Derivative Quotes

Most fantasy is incredibly derivative of Tolkien, so when you read a lot of fantasy, it's really just elves and gnomes, and it all goes back to Tolkien. ~ John Orloff

I have always thought that art is not a category, not a realm covering innumerable concepts and derivative phenomena, but that, on the contrary, it is something concentrated, strictly limited. It is a principle that is present in every work of art, a force applied to it and a truth worked out in it. And I have never seen art as form but rather as a hidden, secret part of content ... A literary creation can appeal to us in all sorts of ways - by its theme, subject, situations, characters. But above all it appeals to us by the presence in it of art ... You can call it an idea, a statement about life, so all-embracing that it can't be split up into separate words; and if there is so much as a particle of it in any work that includes other things as well, it outweighs all the other ingredients in significance and turns out to be the essence, the heart and soul of the work. ~ Boris Pasternak

A sense of life meaning ensues but cannot be deliberately pursued: life meaning is always a derivative phenomenon that materializes when we have transcended ourselves, when we have forgotten ourselves and become absorbed in someone (or something) outside ourselves ~ Irvin D. Yalom

My design has always been a derivative of people I meet. I want to translate who they are and their personality into a room. ~ Jeremiah Brent

The ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism cannot own up to its heavily derivative nature, it must enforce originality on the level of the sentence. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

God has no needs. Human love, as Plato teaches us, is the child of Poverty – of want or lack; it is caused by a real or supposed goal in its beloved which the lover needs and desires. But God's love, far from being caused by goodness in the object, causes all the goodness which the object has, loving it first into existence, and then into real, though derivative, lovability. God is Goodness. He can give good, but cannot need or get it. In that sense , His love is, as it were, bottomlessly selfless by very definition; it has everything to give, and nothing to receive. ~ C.S. Lewis

Vision, the hallmark of leadership, is less a derivative of spreadsheets and more a product of the mind called imagination. ~ Abraham Zaleznik

But how can you understand a war without any knowledge of the society where it happens? It's like trying to understand birth without knowing anything about pregnancy or conception. Or like trying to understand our current economic collapse without knowing what a derivative is. ~ Annia Ciezadlo

The first derivative is the last refuge of a scoundrel. ~ Charles P. Kindleberger

The image cannot be dispossessed of a primordial freshness, which idea can never claim. An idea is derivative and tamed. The imageis in the natural or wild state, and it has to be discovered there, not put there, obeying its own law and none of ours. We think we can lay hold of image and take it captive, but the docile captive is not the real image but only the idea, which is the image with its character beaten out of it. ~ John Crowe Ransom

Crap. No one's ever called me dorkina before. Derivative of dork. Not good. ~ Cynthia Hand

But I should caution that if you seek to plot out all your moves before you make them - if you put your faith in slow, deliberative planning in the hopes it will spare you failure down the line - well, you're deluding yourself. For one thing, it's easier to plan derivative work - things that copy or repeat something already out there. So if your primary goal is to have a fully worked out, set-in-stone plan, you are only upping your chances of being unoriginal. ~ Ed Catmull

My career in academic research has not been involved with active management of securities. I've tried to understand risk-and-return relationships; also the pricing of derivative securities. ~ Myron Scholes

When they become so derivative as to become unintelligible,
the same thing may be said for all of us, that we do not admire what we cannot understand. ~ Marianne Moore

With type as with philosophy, music and food, it is better to have a little of the best than to be swamped with the derivative, the careless, the routine. ~ Robert Bringhurst

The planet Earth in its present mode of florescence is being devastated. This devastation is being fostered and protected by legal, political and economic establishments that exalt the human community while offering no protection to the non-human modes of being. There is an urgent need for a Jurisprudence (system of governance) that recognizes that the well-being of the integral world community is primary, and that human well-being is derivative - an Earth Jurisprudence. ~ Thomas Berry

What sometimes enrages me and always disappoints and grieves me is the preference of great schools of learning for the derivative as opposed to the original, for the conventional and thin which can be duplicated in many copies rather than the new and powerful, and for arid correctness and limitation of scope and method rather than for universal newness and beauty, wherever it may be seen. ~ Norbert Wiener

