Relatively Quotes

Suppose that you want to teach the 'cat' concept to a very young child. Do you explain that a cat is a relatively small, primarily carnivorous mammal with retractible claws, a distinctive sonic output, etc.? I'll bet not. You probably show the kid a lot of different cats, saying 'kitty' each time, until it gets the idea. To put it more generally, generalizations are best made by abstraction from experience. ~ Ralph P. Boas, Jr.

Those moments of solitude and exhibiting a mental breakdown, and how you do that physically and without it being too obvious, but being relatively settled but relatively intense. There are some intense moments in there that sort of pepper his breakdown. ~ Elijah Wood

The home phone is relatively cheap, incredibly reliable, and - if you buy the right phone - will work for years without replacement. Oh, and far as I can tell, a home phone won't give you brain cancer. In a perfect world, the hard line should have become a platform for building out an entire app ecosystem for the home. And yet ... it didn't. ~ John Battelle

We perceive the solidification as the world around us, which appears to be relatively solid. But that solidification is just really a reflection of the solidification of one's sense of self. ~ Frederick Lenz

The heat swept off the black asphalt in waves as our ragged group started down the street between two columns of people. At first, the crowd was sparse, well-dressed, and relatively quiet, obviously high-ranking party officials. As the crowd got thicker and louder, a guard shouted:'Bow your heads!' The words shot through me like a streak of lightning. I shouted:'You are Americans! Keep your heads up! ~ Jeremiah A. Denton Jr.

PERIODIC MOOD-CHANGES We have already spoken of the affective concomitants of common migraines - elated and irritable prodromal states, states of dread and depression associated with the main phase of the attack, and states of euphoric rebound. Any or all of these may be abstracted as isolated periodic symptoms of relatively short duration - some hours, or at most two or three days, and as such may present themselves as primary emotional disorders. The most acute of these mood-changes, generally no more than an hour in duration, usually represents concomitants or equivalents of migraine aura. We may confine our attention at this stage to attacks of depression, or truncated manic-depressive cycles, occurring at intervals in patients who have previously suffered from attacks of undoubted (classical, common, abdominal, etc.) migraine. ~ Oliver Sacks

My father was a doctor,' she says, 'a very kind man. He died in the early '70s, relatively young.' She taps the cigarette packet on the table. 'Of lung cancer.'
'Oh.'
'But the thing about that is,' she says as she exhales, 'it doesn't take very long at all. ~ Anna Funder

I worry that friends will slowly become professional pallbearers, waiting for each death, of their lovers, friends and neighbors, and polishing their funeral speeches; perfecting their rituals of death rather than a relatively simple ritual of life such as screaming in the streets. ~ David Wojnarowicz

It was funny, in her old age, to look back and see for how short a period her nest had NOT been empty. Relatively speaking, it was nothing - empty far longer than full. so much of herself had been invested in those children; who could believe how briefly they'd been with her. ~ Anne Tyler

Fundamentals in the gaming sector remained relatively healthy during the first quarter. ~ Brian Gordon

Chaga mycelium is relatively easy to grow by using methods already practiced elsewhere in the mushroom industry. Its mycelium is initially an off-whitish color, deepening with age. ~ Paul Stamets

If the person or artist doesn't touch it, and if the camera stays relatively far away from it, it doesn't really have to be real. ~ James Pearse Connelly

Horses in the Book of Mormon would be another. You have relatively few mentions of horses, but there are some, and we don't know exactly how they were used; they don't seem to be all that common. Were they horses as we understood them, [or] does the term describe some other animal? Languages don't always and cultures don't always classify things the way we would expect. We have what we call common-sense ways of doing it. They're not common sense; they're just ours. But again, we don't have a strong case there. We're just problem solving there. ~ Daniel C. Peterson

Alexia had found pregnancy relatively manageable, up to a point. That point having been some three weeks ago, at which juncture her natural reserves of control gave way to sentimentality. Only yesterday she had ended breakfast sobbing over the fried eggs because they looked at her funny. The pack had spent a good half hour trying to find a way to pacify her. Her husband was so worried he looked to start crying himself. ~ Gail Carriger

If man were infinitely malleable, there would have been nor revolutions; there would have been no change because a culture would have succeeded in making man submit to its patterns without resistance. But man, being only relatively malleable, has always reacted with protest against conditions which made the disequilibrium between the social order and his human needs too drastic or unbearable. The attempt to reduce this disequilibrium and the need to establish a more acceptable and desirable solution is at the very core of the dynamism of the evolution of man in history. Man's protest arose not only because of material suffering; specifically human needs ... are an equally strong motivation for revolution and the dynamics of change. ~ Erich Fromm

