Disservice Quotes

The Pain of Becoming For the flower, it is fully open at each step of its blossoming. We do ourselves a great disservice by judging where we are in comparison to some final destination. This is one of the pains of aspiring to become something: the stage of development we are in is always seen against the imagined landscape of what we are striving for. So where we are - though closer all the time - is never quite enough. ~ Mark Nepo

We do a disservice to society if we ignore the evidence which shows that stable families tend to be associated with better outcomes for children. ~ Iain Duncan Smith

When we tell people that God will do this and that without teaching people how to do their best, we are doing a disservice to them. ~ Sunday Adelaja

The American Cancer Society has done the American public a really great disservice. ~ David Baltimore

If you want more people to come to the theatre, don't put the prices at £50. You have to make theatre inclusive, and at the moment the prices are exclusive. Putting TV stars in plays just to get people in is wrong. You have to have the right people in the right parts. Stunt casting and being gimmicky does the theatre a great disservice. You have to lure people by getting them excited about a theatrical experience. ~ Catherine Tate

I am not supporting Donald Trump. I think he does this country such a disservice. And I'm gonna leave it there. ~ Nia Long

I've done you a disservice," he said at last. "It's only fair to let you know, but you won't have a normal life span."
I bit my lip. "Have you come to take my soul, then?"
"I told you that's not my jurisdiction. But you're not going to die soon. In fact, you won't die for a long time, far longer than I initially thought, I'm afraid. Nor will you age normally."
"Because I took your qi?"
He inclined his head. "I should have stopped you sooner."
I thought of the empty years that stretched ahead of me, years of solitude long after everyone I loved had died. Though I might have children or grandchildren. But perhaps they might comment on my strange youthfulness and shun me as unnatural. Whisper of sorcery, like those Javanese women who inserted gold needles in their faces and ate children. In the Chinese tradition, nothing was better than dying old and full of years, a treasure in the bosom of one's family. To outlive descendants and endure a long span of widowhood could hardly be construed as lucky. Tears filled my eyes, and for some reason this seemed to agitate Er Lang, for he turned away. In profile, he was even more handsome, if that was possible, though I was quite sure he was aware of it.
"It isn't necessarily a good thing, but you'll see all of the next century, and I think it will be an interesting one."
"That's what Tian Bai said," I said bitterly. "How long will I outlive him?"
"Long enough," he said. Then more gently, "You may ha ~ Yangsze Choo

The idea of competition, particularly in a creative atmosphere, is always there. And, if you don't acknowledge that, you are doing yourself and the process a disservice. ~ Jake Gyllenhaal

If you are bored, you're doing yourself a tremendous disservice. Open your mind, break-free from your conditioned routine, and reignite the flames of excitement and discover. ~ Steve Maraboli

What you don't want is to repeat a formula over and over or impose a formula to a movie that ... when you impose yourself and you impose a formula and you're not open to explore and to find what is right for the movie, I think you're doing a disservice to the story and what you're trying to express. ~ Emmanuel Lubezki

We are doing a huge disservice to a dying world if a manifestation of the joy in us is not coming out of us. ~ Joshua Stannard

You were doing a sadistic little disservice to your country. ~ Alan K. Simpson

If I don't explain or tell some of my experiences, I feel like I'm doing guys a disservice because I know as a younger player, there's things I could benefit from the experience of an older guy. ~ D'Brickashaw Ferguson

I think it's a little insulting, a bit insulting to American workers when Rand Paul says that unemployment insurance is a disservice. ~ Chuck Schumer

I think people do sci-fi a huge disservice by lumping it as some sort of bizarre subculture genre when I think everybody's lives are impacted by sci-fi at some point. ~ Mark Sheppard

Shakespeare had Polonius truly say, "The apparel oft proclaims the man." (Hamlet, act 1, sc. 3). We are affected by our own outward appearances; we tend to fill roles. If we are in our Sunday best, we have little inclination for roughhousing; if we dress for work, we are drawn to work; if we dress immodestly, we are tempted to act immodestly; if we dress like the opposite sex, we tend to lose our sexual identity or some of the characteristics that distinguish the eternal mission of our sex. Now I hope not to be misunderstood: I am not saying that we should judge one another by appearance, for that would be folly and worse; I am saying that there is a relationship between how we dress and groom ourselves and how we are inclined to feel and act. By seriously urging full conformity with the standards, we must not drive a wedge between brothers and sisters, for there are some who have not heard or do not understand. They are not to be rejected or condemned as evil, but rather loved the more, that we may patiently bring them to understand the danger to themselves and the disservice to the ideals to which they owe loyalty, if they depart from their commitments. We hope that the disregard we sometimes see is mere thoughtlessness and not deliberate.