Very little in science fiction can transcend the gimmickry of a technical conceit, yet without that conceit at its heart a book is not truly science fiction. Furthermore, so little emerging thought and technology is employed by sf writers today that the genre is lagging far behind reality both in the cosmology area and the technology area: sf is no longer a place to experiment, but is now very derivative. ~ Janet Morris

Well, when I was a young writer the people we read were Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sartre, Camus, Celine, Malraux. And to begin with, I was a bit of a copycat writer and very derivative and tried to write a novel using their voices, really ... I keep it out of print. ~ Mordecai Richler

I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness. ~ Max Planck

Investors look at economic fundamentals; traders look at each other; 'quants' look at the data. Dealing on the basis of historic price series was once described as technical analysis, or chartism (and there are chartists still). These savants identify visual patterns in charts of price data, often favouring them with arresting names such as 'head and shoulders' or 'double bottoms'. This is pseudo-scientific bunk, the financial equivalent of astrology. But more sophisticated quantitative methods have since proved profitable for some since the 1970s' creation of derivative markets and the related mathematics. Profitable ~ John Kay

I know there's this ongoing Portland/Brooklyn spar for über hipdom (and I have to be careful here, because my agent lives in Brooklyn), but Portland is the least derivative place I've ever been. The folks here do what they do in defiance of norm or trend. The spirit of authenticity in Portland is as contagious as a February flu. ~ Suzy Vitello

Capital exists because we create it. We created it yesterday (and every day for the last two hundred years or so). If we do not create it tomorrow, it will cease to exist. Its existence depends on the constant repetition of the process of exploitation (and of all the social processes that make exploitation possible). It is not like Frankenstein's creature. It does not have an existence independent of our doing. It does not have a duration, a durable independent existence. It only appears to have a duration. The same is true of all the derivative forms of capital (state, money, etc.). The continuity of these monsters (these forms of social relations) is not something that exists independent of us: their continuity is a continuity that is constantly generated and re-generated by our doing. The fact that we have reasons for generating capital does not alter the fact that capital depends for its existence from one day to the next, from one moment to the next, on our act of creation. Capital depends upon us: that is the ray of hope in a world that seems so black. ~ John Holloway

In the beginning I had a lot of self-imposed limitations as far as production and instrumentation. It was really inspiring for us at the time, because those limitations allowed us to push ourselves as songwriters and gave us a strong sound that people could recognize as ours, like wearing a leather jacket every day. A uniform. They know it's you - and that's great - but my original intention wasn't to be a shoegaze band or to be derivative of one sound. ~ Tamaryn

Online is a revolution. The Internet is a revolution. And we should be revolutionary in the content that we put on it rather than derivative. ~ Shane Smith

Story is the mechanism by which we live, express, understand, and evolve. Story is more than just equipment for living - it's life itself. When a culture's stories are honest, authentic, and connected to the truth, the culture is strong, productive, and progressive. When a culture's stories stagnate and become derivative, deceptive, shallow, and unconnected to the energy of life, the culture erodes, degrades, and eventually perishes (although the people may not realize they're dead!). Stories are the manner by which we extract meaning out of the fibrous pulp of our everyday lives. And meaning is the spiritual oxygen that allows our soul to breathe. Without stories, life has no meaning. Without meaning, we cannot live. ~ Derek Rydall

Change is most sluggish at the extremes precisely because the derivative is zero there. ~ Steven Strogatz

The error in positivism is that it takes as its standard of truth the contingently given division of labor, that between the science and social praxis as well as that within science itself, and allows no theory that could reveal the division of labor to be itself derivative and mediated and thus strip it of its false authority. ~ Theodor Adorno

Our influences are who we are. It's rare that anything is an absolutely pure vision; even Daniel Johnston sounds like the Beatles. And that's the problem with the bands I'm always asked about, the ones derivative of the early Seattle sound. They don't dilute their influences enough. ~ Eddie Vedder