Individuals need life structure. A life lacking in comprehensible structure is an aimless wreck. The absence of structure breeds breakdown.
Structure provides the relatively fixed points of reference we need. That is why, for many people, a job is crucial psychologically, over and above the paycheck. By making clear demands on their time and energy, it provides an element of structure around which the rest of their lives can be organized. The absolute demands imposed on a parent by an infant, the responsibility to care for an invalid, the tight discipline demanded by membership in a church or, in some countries, a political party - all these may also impose a simple structure on life. ~ Alvin Toffler

There is a small minority of well-educated people with relatively sensible views on economics, and an extremely tiny minority of economists with highly sensible views. Then there's everybody else ... To win, a politician needs to please the median voter. It makes little difference if a few thousand economists think you a fool. ~ Bryan Caplan

Presumptuous for me to say, but at least - at a minimum - I've been able to influence the direction of the Democratic Party on foreign policy. And I've been relatively - presumptuous to say - relatively successful legislatively in the Senate, being able to win a lot of Republican friends, and being able to cross the aisle. ~ Joe Biden

I can't actually explain why my lines got shorter, but they did. Just as I can't explain why my early poems were 'all image' and my current ones are relatively abstract. The sense of the line changed with the theme, somehow my ear (or brain or heart/mind) fell in love with a short line and very very simple words. ~ Gregory Orr

Today we are again witnessing the emergence of transnational elites ... [Whose] ties cut across national boundaries ... It is likely that before long the social elites of most of the more advanced countries will be highly internationalist or globalist in spirit and outlook ... The nation-state is gradually yielding its sovereignty ... Further progress will require greater American sacrifices. More intensive efforts to shape a new world monetary structure will have to be undertaken, with some consequent risk to the present relatively favorable American position. ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski

When you have to play a character that seems to be a relatively decent person and seems to be like yourself, I think the trick in that kind of character, so that you don't become a cliche, is to find where their weaknesses are. ~ Jennifer Beals

It's not about weight, it's about fitness, and one component of being fit is to have relatively low body fat, because fat is not very efficient, whereas muscle is. ~ Deborah Bull

Politics is a dirty, ruthless business, Agent Robie. It makes the intelligence sector look relatively honorable by comparison. ~ David Baldacci

The owners are related to Ernie, and because of our circumstances; they're letting us stay there relatively cheap. ~ Kristen Middleton

Women are the most spectacular instance of this. After a period of independence that came with the spread of Christianity, they were relegated to a lower order. This is all the more interesting because the gospel and the first church were never hostile to women nor treated them as minors, and the situation of women in the Roman empire (particularly in the East) was relatively favourable. In spite of this, when Christianity became a power or authority, this worked against women. A strange perversion, yet fully understandable when we allow that women represent precisely the most innovative elements in Christianity: grace, love, charity, a concern for living creatures, nonviolence, an interest in little things, the hope of new beginnings - the very elements that Christianity was setting aside in favor of glory and success. ~ Jacques Ellul

I'm in a very close-knit, very, very tight family. My grandmother had 13 kids, so we had a lot of family like 50, 60 grandchildren and we all lived in Jersey, relatively in the same area. So every time there was something, my entire family was there. And I just believed everybody's family was like that. ~ Lauryn Hill

I had lived my entire life up until I began working at Westwind relatively corpse-free. Now I had access to scores of them - stacked in the crematory freezer. They forced me to face my own death and the deaths of those I loved. No matter how much technology may become our master, it takes only a human corpse to toss the anchor off that boat and pull us back down to the firm knowledge that we are glorified animals that eat and shit and are doomed to die. We are all just future corpses. ~ Caitlin Doughty

The development of mathematics toward greater precision has led, as is well known, to the formalization of large tracts of it, so that one can prove any theorem using nothing but a few mechanical rules ... One might therefore conjecture that these axioms and rules of inference are sufficient to decide any mathematical question that can at all be formally expressed in these systems. It will be shown below that this is not the case, that on the contrary there are in the two systems mentioned relatively simple problems in the theory of integers that cannot be decided on the basis of the axioms. ~ Kurt Godel

Relatively few people should start companies. ~ Reid Hoffman

Classically, cosmetics companies will take highly theoretical, textbookish information about the way that cells work - the components at a molecular level or the behavior of cells in a glass dish - and then pretend it's the same as the ultimate issue of whether something makes you look nice. "This molecular component," they say, with a flourish, "is crucial for collagen formation." And that will be perfectly true (along with many other amino acids which are used by your body to assemble protein in joints, skin, and everywhere else), but there is no reason to believe that anyone is deficient in it or that smearing it on your face will make any difference to your appearance. In general, you don't absorb things very well through your skin, because its purpose is to be relatively impermeable. When you sit in a bath of baked beans for charity, you do not get fat, nor do you start farting. ~ Ben Goldacre

