Quotes About Comparison

The top five countries that still execute people in significant numbers form an unlikely club: China and Iran (more than a thousand apiece annually), Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. As in other areas of human flourishing (such as crime, war, health, longevity, accidents, and education), the United States is a laggard among wealthy democracies.

In the richest country two centuries ago (the Netherlands), life expectancy was just forty, and in no country was it above forty-five. Today, life expectancy in the poorest country in the world (the Central African Republic) is fifty-four, and in no country is it below forty-five.

States are far less violent than traditional bands and tribes. Modern Western countries, even in their most war-torn centuries, suffered no more than around a quarter of the average death rate of nonstate societies, and less than a tenth of that for the most violent one.

According to the National Safety Council, the horse-associated fatality rate was ten times the car-associated rate of modern times [in 1974, which is more than double the per capita rate today—SP].45

Plane crashes, in contrast, get lavish coverage, but they kill only about 250 people a year worldwide, making planes about a thousand times safer per passenger mile than cars.

The population of the world in 1950 was 2.5 billion, which is about two and a half times the population in 1800, four and a half times that in 1600, seven times that in 1300, and fifteen times that of 1 CE. So the death count of a war in 1600, for instance, would have to be multiplied by 4.5 for us to compare its destructiveness to those in the middle of the 20th century.9

And countries that combine free markets with more taxation, social spending, and regulation than the United States (such as Canada, New Zealand, and Western Europe) turn out to be not grim dystopias but rather pleasant places to live, and they trounce the United States in every measure of human flourishing, including crime, life expectancy, infant mortality, education, and happiness.

Enemies, as well as lovers, come to resemble each other over a period of time.

Love not only prefers the good of another to my own, but it does not even compare the two.

I would rather live in Russia on black bread and vodka than in the United States at the best hotels. America knows nothing of food, love or art.

If some unemployed punk in New Jersey, can get a cassette to make love to Elle McPherson for $19.95, this virtual reality stuff is going to make crack look like Sanka.

I don't reject Christ. I love Christ. It's just that so many of you Christians are so unlike Christ.

One good husband is worth two good wives, for the scarcer things are, the more they are valued.

And then I went round the corner and there's a Van Gogh portrait, and you just think, well, this is another level. A higher level, actually. I love the Sargent, but it's not the level of Van Gogh.

One common fate we both must prove; You die with envy, I with love.

Hope is in the name of God, the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Hope is when you compare your suffering to the infinite, immeasurable love and grace of God.

Jealousy is not so much the love of another as the love of ourselves.

O Helena, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine! To what, my love, shall I compare thine eyne? Crystal is muddy. O, how ripe in show Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow!

Never say love is "like" anything... It isn't.

There is no Muslim version of 'love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you' or 'if anyone strikes you on the right cheek turn to him the other also'.

It does help to actually realize that however stunning the person who is, you know, fluttering eyelashes at you, she doesn't do anything to match up to your wife.

The Russians love Brooke Shields because her eyebrows remind them of Leonid Brezhnev.

Music journalists love Elvis Costello and hate me because they look like Elvis Costello

There is no comparison: The money is over here and the love is over there. But the love is the most important thing.