In this book industry we have different kinds of birds; excepting one; all having in common that they are ONLY watchers and squawkers at the pond. We have readers, editors, reviewers, interviewers, publishers, marketers, websites, monopolies, and writers. All are better compensated than the writers. Yet the system is totally upside down as those better rewarded are all derivative of what is primary; the writer. Without that person the readers have nothing to read; the editors have nothing to edit; the reviewers have nothing to review; the interviewers have no one to interview; the publishers have nothing to publish; the marketers have nothing to market; the website cannot adware infect 'members,' and the legalized monopolies have nothing to monopolize. So, in effect, this is where the troll steps in. He's kind of a writer; but he's not taking the time to churn out masterpieces. He's just effortlessly telling the vultures exactly what they are. ~ Edward Drobinski

Look at every show on television; it's derivative of another show that came before it. It was only a matter of time. So all you 'Mentalist' fans, it's okay to like the show, but don't be in denial of where it came from. Friday nights, U.S.A., basic cable-style baby. ~ James Roday

Simon Greenleaf's Masonic work documents the relationship between defining the Patriarch Enoch as a Pythagorean figure while linking the Druidical priestly presence through Phoenician exploration from Egyptian source. Thus Enoch brought the content of Masonic knowledge to a greater mystical perfection as he was deemed to have caused the emergence of the restoration of learning from the vault into solar Apollonian radiance through the application of Pythagorean learning to the inspiration of the new Republic through mathematics and the laws derived from it. The result was for Greenleaf a pre- critical logic of unfolding of the Logos envisaged by Salem Town along lines delineated in the L'Enfant-Latrobe District of Columbia template from the national capital into districts of Masonic Grand Lodge administration was devolved into districts, paralleling judicial and congressional districts, symbolically as an extension of the Latrobe-L'Enfant template just after the moral and political defeat of Jedidiah Morse and the Federalists in 1800 and theological attacks on Masonry and before the onset of the Morgan fervor in 1826. This period enables the historian to see a sequence of Masonic and mythic legal unfolding from legendary history which linked the emergence of Enochic design to civil religion through monumental architecture which also links the dynamism of a Third Age of Masonic "Aquarian" millennialism rooted in third age eschatology within its Tudor derivative of an articulat ~ Robert W. Sullivan IV

Who has not been amazed to learn that the function y = ex, like a phoenix rising from its own ashes, is its own derivative? ~ Francois Le Lionnais

There must be some Tommy Hilfiger event horizon, beyond which it is impossible to be more derivative, more removed from the source, more devoid of soul. ~ William Gibson

But just as much as it is easy to find the differential [derivative] of a given quantity, so it is difficult to find the integral of a given differential. Moreover, sometimes we cannot say with certainty whether the integral of a given quantity can be found or not. ~ Johann Bernoulli

The word animal is a derivative of the Greek word anima, which also means soul. ~ Gunther Hauk

Hope is meaningless. It is just a wish that you are unsure of that will happen. Now if you think that you already obtain whatever it is that you want will happen, then it will happen. The law of attraction and the power of will is the focus that you should embrace for if you think it, it will happen. Doubt it and it will fail. Hope is just a derivative of doubt. ~ Kenneth G. Ortiz

I am a Prince," he replied, being rather dense. "It is the function of a Prince - value A - to kill monsters - value B - for the purpose of establishing order - value C - and maintaining a steady supply of maidens - value D. If one inserts the derivative of value A (Prince) into the equation y equals BC plus CD squared, and sets it equal to zero, giving the apex of the parabola, namely, the point of intersection between A (Prince) and B (Monster), one determines value E - a stable kingdom. It is all very complicated, and if you have a chart handy I can graph it for you. ~ Catherynne M Valente

What I consider to be the barometer for what is a rock artist and what is not, is somebody who has a certain element of blues, even a hint of soul or blues music, derivative of African-American blues, folk, spiritual, or gospel. ~ Ian Astbury