Upon reflection, it is relatively easy to understand how Americans come to deny the evils of mass incarceration. Denial is facilitated by persistent racial segregation in housing and schools, by political demagoguery, by racialized media imagery, and by the ease of changing one's perception of reality simply by changing television channels. There is little reason to doubt the prevailing "common sense" that black and brown men have been locked up en masse merely in response to crime rates when one's sources of information are mainstream media outlets. ~ Michelle Alexander

we can influence others, and change their behaviour, if: a) they are motivated to do what we are asking them to do; and b) what we are asking them to do is relatively easy. ~ Adam Ferrier

And this one is relatively common: iatrophobia, or fear of doctors. Or gynophobia, which is fear of women, and naturally only afflicts only men. Very widespread in Mexico, although it manifests itself in different ways. Isn't that a slight exaggeration? Not a bit: almost all Mexican men are afraid of women. I don't know what to say to that, said Juan de Dios Martínez. Then there are two fears that are really very romantic: ombrophobia and thalassophobia, or fear of rain and fear of the sea. And two others with a touch of the romantic: anthophobia, or fear of flowers, and dendrophobia, fear of trees. Some Mexican men may be gynophobes, said Juan de Dios Martínez, but not all of them, it can't be that bad. What do you think optophobia is? asked the director. Opto, opto, something to do with the eyes, my God, fear of the eyes? Even worse: fear of opening the eyes. In a figurative sense, that's the answer to what you just said about gynophobia. In a literal sense, it leads to violent attacks, loss of consciousness, visual and auditory hallucinations, and generally aggressive behavior. ~ Roberto Bolano

It was sometimes praised as a noble public endeavor, but nearly all other Atlanteans found more important things to do on any given day than help. Even the Atlantean nobles ignored the prospect of somebody other than themselves obtaining unchallengeable power, which a less experienced cynic might expect to catch their attention. With relatively little support, the tiny handful of would-be makers of this device labored under working conditions that were not so much dramatically arduous, as pointlessly annoying. Eventually time ran out and Atlantis was destroyed with the device still far from complete. ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

I don't really think in terms of the future of literature. I think literature will be around "forever" - but in a relatively niche way, like jazz and poetry, although probably more widely consumed than jazz and poetry since it's fundamentally a narrative form. And I think that's important and places like Word Riot and The New York Tyrant and n+1 will be responsible for keeping it alive. ~ Nick Antosca

I mean that in a consumer society, the family is the means by which most people become tied to a cycle like this: go along with things, so long as you get enough to buy more and more things even though the whole world is exploited so that a relatively small number of people in this country - US! - can live well. (Our own land and air and water are also plundered in the interests of blind consumerism.) ~ Daniel Berrigan

The social sciences, like much of biology but unlike most fields of the physical sciences, have to deal with structures of essential complexity, i.e. with structures whose characteristic properties can be exhibited only by models made up of relatively large numbers of variables. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

I think spirituality, even if there's no God, even if there's nothing - I consider myself relatively spiritual. I believe in a God. I don't know what it's like, but I do believe in it. It's the only thing that makes any sense. Maybe I'm just looking for order in the chaos. Though, I do believe in Evolution and I do believe in science. ~ Gerard Way

I have four relatively small children, and around fourth grade, they start doing big projects on Native Americas: everything is Native Americans in elementary school. Do you know how many Native American dresses I've sewn, on and on; it's a full yearlong study. And then never again. As journalists, we never even cover Native Americans. ~ Soledad O'Brien

On New Year's Eve, when the children had gone up the hill to be with their father, I went to a Mensa party in San Francisco, but returned home relatively early, wanting to face the first few hours of the new year away from the noise and lurching of people who had drunk too much. I stood outside on the deck, in darkness, looking up at the star-frosted sky, letting myself feel without censoring the ache and hope that belonged to that night, and I sent out prayer for connection with someone who would be --finally -- the person I'd needed to be with all my life, someone who would have gone through his own changes and wars of the spirit and emerged a true adult. A grown-up man. Who wouldn't mind my being a grandmother, for Pete's sake. A man somewhat like Shura Borodin -- or what Shura seemed to be.
I cried a bit because the wanting was so very intense and the clear night sky so very indifferent, and everything I was in body and soul might yet grow old without a lover and friend who could be to me what I was capable of being to him. I toasted myself, hope, the new year and the magnificent cold stars with a bit of wine, then went to bed. ~ Ann Shulgin

