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Quotes About Distinctions

Abstract accuracy is no more to be expected in all philosophic treatises than in all products of art, and noble and just acts with which the art political is concerned admit of such great variation and of so many differences that they have been held to depend upon conventional rather than upon real distinctions.
~ Aristotle
This country must be governed, and can be governed, simply on questions of policy and administration and the French Canadians who have had any part in this movement have never had any other intention but to organise upon those party distinctions and upon no other.
~ Wilfrid Laurier
Good men, whether they be Christians or rationalists, do not desire to discriminate between races, but the distinctions implanted by Nature are too conspicuous to escape the observation of our senses.
~ Arthur Keith
felt somewhat surprised that I could be so much at ease in such company, but I found it then, as I have since, that the higher the gradation in intelligence and refinement the farther removed are all artificial distinctions and restraints of mere caste or color.
~ Frederick Douglass
Even though I was making documentaries, my films had fictional elements to them. I think I like blurring those distinctions because so much of what we see on television purports to be the truth, but it's often largely imaginary - or wishful thinking, or any number of less honorable things.
~ Ruth Ozeki
Religious relativism is not the answer to disagreement between faiths; yet relativism, and a blurring of religious distinctions, all too often result when two deeply believing faith communities engage each other in the public arena on theological issues.
~ Meir Soloveichik
I also think we need to maintain distinctions - the doctrine of creation is different from a scientific cosmology, and we should resist the temptation, which sometimes scientists give in to, to try to assimilate the concepts of theology to the concepts of science.
~ John Polkinghorne
Each thing is valid and really there. It is through a field of such valid objects that I must pick my way, every day and in every way. I put a lot of effort into making such distinctions. I need to make them. I need to be very clear, in my own mind.
~ Margaret Atwood
The tulip is not a reason for disbelief in the hanged man, or vice versa. Each thing is valid and really there. It is through a field of such valid objects that I must pick my way, every day and in every way. I put a lot of effort into making such distinctions. I need to make them. I need to be very clear, in my own mind. I
~ Margaret Atwood
The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega, it is God's brooding over the face of the waters; it is the blinded note of the ten thousand things, the whine of wings. You take a step in the right direction to pray to this silence, and even to address the prayer to World. Distinctions blur. Quit your tents. Pray without ceasing.
~ Annie Dillard
In life and art, there are distinctions to be made between what an act of cruelty consists of.
~ Maggie Nelson
The question had been complicated by the advocacy of some good men, who saw in the separation of the white and black races in the schools of the Nation a dangerous tendency toward the creation of class distinctions in our American life. It was the expression of a theory of equality right in itself, but which it would have been fatal at that moment to enforce.
~ John Eaton
What harm is done by that commonplace word? What distinctions will not, cannot be drawn where enemy holds sway? Is the concept "enemy" the enemy of clear thought, therefore of justice? What is gained by its invocation? Perhaps as important, what is lost?
~ John Jeremiah Sullivan
There being no room for equivocations, there is no need of distinctions.
~ John Locke
Distinctions drawn by the mind are not necessarily equivalent to distinctions in reality.
~ Thomas Aquinas
I've gotten some pretty nice awards. I'm having trouble finding places to put them all.
~ Craig Venter
I think that people are most comfortable when the world is orderly. I think there's the sense that when you begin questioning basic distinctions, such as the distinction between being male and being female, it represents a threat to the social order.
~ Andrew Solomon
We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude, but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favor,
~ Samuel Johnson
On any given day in court, Vic would be wearing the most expensive suit in the place. If anyone minded, they kept it to themselves. New Orleans was a little like England: people were comfortable with class distinctions.
~ Sara Gran
The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.
~ W. H. Auden
I constantly strive to learn and to make new and more powerful distinctions about ways to add value to other people's lives.
~ Anthony Robbins
Las diferencias entre los tribunales sólo pueden recaer sobre tres puntos: su personal, sus atribuciones, su modo de formación.
~ Aristotle
I also think we need to maintain distinctions - the doctrine of creation is different from a scientific cosmology, and we should resist the temptation, which sometimes scientists give in to, to try to assimilate the concepts of theology to the concepts of science.
~ John Polkinghorne
Mindfulness, as I've studied it for more than thirty years, is the simple process of actively drawing distinctions. It is finding something new in what we may think we already know. It doesn't matter what we notice—whether it is smart or silly.
~ Ellen J. Langer