Kind of gay? I wanted to say. Do you have any notion how many homosexuals sweated their ass off on the dance floor to make this soaring bit of derivative trash possible? How many died of AIDS, OD'd, or went broke on the way to that girl from Texas cutting a deal... ~ Adam Haslett

It seemed to me that there was nothing new to be discovered ever again. Our society was utterly, ruinously derivative (although the word derivative as a criticism is itself derivative). We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can't recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn't immediately reference to a movie or TV show. ~ Gillian Flynn

Since I was not able wholly to subscribe to any one set of beliefs advanced by any 'guru' I had to fall back on my own, however derivative. ~ Anthony Storr

Distraction, rather than being occasional and derivative, becomes perpetual and primary. Rather than being a diversion from the main thing you do, it becomes the main thing you do. ~ Andrew S. Miller, The Gospel According To David Foster Wallace: Boredom And Addiction In An Age Of D

Ecthelion must be similarly from Aegthelion. Latter element is a derivative of √stel 'remain firm'. The form with prefix 'sundóma', estel, was used in Q{uenya} and S{indarin} for 'hope' – sc. a temper of mind, steady, fixed in purpose, and difficult to dissuade and unlikely to fall into despair or abandon its purpose. The unprefixed stel- gave [? S verb] thel 'intend, mean, purpose, resolve, will'. So Q ? þelma 'a fixed idea,..., will. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

There are no shortcuts. There are no substitutes. Success is a derivative of persistence. ~ Mark Batterson

Step by step, place became property, property became a mortgage, and
mortgages became derivative investments. ~ Douglas Rushkoff

It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I just think TV is becoming more and more interesting in a way. Films are more and more derivative, you know, whether it's 'Transformers 2' or 'Shrek 5', or it's yet another iteration of another kind of clone of something else. It's a bit depressing in a way. ~ Joe Abercrombie

Guilty as charged. Perl is happily ugly, and happily derivative. ~ Larry Wall

I wrote three mysteries and then a contemporary spy novel that was unbelievably derivative - completely based on 'The Conversation,' the movie with Gene Hackman. Amazingly, the character in the book looks exactly like ... Gene Hackman. ~ Alan Furst

When we take a top-tier view of the amount of code showing up inside of Linux today that is either directly related to our Unix System 5 that we directly own or is related to one of our flavors of Unix that we have derivative works rights over
we don't necessarily own those flavors, but we have control rights over how that information gets disseminated
the amount is substantial. We're not talking about just lines of code; we're talking about entire programs. We're talking about hundred [sic] of thousands of lines of code. ~ Darl McBride

The propaganda system allows the U.S. Ieadership to commit crimes without limit and with no suggestion of misbehavior or criminality; in fact, major war criminals like Henry Kissinger appear regularly on TV to comment on the crimes of the derivative butchers. ~ Edward S. Herman

It is already the fashion to diminish Eliot by calling him derivative, the mouthpiece of Pound, and so forth; and yet if one wanted to understand the apocalypse of early modernism in its true complexity it would be Eliot, I fancy, who would demand one's closest attention. He was ready to rewrite the history of all that interested him in order to have past and present conform; he was a poet of apocalypse, of the last days and the renovation, the destruction of the earthly city as a chastisement of human presumption, but also of empire. Tradition, a word we especially associate with this modernist, is for him the continuity of imperial deposits; hence the importance in his thought of Virgil and Dante. He saw his age as a long transition through which the elect must live, redeeming the time. He had his demonic host, too; the word 'Jew' remained in lower case through all the editions of the poems until the last of his lifetime, the seventy-fifth birthday edition of 1963. He had a persistent nostalgia for closed, immobile hierarchical societies. If tradition is, as he said in After Strange Gods--though the work was suppressed--'the habitual actions, habits and customs' which represent the kinship 'of the same people living in the same place' it is clear that Jews do not have it, but also that practically nobody now does. It is a fiction, a fiction cousin to a myth which had its effect in more practical politics. In extenuation it might be said that these writers felt, as Sartre fe ~ Frank Kermode