I smelled like an Upper Level demon. Roth was back and he was relatively unharmed. A Lilin had been born. Apparently an orgasm was apocalyptic. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Whatever happens to a baby contributes to the emotional and perceptual map of the world that its developing brain creates. As my colleague Bruce Perry explains it, the brain is formed in a "use-dependent manner."5 This is another way of describing neuroplasticity, the relatively recent discovery that neurons that "fire together, wire together." When a circuit fires repeatedly, it can become a default setting - the response most likely to occur. If you feel safe and loved, your brain becomes specialized in exploration, play, and cooperation; if you are frightened and unwanted, it specializes in managing feelings of fear and abandonment. As infants and ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

This is my real bed-rock objection to the eastern systems. They decry all manly virtue as dangerous and wicked, and they look upon Nature as evil. True enough, everything is evil relatively to Adonai; for all stain is impurity. A bee's swarm is evil - inside one's clothes. "Dirt is matter in the wrong place." It is dirt to connect sex with statuary, morals with art.
Only Adonai, who is in a sense the True Meaning of everything, cannot defile any idea. This is a hard saying, though true, for nothing of course is dirtier than to try and use Adonai as a fig-leaf for one's shame.
To seduce women under the pretense of religion is unutterable foulness; though both adultery and religion are themselves clean. To mix jam and mustard is a messy mistake. ~ Aleister Crowley

For the serious and dedicated guitarist, learning to play and master the Guitar represents The Path or Way of Enlightenment of which there is no end. Ultimately, playing the Guitar represents the Path to Spiritual Perfection. The guitarist is always a student on this Path. To become a master of the Guitar, relatively speaking, is to always be a student of the Guitar, continually learning and growing with the instrument. The master never thinks of him or herself as a master, but rather as the eternal student on whatever Path he or she is walking in life. We are all students here on this little green earth. ~ David Cherubim

O, lawdy, seems you don't got good radar when it comes to pickin' 'em," Elvira muttered.
"No, her radar is beyond not good. Her radar is also not malfunctioning. It's straight out broke," Martha agreed and I was wondering if perhaps Elvira and Martha were not such a good match. Denver was relatively peaceful. I'd never heard of riots or sieges or militant hostile takeovers of land and I was foreseeing this if these two got together and rallied the female population of the Denver Metropolitan Area as a protest to shelter all women against dickhead assholes. ~ Kristen Ashley

5 1/2 centuries after its 1.0 release, the book is a surprisingly robust piece of information technology. Sure, its memory is relatively tiny
one novel adds up to less than a megabyte. But it doesn't need charging, and it never crashes. Its interface is rapidly and intuitively navigable. The scroll never stood a chance. ~ Lev Grossman

INTPs seem more inclined toward cerebral narcissism than most other types. While Vaknin sees the narcissist's chance of recovery as relatively slim, I tend to disagree, especially for those with milder cases. In my experience, as INTPs mature and develop, their need for ego affirmation gradually diminishes and is supplanted by a healthier sense of self-worth. ~ A.J. Drenth

Acidalia Planitia (where I am) has a relatively low elevation. So does Schiaparelli. But between them it goes up and down by 10 kilometers. There's going to be a lot of dangerous driving. ~ Andy Weir

My parents are both very funny but they're also relatively soft-spoken, normal human beings while I'm just a lunatic. I don't know where this loud, ballsy, hammy ridiculousness came from. I'm just glad I followed my goals and my parents did too. It's not like we even had a plan when I dragged my mom to Los Angeles. ~ Emma Stone

Currently where you are is on a huge globe with a relatively thin crust of stone, containing fire in its bowels, rotating on its own slightly tilted axis at 1,000 miles per hour in an easterly direction while simultaneously traveling in orbit around an enormous ball of burning hydrogen, 93,000,000 miles away at 66,000 miles per hour. That's 66,000 miles per hour, or nineteen miles per second, which is much faster that you've maybe ever imagined, and means that you will be traveling nearly 60,000,000 miles this coming year.
Beauty is, you don't have to imagine it, you can feel it instead. And if you want to know what it's like, simply stop. Be still, and in that stillness, whatever you are feeling in your belly: that's it. this is what it feels like to go 66,000 miles per hour while spinning at one thousand. ~ Stephen Russell

Kolkata is the relatively unexplored part of India as far as Hindi films are concerned. ~ Sanjay Dutt

There are so many reasons why, for me, writing is superior to acting. One of them is anonymity. Writers can live relatively normal lives. ~ Evangeline Lilly

Part of the problem is voters know relatively little about Romney. And some of what they know about him complicates his task: Romney has a history of flip-flopping on issues, he's extraordinarily wealthy, and he can be tone-deaf about what moves voters. He just doesn't seem comfortable in his skin. ~ Ron Fournier