[Ensign, Mar. 1980, 2, 4] ~ Spencer W. Kimball

Most girls take one look at you and swoon. You've never had to really work for someone's affection or put effort into maintaining it. In many ways, your natural gifts have done you a disservice
they've stunted your sensitivity and charm! You've never had to develop insight into what will make a girl laugh and come to love you for reasons that aren't handsome or heroic. That's why smees are experts on the subtle arts of courtship and seduction; nothing comes easy to us, but we do understand and live by the Lover's Maxim."
"And what on earth is the Lover's Maxim?" asked Maz, feeling very uninformed.
The smee cleared his throat. "If you can't be handsome, be rich. If you can't be rich, be strong. If you cant be strong, be witty."
"But what if you can't be witty?" Max wondered.
"Learn the guitar. ~ Henry H. Neff

You will do yourself a disservice if you confine your reading to the rising star whose six-figure, two-book contract might seem to indicate where your own work should be heading. I'm not saying you shouldn't read such writers, some of whom are excellent and deserving of celebrity. I'm only pointing out that they represent the dot at the end of the long, glorious, complex sentence in which literature has been written. ~ Francine Prose

Outlawing religion form the political arena is not what the Founding Fathers intended when they drafted the First Amendment. We do a grave disservice to our country by removing the influence of religion. If you separate God from the public arena, inevitably you separate good from our government. ~ Bill Bright

For me and my friends, for people who think the way I do over there, for all ordinary Soviet citizens, America evokes a mixture of admiration and compassion...You're a country of the future, a young country, with yet untapped possiblities, enormous territory, great breadth of spirit, generosity, magnanimity. But these qualities - strength, generosity, and magnanimity - are usually combined in a man and even in a whole country with trustfulness. And this has already done you a disservice several times. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Even if we grant that digital natives think and learn somewhat differently than older generations, we may be doing them a disservice to de-emphasize 'legacy' content such as reading, writing, and logical thinking, or to say that the methodologies we have used in the past are no longer relevant ... Digital immigrants and natives alike are bombarded with vast volumes of information in today's electronic society, which ... calls for an even greater emphasis on critical thinking and research skills
the very sort of 'legacy' content that teachers have focused on since classical times ~ Timothy VanSlyke

Meditation will do you a disservice. It will confuse you more than clarify you. It will bring tremendous impurity in you - if you are allowing your mind to wander during the empowered experience. ~ Frederick Lenz

And once upon a time I wondered: Is writing epic fantasy not somehow a betrayal? Did I not somehow do a disservice to my own reality by paying so much attention to the power fantasies of disenchanted white men?

But. Epic fantasy is not merely what Tolkien made it.

This genre is rooted in the epic - and the truth is that there are plenty of epics out there which feature people like me. Sundiata's badass mother. Dihya, warrior queen of the Amazighs. The Rain Queens. The Mino Warriors. Hatshepsut's reign. Everything Harriet Tubman ever did. And more, so much more, just within the African components of my heritage. I haven't even begun to explore the non-African stuff. So given all these myths, all these examinations of the possible… how can I not imagine more? How can I not envision an epic set somewhere other than medieval England, about someone other than an awkward white boy? How can I not use every building-block of my history and heritage and imagination when I make shit up?