On first priority in design consideration is the full realization of individual potential in order to reach the second derivative full realization for all individuals ~ R. Buckminster Fuller

There are only four great arts: music, painting, sculpture, and ornamental pastry - architecture being the least banal derivative of the latter. ~ Edith Wharton

The harder a government, such as a dictatorship, tries to maintain monetary policy autonomy, the more it must either limit the movement of capital into and outside of the country, or the more it must compromise exchange-rate stability. ~ Janet M. Tavakoli

When I am in the process of conceiving a story, I make sure it can be told with words and pictures. The story has to be creative, original and interesting in both areas. Many stories get rejected because they feel derivative. ~ Nicholas Sparks

In the case of a meltdown, the regulatory authorities may find themselves obliged to step in to preserve the integrity of the system. It is in that light that the authorities have both a right and an obligation to supervise and regulate derivative instruments. ~ George Soros

Interestingly, Marxism, Communism and its derivative, Socialism, when seen years later in practice, are nothing but state-capitalism and rule by a privileged minority, exercising despotic and total control over a majority which is left with virtually no property or legal rights. ~ Andrew Carrington Hitchcock

I think that frequently, many times in the beginning of our path as artists, we do have to deal with our upsets and our negativeness - in regard to, mostly, ourselves. We may be taking it out on our loved ones or people close to us, but really we're just mad at ourselves for not giving ourselves the time to devote to our inner development and doing the soul work through our art work. So there's a certain amount of working through that. You may have to cry, you may have to dance, you may have to get the energy moving in whatever way you can, and if you need to scream as you work that's as much of a prayer as the more refined kinds of artist's prayers. Sometimes it's a more direct kind of thing. You can scream in rage, you can scream your need for God, whatever's there for you. You've got to start where you're at. If you think that you can just start making spiritual art without addressing all the build-up of shadow material that you may be carrying around with you, and it's leaking out at the borders, then I don't think that's any good. You've got to be true. So wherever you're at, that's where you start.
And as far as the artist creating spiritual or visionary art, I think that it's obvious and important that the artist experience the transpersonal states prior to them trying to bring it out in their work, otherwise they're just doing imitative or derivative kind of work. It has to be from some authentic inner experience, and as long as you've had some experience of you ~ Alex Grey

What happens if the writer is good is usually not that the work seems derivative or trivial but just the opposite: the work actually acquires depth and resonance from the echoes and chimes it sets up with prior texts, weight from the accumulated use of certain basic patterns and tendencies. Moreover, works are actually more comforting because we can recognize elements of them from our prior reading. I suspect that a wholly original work, one that owed nothing to previous writing, would so lack familiarity as to be quite unnerving to readers. ~ Thomas C. Foster

verb swon to swear, derivative of swannee I swan, raising kids is like being pecked to death by a chicken ~ Amy Metz

The whole market mechanism and its evolution is something that, I'm kind of of the Buffett School. You know, if I see a derivative, I run the other way. ~ Felix Rohatyn

My rich Diana. Fly me to the moon with you. Dance among the stars.
Treacle. Romantic hogwash. Derivative. Unworthy.
My rich Diana. I hate you, hate you, hate you. Hate you, hate.
"Do it," he said. ~ Dean Koontz

Since the 1970S, financial innova­tions such as the securitisation of mortgage debt and the spreading of investment risks through the creation of derivative markets, all tacitly (and now, as we see, actually) backed by state power, have permitted a huge flow of excess liquidity into all facets of urbanisa­tion and built environment construction worldwide. ~ David Harvey

Derivative trading with mark-to-market accounting degenerates into mark-to-model. Two firms make a big derivative trade and the accountants on both sides show a large profit from the same trade. ~ Charlie Munger

To follow Jesus implies that we enter into a way of life that is given character and shape and direction by the one who calls us. To follow Jesus means picking up rhythms and ways of doing things that are often unsaid but always derivative from Jesus, formed by the influence of Jesus. To follow Jesus means that we can't separate what Jesus is saying from what Jesus is doing and the way that he is doing it. To follow Jesus is as much, or maybe even more, about feet as it is about ears and eyes (The Way of Jesus, Eugene H. Peterson, 22). ~ Eugene H. Peterson

