Distinction 39 Quotes

…those who deny that some being is 'contingent' should be exposed to torments until they concede that it is possible for them not to be tormented. ~ John Duns Scotus

In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose. ~ Richard M. Nixon

We've made two products; one is a 155 mm 52-calibre gun with self-propelling and towing capability. This is a field gun - the mainstay of the Indian army like the Bofors guns. Our gun is similar but of a longer range. That was 39 calibre; this is 52. The calibre denotes the length of the barrel and the range. ~ Baba Kalyani

Cat tongues are awesome.
Nellie Gomez, The 39 Clues, Beyond The Grave ~ Jude Watson

People who choose to earn money first, people who put off their real plans until later, until they are rich, are not necessarily wrong. People who want only to live, and who reckon living is absolute freedom, the exclusive pursuit of happiness, the sole satisfaction of their desires and instincts, the immediate enjoyment of the boundless riches of the world [ ... ] such people will always be unhappy. It is true [ ... ] that there are people for whom this kind of dilemma does not arise, or hardly arises, either because they are too poor and have no requirements beyond a slightly better diet, slightly better housing, slightly less work, or because they are too rich, from the start, to understand the import or even the meaning of such a distinction. But nowadays and in our part of the world, more and more people are neither rich nor poor: they dream of wealth, and could become wealthy; and that is where their misfortunes begin."
-from "Things: A Story of the Sixties ~ Georges Perec

The distinction that Jews have themselves always made between Jews of German origin and Jews of East European origin is as stringent as that between Boston Brahmin and Boston lace-curtain Irish, though much finer. ~ Diana Trilling

I accept that it was a mistake to allow distinctions to be blurred between my professional responsibilities and my personal loyalties to a friend. Mr Speaker, I am sorry for this. I have apologised to the prime minister, to the public, and, at the first opportunity available, to the House. ~ Liam Fox

Although the art world is frequently characterised as a classless scene where artists from lower-msddle-class backgrounds drink champagne with high-priced hedge-fund managers, scholarly curators, fashion designers and other "creatives," you'd be mistaken if you thought the world was egalitarian or democratic. Art is about experimenting with ideas, but it is also about excellence and exclusion. In a society where everyone is looking for a little distinction, it's an intoxicating combination. ~ Sarah Thornton

ABAC'TOR, noun [Latin from abigo, ab and ago, to drive.] In law, one that feloniously drives away or steals a herd or numbers of cattle at once, in distinction from one that steals a sheep or two. ~ Noah Webster

For our immigration policy to make sense, it is necessary to make distinctions between those who obey the law, and those who violate it. ~ Barbara Jordan

Through the same plan of a conformity to nature in our artificial institutions, and by calling in the aid of her unerring and powerful instincts to fortify the fallible and feeble contrivances of our reason, we have derived several other, and those no small, benefits from considering our liberties in the light of an inheritance. Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity. This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble freedom. ~ Edmund Burke

You're gonna have to keep on saying that - I am the proletariat, I am the people. I am not the pig. You've got to make a distinction. ~ Fred Hampton

So much crap passes as information that not only does the audience sometimes miss the distinction between news and crap, the editors sometimes miss the distinction. ~ Morley Safer

They had not yet learned to draw the significant but often very fine distinction between smut and pure science. ~ Aldous Huxley

The concept of encounter also enables us to make clearer the important distinction between talent and creativity. Talent may well have its neurological correlates and can be studied as "given" to a person. A man or woman may have talent whether he or she uses it or not; talent can probably be measured in the person as such. But creativity can be seen only in the act. If we were purists, we would not speak of a "creative person," but only of a creative act. ~ Rollo May

Ligon's distinction between making "a Christian a slave" and "a slave a Christian" turned this idea on its head. ~ Ibram X. Kendi

Plato talks about something called anamnesis, which is when something long forgotten comes to the surface of a man's consciousness. Now, I'll admit that just sounds like a fancy word for remembering something, but actually it's more than that because with remembering, it's not necessary to have forgotten anything, which makes for a subtle distinction. That's what cinema does. ~ Philip Kerr

An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: "There is very little difference between one man and another; but what little there is, is very important." This distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter. ~ William James

I make a distinction between manners and etiquette - manners as the principles, which are eternal and universal, etiquette as the particular rules which are arbitrary and different in different times, different situations, different cultures. ~ Judith Martin

The Japanese had no idea what elements of Western culture and institutions where the crucial ones, so they ended up copying everything, from western clothes and hair styles to the European practice of colonizing foreign people. Unfortunately, they took up empire-building at precisely the moment when the cost of imperialism began to exceed the benefits. ~ Niall Ferguson

Blasphemy is just the fanatic's name for criticism. Charb writes wisely:

'A believer can blaspheme only to the extent that the idea of blasphemy holds any meaning to him. A non-believer, no matter how hard he tries, 'cannot' blaspheme. God is sacred only to those who believe in him. If you wish to insult or offend God, you have to be sure that he exists. The strategy used by minority group activists masquerading as anti-racists is to pass off blasphemy as Islamophobia and Islamophobia as racism.'