And how dare I disrespect that history, profane all my ancestors' suffering and struggles, by giving up the freedom to imagine that they've won for me. ~ N.K. Jemisin

You cannot win a war if you cannot talk honestly about the enemy Since the 9/11 attacks, political correctness and ideological prejudice - under both Republican and Democratic presidents - have distorted our analysis of the enemy, preventing us from drawing an effective plan to defeat the likes of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. The Obama administration, blinded by its own preconceived ideas of why terrorism occurs, is influenced by malevolent actors who have an interest in censoring any talk of the religious aspects of the enemy's ideology. At the highest level of the U.S. government, terrorism is deemed to be the result of poverty, unemployment, and lack of political enfranchisement. This fallacy must be jettisoned. We are not at war with Islam. The people most immanently in danger, in fact, are the nonviolent and non-extremist Muslims of the Middle East, such as our allies in Jordan and the modern Muslims of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. They are on the most important front of this war, and they understand just how much religion truly matters. We do a great disservice to those brave Muslims when we try to convince the world that the threat will disappear if enough people have good jobs and sound educations. ~ Sebastian Gorka

I don't see any justification for the federal government owning land, other than the Statue of Liberty and maybe a few parks, maybe a few refuges. But to just own land to do nothing with it I think is a disservice to the Constitution. ~ Don Young

What? Am I supposed to be damaged? Bitter? My father was an asshole. He was a decent enough father. I mean, he got the job done all right. But he was a shitty husband. Mom was better off without him." I put the bread away and grab a container of butter from the bottom of the bag. "It was hard on us after he left, but we persevered. We got through it together. And I'd be doing a disservice to myself and everything I've been through if I automatically assumed every man is a cheating scumbag like my father. ~ Winter Renshaw

Oil companies earned a permanent enemy in me when they messed with the electric car the first time around, and I think they continue to do a disservice in making it seem like fossil fuels are cheaper than they really are in terms of total cost. ~ Chris Paine

A lot of people, especially Christians, want to put you in this box of being a Christian actor, and I don't believe in it. You do yourself and everyone else a big disservice when you start thinking about it as 'Christian art.' That's why most Christian art is bad. They don't put a premium on the 'art.' ~ Zachary Levi

When you compare what people endured in the South in the 60s to try to get the right to vote for African Americans, and to compare what people were subjected to there to what happened in Philadelphia
which was inappropriate, certainly that ... to describe it in those terms I think does a great disservice to people who put their lives on the line, who risked all, for my people, ~ Eric Holder

We do students a great disservice by implying that one set of students is more important than another. ~ Johann Lamont

I decided this early on at Justice: if the traditional way was the most effective way of doing something, then we'd maintain it. But if it was not functioning at optimum levels, we would be doing the country a disservice by continuing to do things "like we've always done them." ~ John Ashcroft

I try not to think of actors as I'm writing because I think you do them a disservice by writing for things they've already done. ~ Paul Haggis

If you don't care about the lapel or the buttons or the fit, then you are doing a disservice to the consumer. We're all inside the tunnel, speaking the language of business, but we need to speak the language of customers. ~ Mickey Drexler

When he reached the doorman, he stopped.
"Did you see Miss Christian come in a few minutes ago?"
The doorman nodded. "Yes, sir. She got here just before you arrived."
Relief staggered him. He bolted for the elevator. A few moments later, he strode into the apartment.
"Kelly? Kelly, honey, where are you?"
Not waiting for an answer, he hurried into the bedroom to see her sitting on the edge of the bed, her face pale and drawn in pain. When she heard him, she looked up and he winced at the dullness in her eyes.
She'd been crying.
"I thought I could do it," she said in a raw voice, before he could beg her forgiveness. "I thought I could just go on and forget and that I could accept others thinking the worst of me as long as you and I were okay again. I did myself a huge disservice."
"Kelly…"
Something in her look silenced him and he stood several feet away, a feeling of helplessness gripping him as he watched her try to compose herself.
"I sat there tonight while your friends and your mother looked at me in disgust, while they looked at you with a mixture of pity and disbelief in their eyes. All because you took me back. The tramp who betrayed you in the worst possible manner. And I thought to myself I don't deserve this. I've never deserved it. I deserve better."
She raised her eyes to his and he flinched at the horrible pain he saw reflected there. Then she laughed. A raw, terrible sound that grated across his ears.
"A ~ Maya Banks