American society is uncomfortable with the idea that some people's lives are difficult past the point of sanity and that they aren't necessarily to blame. There's no way you can argue that everyone has a difficult life. This is an incredible culture; the majority of people live in amazing comfort, with real dignity, maybe more comfort and dignity than any other culture in the history of the world. We live relatively safe and sane lives, which, if you've ever loved anybody and therefore feared for them, is a wonderful thing. But part of our moral responsibility is to keep in our minds those whose lives are unsafe and insane. In this way, fiction can be like a meditation, a way of saying: Though things are this way for me right now, they could be different later and are different for others this very moment. ~ George Saunders

I am a person of faith, so I come from a community that's involved in 360,000 churches across the country, that is an institution that could, in a relatively short period of time, provide hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of positive male role models. ~ Donald Miller

The tallest adults are the ones who had the most childhood and adolescent growth before puberty started; puberty typically tacks on a standard nine inches, and then the game's over. "The children who are going to be the biggest adults are those who are tall by age one or two, and have a relatively late puberty," says Rosenfeld. ~ Arianne Cohen

Where once universities, corporations, movie studios, and the like had been governed by a combination of relatively simple chains of command and informal patronage networks, we now have a world of funding proposals, strategic vision documents, and development team pitches - allowing for the endless elaborations of new and ever more pointless levels of managerial hierarchy, staffed by men and women with elaborate titles, fluent in corporate jargon, but who either have no firsthand experience of what it's like to do the work they are supposed to be managing, or who have done everything in their power to forget it. ~ David Graeber

If somebody's gonna smoke a joint in their house and not do anybody else any harm, then perhaps there are other things that our cops should be looking at to engage in and try to clean up some of the other problems that we have in society that are appropriate for law enforcement to do and not concentrate on such a, relatively speaking, minimal problem that we have in the country. ~ Sarah Palin

The notion of representing a sound by a graphic symbol is itself so stupefying a leap of the imagination that what is remarkable is not so much that it happened relatively late in human history, but that it happened at all. ~ Jack Goody

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority. ~ Stanley Milgram

I've read plenty of J.G. Ballard, but I'm not really a Ballardian. I've met Ballardians, and I know when I can't compete. I like Ballard in his relatively unchallenging apocalyptic mode: 'Vermilion Sands,' 'The Drowned World,' 'The Burning World,' 'The Crystal World.' ~ Lev Grossman

Until relatively recently, and with a very few exceptions, cannibalism would have been regarded as anything but normal. As a result, until the last two decades of the 20th century, few scientists spent time studying a topic thought to have little, if any, biological significance. Basically, the party line was that cannibalism, when it did occur, was either the result of starvation to the stresses related to captive conditions. It was as simple as that. Or so we thought. ~ Bill Schutt

One of the accusations made against the Pope is that he did not give a public and obvious denunciation of anti-Semitism during the Holocaust. It's a valid issue but one that is often discussed with too little understanding of the reality of 1940s Europe. Such explicit condemnations of Nazi anti-Semitism were not really made in London, Washington, or Moscow, but it's always assumed that Rome should somehow have been different, in spite of the fact that the Vatican was surrounded by Nazi or pro-Nazi troops and that millions of Roman Catholics lived under Nazi occupation whereas London, Washington, and even Moscow were relatively cocooned and the latter even comparatively safe. ~ Michael Coren

for the same things are not 'knowable relatively to us' and 'knowable' without qualification. So in the present inquiry we must follow this method and advance from what is more obscure by nature, (20) but clearer to us, towards what is more clear and more knowable by nature. ~ Aristotle.

When nuclear weapons were an elite club of five relatively sane world powers, the Left was convinced the planet was about to go ka-boom any minute, and the handful of us who survived would be walking in a nuclear winter wonderland. Now anyone with a few thousand bucks and an unlisted number in Islamabad in his Rolodex can get a nuke, and the Left couldn't care less. ~ Mark Steyn

If there is anything the artist or a true work of art teaches us, it is that variety and complexity really increase the unity, and that to achieve unity within a great variety of complexity is a greater achievement and more satisfying piece of art than to achieve unity with just a few elements, which is relatively easily achieved. ~ David Steindl-Rast

Society never progresses because the majority one day wakes up and says, "Let's do things differently." The majority didn't wake up and say, "Oh, let's just free the slaves." Society always progressed because a relatively small group of people usually considered outrageous radicals by the status quo of their time had a better idea and articulated another way. That's simply how evolution works; it's the mutation. The member of the species who does things differently - that points the way to the future because they're better adapted for survival. ~ Marianne Williamson

It's hard, too, to acknowledge that I feel this way while also simultaneously existing in a place of enormous privilege. My disability affects all aspects of my life, but it is also relatively mild. ~ Amanda Leduc

