Quotes About Comparison

It put me upon reflecting how little repining there would be among mankind at any condition of life, if people would rather compare their condition with those that were worse, in order to be thankful, than be always comparing them with those which are better, to assist their murmurings and complaining.

Self-esteem is the difference between where you believe you are and where you think you should be compared to others. If they match, you tend to feel good about yourself. If they don't match, you feel inferior.

Make an effort to compare yourself to others in a positive way. Comparing yourself to others in a negative way is the most predictable way to lower your self-esteem.

when we are selecting, we consider the positive attributes of our alternatives, and when we are rejecting, we consider the negative attributes.

if you are like most people, then like most people, you don't know you're like most people.

If you are like most people, then like most people, you don't know you're like most people.

Most of us appear to believe that we are more athletic, intelligent, organized, ethical, logical, interesting, open-minded, and healthy-not to mention more attractive-than the average person.

The average newspaper boy in Pittsburgh knows more about the universe than did Galileo, Aristotle, Leonardo, or any of those other guys who were so smart they only needed one name.

business writer Polly LaBarre notes, "The United States spends more on trash bags than ninety other countries spend on everything.

We often understand something better when we see it in comparison with something else than when we see it in isolation.

In the middle, we relax our standards, perhaps because others relax their assessments

But the truth is different. You're much more likely to have a Silver Emma moment than a Bronze Borghini one. When researchers have tracked people's thoughts by asking them to keep daily diaries or by pinging them randomly to ask what's on their mind, they've discovered that If Onlys outnumber At Leasts in people's lives—often by a wide margin.[7] One study found that 80 percent of the counterfactuals people generate are If Onlys.

United States spends more on trash bags than ninety other countries spend on everything. In other words, the receptacles of our waste cost more than all of the goods consumed by nearly half of the world's nations.

The United States spends more on trash bags than ninety other countries spend on everything. In other words, the receptacles of our waste cost more than all of the goods consumed by nearly half of the world's nations."6

The U.S. private sector employs three times as many salespeople as all fifty state governments combined employ people. If the nation's salespeople lived in a single state, that state would be the fifth-largest in the United States.

Clarity depends on contrast. In

My porch feels as safe as a chocolate doughnut on an ant hill.

They looked at each other like a pair of parentheses.

Christians in China are praying for our Christian brothers and sisters in America. We believe we are handling our persecution better than you are handling your prosperity.2 A CHRISTIAN LEADER IN CHINA

Relieved of all these stressors, including the pressure of actually being evaluated, and fears that they might come up short, the older adults performed as well as younger controls.

Physically and genetically, our brains may not have evolved much in the last forty thousand years—but our minds have. A baby born today would be much the same as a baby born tens of thousands of years ago. But if we were able to compare the intricate neural structure of an adult brain in today's modern society with that of an adult brain from forty thousand years ago, we'd find huge differences.

As a result, she stubbornly refuses to acknowledge that someone else might be just as talented. You can guide her back into the flow of well-being so that she can achieve better balance within herself and move into a more integrated state.

Amos and I introduced the idea of a conjunction fallacy, which people commit when they judge a conjunction of two events (here, bank teller and feminist) to be more probable than one of the events (bank teller) in a direct comparison.

Unlike life, a work of art never gets taken for granted: it is always viewed against its precursors and predecessors.