Ridge: I'm only going to say this once, Sydney. Are you ready? Me: Oh, God. No. I'm turning off my phone. Ridge: I know where you live. Me: Fine. Ridge: You're incredible. Those lyrics. I can't even describe to you how perfect they are for the song. How in the hell does that come out of you? And why can't you see that you need to LET it come out of you? Don't hold it in. You're doing the world a huge disservice with your modesty. I know I agreed not to ask you for more, but that was because I really didn't expect to get what I got from you. I need more. Give me, give me, give me. ~ Colleen Hoover

Freud 's fanciful pseudo-explanations (precisely because they are brilliant) perform a disservice. (Now any ass has these pictures available to use in "explaining" symptoms of an illness. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

The harder a man feels compelled to be, the weaker his ego is. And then we do a much greater disservice to girls, because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of males. We ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The photographer does the world a great disservice when he leaves his camera at home. ~ Mark Denman

What he said was: "You obviously don't know where the bar should be, and you're only going to do a disservice by putting it anywhere." And boy was that good advice. Because what he said was, you obviously don't know where the bar should be, and you're only going to do them a disservice by putting it anywhere. ~ Randy Pausch

The word passive does a disservice to investors considering their options. Indexing provides an effective means of owning the market and allows investors to participate in the returns of a basket of stocks. The basket of stocks changes over time as stocks are added or removed based on its rules. ~ Charles R. Schwab

I wouldn't have thought the king would discuss important matters where the dull-minded can hear. Such people tend to be so confused by events that it is a disservice to allow them the opportunity. ~ Brandon Sanderson

The importance of experiences lies not so much in their precise nature as in one's response to them. In part this represents a harkening back to an old principle of discernment...of evaluating an experience in relation to its fruits. More deeply, however, we are speaking of remaining attentive to the mystery and reality of God behind> all phenomena, refusing to allow superficial appearances to distract us from this central concern. We do a disservice to ourselves and others when we allow our interest in the nature of a phenomenon to obscure the mysterious wonder of the very existence of that phenomenon. ~ Gerald G. May

Goodreads could be a source for knowledge but instead does all readers a supreme disservice by allowing the spread of false quotes on the Internet. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

It's a big universe. To stay in one tiny place is doing a disservice to yourself. ~ Janelle Monae

We do literature a real disservice if we reduce it to knowledge or to use, to a problem to be solved. If literature solves problems, it does so by its own inexhaustibility, and by its ultimate refusal to be applied or used, even for moral good. This refusal, indeed, is literature's most moral act. At a time when meanings are manifold, disparate, and always changing, the rich possibility of interpretation
the happy resistance of the text to ever be fully known and mastered
is one of the most exhilarating products of human culture. ~ Marjorie Garber

I would call the French scumbags, but that, of course, would be a disservice to bags filled with scum. I say we invade Iraq, then invade Chirac. ~ Dennis Miller

Sometimes, we do ourselves a disservice to yearn for what we've lost. For if we try to find it again, we might discover faults and blemishes memory has been kind enough to erase. ~ Angela Hunt

It made sense that these adult women worked hard on their friendships, even when sex and romantic love weren't part of the equation. It made me wonder about all the ways that we are able to love each other and how movies and TV make it seem like you have to discard people once they break your heart or once the love disappears. Maybe that was a horrible lie, a complete disservice to real love. ~ Gabby Rivera

Sometime really good writing does you a disservice as an actor. Because you can get lazy. It's doing a lot of the work for you. I guess that's good. But at the same time with material that's not so good, you have to be more inventive, because no thought has been applied to it. ~ Meryl Streep

We should never forget that Americans continue to advocate for individual liberty, equality and self-governance. We often step in when it's necessary to help countries in need. But our history needs no whitewashing. To attempt this does us a terrible disservice. ~ Jay Parini

Any belief system that is based on fear, encourages weakness, sanctions intolerance threatens vengeance, promotes passivity and requires you to relinquish your personal power is doing you a disservice. ~ Walt F.J. Goodridge

The adivasi people have a long and courageous history of resistance that predates the birth of Maoism. To look upon them as brainless puppets being manipulated by a few middle-class Maoist ideologues is to do them something of a disservice. ~ Arundhati Roy