I think it's really good and helpful to have the people you most admire in some other discipline than what you work in. It's too intimidating and derivative to be just totally gobsmacked by someone doing exactly the same thing as you are. ~ Whit Stillman

I guess after Dances With Wolves they probably tried some derivative westerns, and if they didn't work, they said the western is dead and moved on to something else. ~ Tom Selleck

My generation grew up with an imposed myth: the myth of happily ever after
(and makes you do the same). Whether we wrote this myth or its opposite
there is no prince, and ever if there is, he never comes, and even if he comes, he never makes you come
we were still seeing our lives in terms of this myth. Pro-prince or anti-prince, the terms of the debate were defined
and not by us. We tried to write other myths
some day my princess will come or I am my own princess so there
but they were all derivative. The armature of plot was the same. We were reacting, not creating. We had not expanded the terms in which we saw our lives. ~ Erica Jong

At the same time, much of it seems to have to do with recreating things we or others had already done; it seems rather derivative intellectually; is there a dearth of really new ideas? ~ Dennis Ritchie

The cross constitutes Golgotha as the new holy mountain. This is where the nations will now come to pay homage to the world's true Lord. The one enthroned there, with "King of the Jews" above his head, is to have the nations as his inheritance, the uttermost parts of the earth as his possession. His victory over them will not be the victory of swords and guns and bombs, but the victory of his people and of their derivative suffering and testimony. That is how, for the four evangelists, the kingdom and the cross come together at last. That is how the darkest of the "powers" are to be overthrown. ~ N. T. Wright

Hedge funds try to produce above-average investment returns using tactics ranging from traditional stock-picking to complex derivative and arbitrage plays. High minimum investments, redemption restrictions and aggressive strategies make them suitable mainly for more sophisticated and well-heeled investors. ~ Alex Berenson

When I evaluate a candidate, one of the most important criteria is what I call "the first derivative." Is this person learning? Is this candidate moving forward, or have they stagnated. ~ Eric Sink

I hate the notion of a secret recipe. Recipes are by nature derivative and meant to be shared - that is how they improve, are changed, how new ideas are formed. To stop a recipe in it's tracks, to label it "secret" just seems mean. ~ Molly Wizenberg

Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman other or flawed derivative of the author; the lack of a pen is no longer a shameful mark of secondary status but a positively enabling space, just as within every writer can be seen to lurk, as a repressed but contaminating antithesis, a reader. ~ Terry Eagleton

Sid: She laughed and said to her oppo, 'Oh dear, how plebian.
Bill: What's 'plebian'?
Hancock: Plebian! It's from the latin 'plebes', defined by Pliny as derivative from 'plebiscum'.
Bill: Yeah, but what does it mean?
Hancock: It means you're a scruffbag! ~ Ray Galton

I'm starting to feel like so much of rock music is derivative and boring. ~ Mary Timony

You have a lot of companies developing stuff that's just derivative. If 'The Voice' is the No. 1 show on TV, they say, 'Let's do 100 different versions of 'The Voice.' The problem is, by the time you get to market, it's already saturated, and everybody hates the format. ~ Shane Smith

When he read James Wilkinson's book The Human Body in 1851, Thoreau was impressed. "Wilkinson's book," he wrote in his journal, "to some extent realizes what I have dreamed of, -a return to the primitive analogical and derivative sense of words. His ability to trace analogies often leads to a truer word than more remarkable writers have found ... The faith he puts in old and current expressions as having sprung from an instinct wiser than science, and safely to be trusted if they can be interpreted ... Wilkinson finds a home for the imagination ... All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy; we reason from our hands to our heads. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Only at his maximum does an individual surpass all his derivative elements, and become purely himself. And most people never get there. In his own pure individuality a man surpasses his father and mother, and is utterly unknown to them. ~ D.H. Lawrence

