are forever eager to press drink upon those they consider their superiors, hoping thereby to eliminate that distinction between them.... And women, when confronted by superiors, substitute for drink the crippling liquor of their sex.

  Ken Kesey

  Sex, Women, Forever

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• We are not clear as to the role in life of these chemicals; nor are we clear as to the role of the physician. You know, of course, that in ancient times there was no clear distinction between priest and physician.

  Alan Watts

  Science, Tolerance, Religion

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• Morality knows nothing of geographical boundaries, or distinctions of race.

  Herbert Spencer

  Race, Morality, Boundaries

  Herbert Spencer (2016). “Social Statics: Great Essays”, p.249, VM eBooks

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• What expressions we used - in part taken over and in part newly invented! above all, the famous 'wholly other' breaking in upon us 'perpendicularly from above,' the not less famous 'infinite qualitative distinction' between God and man, the vacuum, the mathematical point, and the tangent in which alone they must meet.

  Karl Barth

  Taken, Men, Expression

  Karl Barth (1960). “The Humanity of God”, p.42, Westminster John Knox Press

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• Don't quote the distinction, for the honour of my lord Coke.

  Edward Coke

  Coke, Lord, Honour

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