Yes, of course, the whole idea is utterly inane, but to let its predictable inanities blind you to its truly fabulous and breathtaking aspects is to do both oneself and the genre a disservice. ~ Alan Moore

Thanks to General Petraeus, our leadership and the sacrifice of brave young Americans. To deny that their sacrifice didn't make possible the success of the surge in Iraq, I think does a great disservice ... the progress has been immense. ~ John McCain

And yet, those who speak loudly and call anyone who disagrees with them a wimp often do a disservice to the cause they are promoting. ~ Marvin Olasky

What is it that is done to our children that their puberty should deform them? They have the joy of movement; they have an enterprising curiosity; they are ready for sensible self-denial; they dream ahead, and they have a faithful memory, and, above all, great compassion. [ ... ] The well-meaning educator who flatters and humours the young not only does a disservice to the community, but also damages the individual by depriving him of the opportunities of self-discovery. ~ Kurt Hahn

I do believe we should push each other to write better songs and make better music. We do ourselves a disservice if we sit back and float along the river instead of trying to paddle and guide ourselves to a more creative place. ~ Bonnie Baker

Invest in low-turnover, passively managed index funds ... and stay away from profit-driven investment management organizations ... The mutual fund industry is a colossal failure ... resulting from its systematic exploitation of individual investors ... as funds extract enormous sums from investors in exchange for providing a shocking disservice ... Excessive management fees take their toll, and manager profits dominate fiduciary responsibility. ~ David F. Swensen

When somebody discusses my work with me and peruses a poem or two, they get to see a piece of who I am. Because when it comes to poetry, I let it all spill forth. Any other way of writing prose would be a disservice to the art of poetry. ~ Nicholas Trandahl

We are doing a disservice to our country when we keep on pushing the messages of miracles, signs and wonders. ~ Sunday Adelaja

It is easier to say that AS best describes my differences. It makes people more comfortable to have a scientific-sounding term. But actually, I feel dishonest when I say I have AS because the negative effects of my differences on my life are so slight compared to other kids who have AS or other forms of autism and truly suffer. I always feel like I'm doing the people who have these conditions a disservice when I use the medical term, because then people say, Oh, that doesn't seem so bad. What's all the fuss about? ~ Francisco X Stork

I think I'd be a really good dad. So perhaps I'm doing society a disservice by not having as many kids as possible. ~ David Cross

I'm worried about well-meaning white folks, who in their effort to lead a social justice conversation as my allies, make missteps that continue to reinforce oppression in racialized communities, and do a disservice to mainstream feminist social justice work, which should surely be intersectional as fuck by now. ~ Anonymous

One of the greatest disservices you can do a man is to lend him money that he can't pay back. ~ Jesse H. Jones

The current diversity visa program does a disservice to our immigration policy and to those immigrants who have moved through the more traditional process that allows them to lawfully reside in this country. ~ William L. Jenkins

I will no longer
compare my path to others

-I refuse to do a disservice to my life ~ Rupi Kaur

There's mainstream pornography--soft-core airbrushed fluff such as Penthouse and Playboy. The folks makin' this stuff do men and their range of desires a disservice; their implication is that anything outside the "big hair, fake tits, tiny waste, no pores, limited body hair" aesthetic is deviant, weird, not normal--and not something that a red-blooded American man would be interested in. The common boys-will-be-boys explanation for porn--that men get turned on visually (in contrast to "feminine" mode of arousal, which is mental and emotional)--is nothing more than an insult, making men out to be Pavlovian dogs who salivate uncontrollably and strain at their trousers upon contact with nudie pictures.
Antiporn arguments, however well-meaning, are no better. Folks like Catherine MacKinnon also believe that men are inherently drawn to porn. And to them, porn is by definition violent, suggesting that it's somehow in men's nature to be aroused by hurting others. Furthermore, antipornography activists think that porn leads men to commit violence--as if men have no self-control or capacity to separate fantasy from reality, as if an erection is a driving force that can't be stopped once it's started... The only difference is one of perspective: Antiporn folk believe that male sexuality is always threatening, while men's-magazine editors think it's always fabulous. ~ Lisa Jervis

We are constantly protecting the male ego, and it's a disservice to men. If a man has any sensitivity or intelligence, he wants to get the straight scoop from his girlfriend. ~ Betty Dodson