There are relatively few things that kill people that are young other than car accidents and suicide. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

Just as the slave master required the slaves to imitate the image he had of them, so women, who live in a relatively powerless position, politically and economically, feel obliged by a kind of implicit force to live up to culture's image of what is female. ~ Susan Griffin

Becomes obvious that if we want to make relatively minor changes in our lives, we can perhaps appropriately focus on our attitudes and behaviors. But if we want to make significant, quantum change, we need to work on our basic paradigms. ~ Stephen R. Covey

As long as art is understood and valued as an "absolute" activity, it will be a separate, elitist one. Elites presuppose masses. So far as the best art defines itself by essentially "priestly" aims, it presupposes and confirms the existence of a relatively passive, never fully initiated, voyeuristic laity which is regularly convoked to watch, listen, read, or hear - and then sent away. ~ Susan Sontag

TV directing is fine because you can come in and do a TV show in a relatively short period of time, and that can pay the bills. ~ John Polson

I am relatively familiar with getting a good old rumping from the critics. In some cases, the critics just didn't like the film - fair cop. Others, I think, didn't understand it. ~ Guy Ritchie

These facilities were relatively rustic even for this area of the world. Other inns at least had indoor plumbing and electricity. Most even had radios. But not this one.

Perhaps it had something to do with the part of town he was in. It was known to the locals as the Nostalgia District, though no one really knew how the area had gotten its name. Did it come about through the feeling that it evoked in its residents and visitors? Or was it due to a lack of modern conveniences? The former certainly seemed less likely than the latter as it seemed doubtful that its long-time residents could continually, over the course of years, manage to be subject to a sense of nostalgia. After all, wouldn't the perpetual absence of a modern context, eventually, defeat the purpose of evoking such a feeling? In fact, it would seem more appropriate to assume that visitors who spent enough time within the confines of this area were unwittingly apt to live in the past and become nostalgic for the modern day...or even the future. ~ Ashim Shanker

I got incerdibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn't even matter if I exsited at all...
"Well I'm not talking about painting the Mona LIsa or curing limeter."
"Yeah?"
"If you hadn't done it, human history would have been one way..."
"Uh-huh?"
"But you did do it, so...?"
I stood on the bed, pointed my fingers at the fake stars, and screamed: "I changed the course of human history!"
"That's right."
"I changed the universe!"
"You did."
"I'm God!"
"You're an atheist."
"I don't exist!"
I fell back onto the bed, into his arms, and we cracked up together. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

To the extent that we are trapped by the overvaluing, idealizing tendency, we are not free fully to celebrate the limited but real goods of creation. Idolatry by definition is not an accurate assessment of creaturely goods, but an overvaluing of them so as to miss the richness of their actual, limited values. If I worship my tennis trophies, my Mondrian, my family tree, my Kawasaki, or my bank account, then I do not really receive those goods for what they actually are - limited, historical, and finite - goods which are vulnerable to being taken away by time and death. When I pretend that a value is something more than it is, ironically I value it less appropriately than it deserves. Biblical psychology invites us to relate ourselves absolutely to the absolute and relatively to the relative. ~ Thomas C. Oden

You do a movie. However long it lasts, it begins and it ends in a relatively short period of time. In a given period of time, let's say a year, you can have three, four, or five different experiences which is exciting. ~ Morgan Freeman

Skin color is basically a measure of the local ultraviolet levels, and it is controlled by relatively minor adaptive changes in the genome. ~ Bill Nye

One theft, however, does not make a thief . . Action which defines a man, describes his character, is action which has been repeated over and over and so has come in time to be a coherent and relatively independent mode of behavior. At first it may have been fumbling and uncertain, may have required attention, effort, will - as when first drives a car, first makes love, first robs a bank, first stands up against injustice.

If one perseveres on any such course it comes in time to require less effort, less attention, begins to function smoothly; its small component behaviors become integrated within a larger pattern which has an ongoing dynamism and cohesiveness, carries its own authority. Such a mode then pervades the entire person, permeates other modes, colors other qualities, in some sense is living and operative even when the action is not being performed, or even considered. . . .

