Quotes About Classification

I love science, and the way it names and orders and classifies everything, from clouds to plants to stars. Even bones. Tibia, fibula, scapula, patella. Science makes everything so official-sounding, and so tidy. Unlike real life, which is often a mess.

So, according to the guidelines, how should his response be classified? Did he tick this particular box or not? According to the guidelines, a student who was 'vulnerable to radicalisation' would have symptoms of regression, a hankering for an idealised past, a misguided belief in authenticity.

When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.

The more primitive a language is the less it abstracts. [...] As the language with its people advances in civilization it classifies, i.e. abstracts and simplifies more and more; it sees common qualities and drops out those distinctions that do not subserve life. A similar process may be observed in the formation of what we call Parts of Speech.

Unless one is a religious fundamentalist and believes that man was created in the image and likeness of God, it is foolish to believe that human beings are exempt from biological classification and the laws of evolution that apply to all other life forms.

I don't like the word 'urban' because I think it's a bit of a generalisation and they use it to class music, but I don't think it's a word that necessarily classes music.

...commerce, which is mistakenly classified among the productive forms of work, ought to be ranked first among the parasitical professions like those of monk, soldier, lawyer etc.

I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.

Sometimes, you just get a label and it sticks.

people want to establish a canon, because people want to imagine that there are great writers and lesser writers and they want the mythology, they want the narrative for themselves. And it's embarrassing.

Hats divide generally into three classes: offensive hats, defensive hats, and shrapnel.

I did tell the census man I was white, and I'm telling you, I started getting offers for the black American Express card in the mail.

Every woman I had ever met who walked through the world appraised and classified by an extraordinary physicality had also received the keys to an unbearable solitude. It was the coefficient of their beauty, the price they had to pay.

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.

Individuality outruns all classification, yet we insist on classifying every one we meet under some general head.

Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose.

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.

Humans like nothing more than to pigeonhole the events & phenomena that punctuate their lives.

Fights are much taxonomised. They have been subject over centuries to a complex, exhaustive categoric imperative. Humans like nothing more than to pigeonhole the events & phenomena that punctuate their lives.

Why does everything have to be put into boxes?" they say. & fair enough, up to a point. But this vigorous drive to divide, subdivide & label has been rather maligned. Such conceptual shuffling is inevitable, & a reasonable defence against what would otherwise face us as thoroughgoing chaos.

N)ot everything fits easily into our systems of classification. The world might be, it turns out, too complicated for us to know.

Noi facem deosebirea dintre o capr? ?i o oaie; dar oare putem distinge o capr? de o alt? capr? sau o oaie de o alt? oaie?

Life was already sorting them into categories, whether they liked it or not. All they could do was stare at each other dumbly across the widening gaps.

Science is the systematic classification of experience.