I believe we do a disservice to God and probably to the pro-life cause if God is never mentioned in our pro-life arguments. ~ George Cardinal Pell

If you're inclined to dismiss L.A. as a place of unrelenting vapidity and generic 1980s architecture, then you're doing yourself and L.A. a huge disservice, and you're just not looking hard enough. ~ Moby

I consider this the greatest disservice anyone can do to themselves, waking up and thinking 'let's get this day over with.' This is your life, you don't have the room or the time to get anything over with. ~ Briana Herlihy

You're doing your kids a disservice if they do get everything they want because that's not the way life's going to go, and I think kids have to have some reality. ~ Steve Carell

Martha Washington. I think she's done herself a disservice in history with a little cap, you know? She looks like a namby-pamby little grandmotherly type, but she turned out to be a very strong woman. ~ Cokie Roberts

I think in some ways, it can do a listener a disservice to explain a song. I think I'd rather leave a little room for people to put themselves in it. ~ St. Vincent

Have the right people in the right places, working together ~ Roger Staubach

Narratives of racial exceptionality obscure the reality of ongoing institutional white control while reinforcing ideologies of individualism and meritocracy. They also do whites a disservice by obscuring the white allies behind the scenes who worked hard and long to open the field. These allies could serve as much-needed role models for other whites. ~ Robin DiAngelo

Magic is a state of mind. It is often portrayed as very black and gothic, and that is because certain practitioners played that up for a sense of power and prestige. That is a disservice. Magic is very colorful. Of this, I am sure. ~ Alan Moore

I feel that The American Dream is this fallacy that you come to the United States and win lotto. That's a disservice to The American Dream because the American Dream is worth striving for. And it's not easy. ~ James Gray

Preaching on Sunday mornings is such a simple thing, and by complicating it, I think we all do ourselves and the audience a disservice. It is very simple. Here is the model: Make people feel like they need an answer to a question. ~ Andy Stanley

I think they ought to know. You do them a disservice by not confiding something this important to them."
"I didn't want - "
" - to worry or frighten them?" said Dumbledore, surveying Harry over the top of his half-moon spectacles. "Or perhaps, to confess that you yourself are worried and frightened? You need your friends, Harry. As you so rightly said, Sirius would not have wanted you to shut yourself away. ~ J.K. Rowling

The scholar who knowingly speaks, writes, or teaches falsehood, who knowingly supports lies and deceptions, not only violates organic principles. He also, no matter how things may seem at the given moment, does his people a grave disservice. He corrupts its air and soil, its food and drink; he poisons its thinking and its laws, and he gives aid and comfort to all the hostile, evil forces that threaten the nation with annihilation. ~ Hermann Hesse

I grew up watching many parents use God as a threat towards their children. "Sit down and be still or God will get angry", "Listen to your mama and papa or God will get angry", "Don't say that word, it will make God angry." As a result, we have all of these adults today relating to God in that very same mindframe. God is a "sky daddy" literally sitting upon the clouds in our atmosphere, watching and getting ready to punish and get angry! A storyland God that is but a symbol of figments of childhood that were planted and then nourished throughout a person's growth, until now. It is not a sustainable God who has evolved along with a person's growth, as Someone a person can come to know in an organic and genuine way. It is a phantasmic God which is a staple of fear and tradition. And this is an absolute disservice that parents have done for their children. ~ C. JoyBell C.

I am very honest with them - with an understanding that I'm doing them a disservice if I'm not telling them what I see. At the same time trying to remember that they're people and they're children and you know they are going to have off days and that's something that I feel like I've had to work on as I've gone down the coaching route. ~ Kim Zmeskal

I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticize their own public officials. While exercising the great powers of the office I hold, I would regret in a crisis like the one through which we are now passing to lose the benefit of patriotic and intelligent criticism. ~ Woodrow Wilson

Stories teach us empathy, and limiting the expression of humanity in our heroes entirely based on sex or gender does us all a disservice. It placess restrictions on what we consider human, which dehumanizes the people we see who do not express traits that fit our narow definition of what's acceptable. ~ Kameron Hurley

There was a girl, and her uncle sold her. Put like that it seems so simple.