Such a mode of action tends to maintain itself, to resist change. A thief is one who steals; stealing extends and reinforces the identity of a thief, which generates further thefts, which further strengthen and deepen the identity. So long as one lives, change is possible; but the longer such behavior is continued the more force and authority it acquires, the more it permeates other constant bodes, subordinates other conflicting modes; changing back becomes steadily more difficult; settling down to an honest job, living on one's earnings becomes ever more unlikely. And wh ~ Allen Wheelis

In 2009, Hamas was relatively new to power. It had won elections just three years earlier and was flexing its newfound strength via a war with its old enemy, Israel, which it officially wants destroyed. ~ Richard Engel

The first and probably most fundamental aspect of this crisis is that we are now close to the commodification of everything. That is, historical capitalism is in crisis precisely because, in pursuing the endless accumulation of capital, it is beginning to approximate that state of being Adam Smith asserted was 'natural' to man but which has never historically existed. The 'propensity [of humanity] to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another' has entered into domains and zones previously untouched, and the pressure to expand commodification is relatively unchecked. ~ Immanuel Wallerstein

... we have to give up that vague notion of getting all our fulfillment from one thing. We have to set our goals in little, manageable steps, and embrace the idea that not all of our emotional eggs can be put in one basket. If we can love our jobs, relatively speaking, that's awesome. But we also need to love our friends and families and significant others and hobbies and time alone as much as possible, and not expect any one thing--even our Big Dreams--to make us suddenly feel whole. ~ Chelsea Fagan

For memetics to be a reasonable research programme, it should be the case that copying, and differential success in causing the multiplication of copies, overwhelmingly plays the major role in shaping all or at least most of the contents of culture. Evolved domain-specific psychological dispositions, if there are any, should be at most a relatively minor factor that could be considered part of background conditions. ~ Dan Sperber

Relatively speaking, the mind controls the body but who or what controls the mind? ~ Christopher Dines

In short, the idea dawns that the one universal principle which possibly ... between force and structure, the embodiment of the Principle of Least Action and the (unknown) force, which in mathematics is known as the attractor which pulls ... in the direction of the most optimal and relatively stable self-organized criticality, could very well be the Golden Ratio dynamic. the universal principle which as the balance between finiteness and infinity, stability and flexibility underlies self-similar fractal forms emerging at the 'edge of chaos' indeed seems to be the Golden Ratio Spiral. ~ Marja De Vries

I find it relatively easy to keep my clothes on because I don't really feel like taking them off. It's not an urge I have. For me, 'risky' is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is. That's putting myself out there, maybe even more than taking my shirt off. ~ Taylor Swift

There is no doubt there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, caused by the burning of fossil fuels. It should have an effect on the climate, but the numbers indicate that effect is relatively minor. ~ John Christy

It used to be that, in astronomy, a small team of people could look at photos of a few thousand galaxies and classify and catalog them relatively easily. But now, with a new generation of robotic telescopes scanning the skies constantly and producing millions of images, that's become next to impossible. ~ Peter Diamandis

related type of argument is that we ought - rather callously - to welcome small and medium-scale catastrophes on grounds that they make us aware of our vulnerabilities and spur us into taking precautions that reduce the probability of an existential catastrophe. The idea is that a small or medium-scale catastrophe acts like an inoculation, challenging civilization with a relatively survivable form of a threat and stimulating an immune response that readies the world to deal with the existential variety of the threat.15 ~ Nick Bostrom

Herbenick invited me to sit in on the Human Sexuality class she was about to teach, one of the most popular courses on Indiana's campus. She was, on that day, delivering a lecture on gender disparities in sexual satisfaction. More than one hundred fifty students were already seated in the classroom when we arrived, nearly all of them female, most dressed in sweats, their hair pulled into haphazard ponytails. They listened raptly as Herbenick explained the vastly different language young men and young women use when describing "good sex." "Men are more likely to talk about pleasure, about orgasm," Herbenick said. "Women talk more about absence of pain. Thirty percent of female college students say they experience pain during their sexual encounters as opposed to five percent of men."

The rates of pain among women, she added, shoot up to 70 percent when anal sex is included. Until recently, anal sex was a relatively rare practice among young adults. But as it's become disproportionately common in porn - and the big payoff in R-rated fare such as Kingsman and The To Do List - it's also on the rise in real life. In 1992 only 16 percent of women aged eighteen to twenty-four said they had tried anal sex. Today 20 percent of women eighteen to nineteen have, and by ages twenty to twenty-four it's up to 40 percent. A 2014 study of heterosexuals sixteen to eighteen years old - and can we pause for a moment to consider just how young that is? - found that it was mainly boys ~ Peggy Orenstein

That was the way one had to do. To do the best one could, and accept things as they were. Usually, they did not seem so bad after a while; if they were not actually good, then they became so by virtue of the many things that were worse. Almost everything was relatively good. Eating was better than starving, living better than dying, ~ Jim Thompson

