Quotes About Comparison

There is no need to look at Venezuela for examples of why socialism doesn't work, they're in our own backyard.

Another thing this spokesman tells me is that more Kansans need to go to jail. In Kansas, he says, the "rate of incarceration went up forty-four percent in the nineties. In the rest of the nation, it went up 71.7 percent. So we are not putting people in jail" at the same rate as other states.

Good is not good where better is expected

Nothing sharpens sight like envy

Comparison, more than reality, makes men happy or wretched.

One could always count on Baal for a religious experience, but not so Yahweh.

It is important to keep old things, he insisted, because it was through them alone that new things could be judged.

Laughter is nothing else but a sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.

Such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves.

Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival.

There is no reason to believe that we are now on a higher intellectual or spiritual level than during ancient times.

Except for the sign on the front lawn, there wasn't much difference between this house and his. World War II bungalows with clapboard siding. Two bedrooms, one bath. A small lawn that ran out to the street. A peaked roof with dark asphalt shingles. Both ordinary, in all ways. One vacant. One empty.

writing a novel is buttering warm toast, while writing a history is herding porcupines with your elbows.

Animal protein, even more than saturated fat and dietary cholesterol, raises blood cholesterol levels in experimental animals, individual humans, and entire populations. International comparisons between countries show that populations subsisting on traditional plant-nased diets have far less heart disease, and studies of individuals within single populations show that those who eat more whole, plant-based foods not only have lower cholesterol levels, but less heart disease.

But the toaster was quite satisfied with itself, thank you. Though it knew from magazines that there were toasters who could toast four slices at a time, it didn't think that the master, who lived alone and seemed to have few friends, would have wanted a toaster of such institutional proportions. With toast, it's quality that matters, not quantity.

Overwhelming and astounding inequality, especially when it has an element of the unattainable, arouses far less envy than minimal inequality, which inevitably causes the envious to think: 'I might have been in his place.' "30

As one study found, frequent Facebook users—especially those who use the site to check in on the relative status or happiness of others—end up plagued by feelings of envy and are more prone to depression.

The constant ability to see into the lives of our neighbors, to compare ourselves to strangers, to be in constant contact with the entire planet day and night, is unnatural and pushes the human mind far beyond its capacity for reason and reflection.

Nazism and communism were the same thing; every man on the street knew it. The difference between them was a semantical matter for the fancier poli-sci professors at Fordham.

He who loves the more is the inferior and must suffer.

If he were not as he is, he would be better than himself.

There were plenty of white folks like that, happy to define themselves as not-quite-as-bad-as-some, conveniently surrounding themselves with awful people in contrast to whom they looked good.

The Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man called Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the adoration originally payed to the sun.

A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be.