The crucial distinction we must defend is between acts of imagination and acts of violence....Faith is not the enemy. Fanaticism is the enemy. It always is. But only a fool would deny that faith has been the seedbed of fanaticism in mankind's long and sorry struggle for the light. As much as at times we need to seek "solidarity" among unlike groups, we also need to "desolidarize," to "unsolidarize" - to put the people we know before the abstract categories we imagine. Come to think of it, making people, with all their flaws, fully visible while leaving generalized types alone is exactly what the caricaturist has always done for us. It's his special form of bravery. ~ Charb

The popular distinction between 'constructive' and 'destructive' criticism is a sentimentality: the mind too weak to perceive in what respects the bad fails is not strong enough to appreciate in what the good succeeds. To be without discrimination is to be unable to praise. The critic who lets you know that he always looks for something to like in works he discusses is not telling you anything about the works or about art; he is saying 'see what a nice person I am. ~ Brigid Brophy

But working women with retired husbands tend to be more dissatisfied with their marriages than any other type of wife.39 ~ Stephanie Coontz

The Scots (originally Irish, but by now Scotch) were at this time inhabiting Ireland, having driven the Irish (Picts) out of Scotland; while the Picts (originally Scots) were now Irish (living in brackets) and vice versa. It is essential to keep these distinctions clearly in mind (and verce visa). ~ W.C. Sellar

You can invest with less risk and make more money in the stock market. All you have to do is not be an average investor. Intelligence is the ability to make finer distinctions. ~ Robert Kiyosaki

The world, every day, is New. Only for those born in, say, 1870 or so, can there be a meaningful use of the term postmodernism, because for the rest of us we are born and we see and from what we see and digest we remake our world. And to understand it we do not need to label it, categorize it. These labels are slothful and dismissive, and so contradict what we already know about the world, and our daily lives. We know that in each day, we laugh, and we are serious. We do both, in the same day, every day. But in our art we expect clear distinction between the two ... But we don't label our days Serious Days or Humorous Days. We know that each day contains endless nuances - if written would contain dozens of disparate passages, funny ones, sad ones, poignant ones, brutal ones, the terrifying and the cuddly. But we are often loathe to allow this in our art. And that is too bad ... ~ Dave Eggers

The distinction between the old and the new formulations consisting in the incorporation of the concept of the rate of chemical reactions is so great that it immediately asserted itself in the objective development of catalysis. ~ Wilhelm, Ostwald

It was a typical summer evening in June, the atmosphere being in such delicate equilibrium and so transmissive that inanimate objects seemed endowed with two or three senses, if not five. There was no distinction between the near and the far, and an auditor felt close to everything within the horizon. The soundlessness impressed her as a positive entity rather than as the mere negation of noise. ~ Thomas Hardy

In the Age of Perfect Virtue, men lived among the animals and birds as members of one large family. There were no distinctions between "superior" and "inferior" to separate one man or species from another. All retained their natural Virtue and lived in a state of pure simplicity. ~ Benjamin Hoff

I mean ... to let you know how deeply I am impressed with a sense of the importance of Amendments; that the good people may clearly see the distinction - for there is a distinction - between the federal powers vested in Congress and the sovereign authority belonging to the several States, which is the Palladium [the protection] of the private and personal rights of the citizens. ~ Samuel

What [Nietzsche] calls slave morality is to him purely spite-morality; and this spite-morality gave new names to all ideals. Thus impotence, which offers no reprisal, became goodness; craven baseness became humility; submission to him who was feared became obedience; inability to assert one's self became reluctance to assert one's self, became forgiveness, love of one's enemies. Misery became a distinction ~ Georg Brandes

I get the greatest joy from just doing anything, being an actor. Doing music, and doing what I love to do. I don't make a huge distinction between comedy and drama. I think the whole point is just trying to be as honest, from moment to moment, as you can be. If you're honest about the material, and the material is ridiculous, then you're in a comedy. ~ John C. Reilly

The willingness to sacrifice that springs from a loving heart rather than the desire for spiritual distinction is surely acceptable to God. But, as in the case of Abraham's offering of his son Isaac, the sacrifice itself is not always finally required. What is required is obedience. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

My father was a die maker for 39 years, so I had a basic understanding of the automobile industry and what the manufacturing world was like, just from the opportunity to spend time with him - just talking, because he was a car buff. ~ Mary Barra

I think we need to draw a contextual distinction between what the neo-fascists of Europe would like to do and what the state of Israel has done. ~ Max Blumenthal

The point is this: The deepest distinction in Scripture is not between the Old and New Testaments but between the covenants of law and the covenants of promise that run throughout both ... Therefore, the distinction between law and gospel or between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace is not the result of imposing an alien sixteenth-century construct on the biblical text. P.17-18 ~ Michael S. Horton

By 2022, China is expected to cede the dubious distinction of being the world's most populous nation to India, according to the population division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. ~ Barbara Demick

Social honour recognises no distinction between the employer and the unemployed. All of them work for a common purpose and are entitled to equal honour and respect. ~ Adolf Hitler

Right, but there's expertise and then there's inside information. And I think we have to make a distinction. ~ Daniel Okrent