No man, proclaimed Donne, is an island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived and then by some means or other, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes- forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'll mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection) but still unique.

Without individuals we see only numbers, a thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, "casualties may rise to a million." With individual stories, the statistics become people- but even that is a lie, for the people continue to suffer in numbers that themselves are numbing and meaningless. Look, see the child's swollen, swollen belly and the flies that crawl at the corners of his eyes, this skeletal limbs: will it make it easier for you to know his name, his age, his dreams, his fears? To see him from the inside? And if it does, are we not doing a disservice to his sister ~ Neil Gaiman

In some ways he was a pioneer...but in others he did a disservice and slowed the pace of development by being too much of a cowboy and acting too exuberantly without scientific foundation. ~ Jack El-Hai

Unless your kid is Pele Jr., they're not going to be able to feed themselves from soccer. If your kid knows how to play soccer, but not make dinner, you have done them a disservice. ~ Alton Brown

The polarization of Congress; the decline of civility; and the rise of attack politics in the 1980s, the 1990s, and the early years of the new century are a blot on our political system and a disservice to the American people. ~ Edward Brooke

It's about knowing that in certain moments you have to offer yourself up as a minor sacrifice to help them accomplish what they need to accomplish. Letting them abuse you, on the other hand, would be a terrible disservice. I know it seems like a fine line, but it's a real one, and it can be done. ~ Patrick Lencioni

The Berkshire-style investors tend to be less diversified than other people. The academics have done a terrible disservice to intelligent investors by glorifying the idea of diversification. Because I just think the whole concept is literally almost insane. It emphasizes feeling good about not having your investment results depart very much from average investment results. But why would you get on the bandwagon like that if somebody didn't make you with a whip and a gun? ~ Charlie Munger

Artists frequently hide the steps that lead to their masterpieces. They want their work and their career to be shrouded in the mystery that it all came out at once. It's called hiding the brushstrokes, and those who do it are doing a disservice to people who admire their work and seek to emulate them. If you don't get to see the notes, the rewrites, and the steps, it's easy to look at a finished product and be under the illusion that it just came pouring out of someone's head like that. People who are young, or still struggling, can get easily discouraged, because they can't do it like they thought it was done. An artwork is a finished product, and it should be, but I always swore to myself that I would not hide my brushstrokes. ~ Matthew Weiner

I believe that we do our country a disservice when we make it harder for new American immigrants to abide by the rules of the road and obtain drivers licenses. ~ Martin O'Malley

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits? ~ Carl Sagan

Our suffering, as well as our joy, shapes who we are and who we will become. We may wish for all of our trials to be taken away, but to do so would be a great disservice to our personal growth. ~ Callie Kanno

If we continue to show young girls that they are being compared to other girls, we're doing ourselves a huge disservice as a society. I surround myself with smart, beautiful, passionate, driven, ambitious women. Other women who are killing it should motivate you, thrill you, challenge you and inspire you rather than threaten you and make you feel like you're immediately being compared to them. The only thing I compare myself to is me, two years ago, or me one year ago. ~ Taylor Swift

It is a historical error for those who were not there to just refer to August 28th as 'I Have a Dream' speech day. That is a real disservice to those who were there. It was a sad day. It was not a celebration environment. ~ Jesse Jackson

I enjoy telling these stories that I ultimately think get a disservice on a lot of network television. I enjoy getting people to change their perspective. I enjoy pushing myself into learning and understanding things from a very different point of view. It's scary to do that. It's scary to kind of put yourself in somebody else's position. ~ Morgan Spurlock

By idolizing those whom we honor, we do a disservice both to them and to ourselves ... We fail to recognize that we could go and do likewise. - CHARLES V. WILLIE ~ James W. Loewen

You [film critics] always overstress the value of images. You judge films in the first place by their visual impact instead of looking for content. This is a great disservice to the cinema. It is like judging a novel only by the quality of its prose. I was guilty of the same sin when I first started writing for the cinema ... Now I feel that only the literary mind can help the movies out of that cul de sac into which they have been driven by mere technicians and artificers. ~ Orson Welles