S-adenosyl-methionine (SAMe) is a natural derivative of an amino acid normally produced by the body, and it plays a role in methylation (see Chapter 5). Levels of SAMe in the body often become depleted by middle age.
Multiple clinical trials have shown that SAMe provides substantial benefit for patients with depression. This effect occurs relatively quickly, unlike the requirement to build up levels in the bloodstream that accompanies some prescription drugs for depression. It is, therefore, an effective, natural, and quick-acting treatment for mild depression. Human trials have also shown benefits for strengthening the liver and for relief from osteoarthritis. ~ Ray Kurzweil

Scientific research sooner or later, but inevitably, encounters something ultimately given that it cannot trace back to something else of which it would appear as the regular or necessary derivative. Scientific progress consists in pushing further back this ultimately given. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Even the crudest, most derivative novel is an expression of the author's hopes and fears and ideas about good and evil. ~ Steven Saylor

It is evident that no derivative laws can teach the young student to see and apprehend colour in nature. His perception needs development as urgently as his muscles. ~ Walter J. Phillips

To Marx the claim of the theory of ideology is that all doctrine is a derivative of social circumstance. ~ Bernard Crick

Don't worry about where you are. Watch the first derivative. ~ Fred Green

i'm too fearful of the professors for whom art is only a derivative of philosophical and theoretical trends" (The Art of the Novel, 32) ~ Milan Kundera

The big car companies are so derivative. They want to see it work somewhere else before they will approve the project and move forward. ~ Ashlee Vance

Television is a populous, derivative, democratic medium. ~ Dan Harmon

Faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Morality is always derivative. It stems from one's worldview. ~ Nancy Pearcey

In the fall of 1972, President Nixon announced that the rate of increase of inflation was decreasing. This was the first time a president used the third derivative to advance his case for reelection. ~ Hugo Rossi

When your 18th, 19, 20 years old like we were at that time, its just like anyone else, you look at like Silverchair and bands like that that are super young and sound extremely derivative of bands that were out at that current moment. As they sounded like 'Nirvana in pajamas' as we called them, we sounded like Bon Jovi and Skid Row and Motley Crue, because we were only influenced by what was out at the time because we were so young ~ Butch Walker

Who do I write for? I thought about this again and again over the next few days until the answer crystalized in my consciousness. I write for all readers. But my primary interest is in representing the complex but universal experience of Somalis. I do this because the media representation of the global Somali community is one that is carved out of derivative clichés crammed with pirates, warlords, terrorists, passive women and girls whose entire existence seems to be nothing more than a footnote on the primitive dangers of female genital mutilation. I write because I want to give a long-overdue voice to a community that has experienced a tremendous array of challenges but who constantly face these challenges with the most wicked sense of humour, humility and dignity. My father always used to tell me that in our culture, the done thing when you're facing hardship and your belly is empty is to moisturize your face, comb your hair, press your clothes and step out into the sun with your sense of humanity intact. It's a lesson I've carried with me to this day. ~ Diriye Osman

Derivative writers seem versatile because they imitate many others, past and present. Artistic originality has only itself to copy. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I believe that writing is derivative. I think good writing comes from good reading. ~ Charles Kuralt

[O]ur human economy is derivative from the Earth economy. To glory in a rising Gross Domestic Product with an irreversibly declining Earth Product is an economic absurdity. ~ Thomas Berry

I will not try to describe the beauty of life in a Swarm ‒ their zero-gravity globe cities and comet farms and thrust clusters, their micro-orbital forests and migrating rivers and the ten thousand colors and textures of life at Rendezvous Week. Suffice it to say that I believe the Ousters have done what Web humanity has not in the past millennia: evolved.
While we live in our derivative cultures, pale reflections of Old Earth life, the Ousters have explored new dimensions of aesthetics and ethics and biosciences and art and all the things that must change and grow to reflect the human soul. ~ Dan Simmons

People who confuse social behavior with manners naturally think of it as something that can be donned and doffed, a fashion that can be copied. But social behavior is nerve and bone, not clothes, and is never just a copy, however derivative it may look. ~ Nick Joaquin