Modern electrical power distribution technology is largely the fruit of the labors of two men - Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. Compared with Edison, Tesla is relatively unknown, yet he invented the alternating electric current generation and distribution system that supplanted Edison's direct current technology and that is the system currently in use today. Tesla also had a vision of delivering electricity to the world that was revolutionary and unique. If his research had come to fruition, the technological landscape would be entirely different than it is today. Power lines and the insulated towers that carry them over thousands of country and city miles would not distract our view. Tesla believed that by using the electrical potential of the Earth, it would be possible to transmit electricity through the Earth and the atmosphere without using wires. With suitable receiving devices, the electricity could be used in remote parts of the planet. Along with the transmission of electricity, Tesla proposed a system of global communication, following an inspired realization that, to electricity, the Earth was nothing more than a small, round metal ball.
[...]
With $150,000 in financial support from J. Pierpont Morgan and other backers, Tesla built a radio transmission tower at Wardenclyffe, Long Island, that promised - along with other less widely popular benefits - to provide communication to people in the far corners of the world who needed no more than a handheld rece ~ Christopher Dunn

If you're climbing big routes that'll take you 16 hours, or, like, El Capitan, you have to take something like a big, robust sandwich. Climbing isn't like running or triathlons, where you have to constantly be eating blocks, gels, and pure sugar. Climbing is relatively slow, so you can pretty much eat anything and digest it as you climb. ~ Alex Honnold

Only the Army conducts an annual assessment, and they appear to do relatively little to analyze the problem, contributions to the problem, and potential solutions. ~ Carter F. Smith

I enjoy the fact that, as a gay man, there's relatively little pressure on me to act like a grown-up, but also I see the pitfalls that we're susceptible to, addiction, isolation, loneliness, mental illness, not to mention the embarrassing fashion choices. ~ Vestal McIntyre

It won't work. You see, he is a liar and a thief. And he's been one for too long. He can't retire now. In addition to which. He has become, I'm afraid, a hack.'
'He may be all those things but she knows he's not.'
'What gives her that curious idea?'
'She's been with him constantly for the last few days. She's seen him shaking with terror, exhausted, ready to quit. She's watched him pull himself together again and she's also seen him be warm and tender. And funny. Not famous-international-wit funny but really funny.'
'Do you think she's an idiot? Do you think she doesn't know what kind of man he is? Or what he needs?'
'And what he needs is L-O-V-E? Uh-uh it's too late. He is 43 years old. Or will be this October. He's been married twice, both times disastrously and there have been too many years of... too much dough, too much bad writing and too much whiskey. He's got nothing left inside to give. Even if he could, which he can't.'
'But that's not true. You can, you have. I just know it.'
'No, you don't. It's lousy. In any case, the problem is you're not in love with the script. You're in love with me. And why shouldn't you be? When suddenly, waltzing into your life comes this charming and relatively handsome stranger. Me. Smooth as silk, with a highly practised line of chatter, specifically designed to knock relatively unsophisticated chicks like you Miss Simpson, right on their ears. Which I'm terribly afraid I've done. Well if it's the last ~ Julien Duvivier

A survey of oceanic (i.e. remote) islands found that, as far back as records exist, they have been accumulating alien plants. In 1860 the average oceanic island had less than 1 introduced plant for every 10 natives. By 1940 the ratio was 1 alien for every 2 natives, and today the ratio is about 1:1. Despite all these new arrivals there have been very few extinctions among the original inhabitants, so the number of plant species on such islands has approximately doubled. Thus, although left to themselves remote islands tend to have rather few species (compared to similar continental areas at the same latitude), so many species have been introduced to Hawaii that it now has as many plants as a similar area of Mexico. Moreover, the evidence suggests that remote islands are by no means 'full' of plants, and that there is room for even more alien plants to establish, and thus for total plant diversity to increase: at the current rate the average oceanic island will have 3 aliens for every 2 natives by 2060. Do we have any idea how many different plant species might eventually be able to coexist on an island like Hawaii? No, we don't. Or, to express that conclusion in a more general form, in a report from US ecologists Dov Sax and Steve Gaines: 'we have a relatively poor understanding of the processes that ultimately limit how many species can inhabit any given place or area ~ Ken Thompson

For example, Shawn Cole, a professor at Harvard Business School, finds that Indian state-owned banks increase their lending to the politically important but relatively poor constituency of farmers by about 5 to 10 percentage points in election years.51 The effect is most pronounced in districts with close elections. The consequences of the lending are greater loan defaults and no measurable increase in agricultural output, which suggest that it really serves as a costly form of income redistribution. ~ Raghuram G. Rajan

The pattern recognition theory of mind that I articulate in this book is based on a different fundamental unit: not the neuron itself, but rather an assembly of neurons, which I estimate to number around a hundred. The wiring and synaptic strengths within each unit are relatively stable and determined genetically - that is the organization within each pattern recognition module is determined by genetic design. Learning takes place in the creation of connections between these units, not within them, and probably in the synaptic strengths of the interunit connections. ~ Ray Kurzweil