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Classification Quotes

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Classification Quotes

“In reaction against the age-old slogan, "woman is the weaker vessel," or the still more offensive, "woman is a divine creature," we have, I think, allowed ourselves to drift into asserting that "a woman is as good as a man," without always pausing to think what exactly we mean by that. What, I feel, we ought to mean is something so obvious that it is apt to escape attention altogether, viz: (...) that a woman is just as much an ordinary human being as a man, with the same individual preferences, and with just as much right to the tastes and preferences of an individual. What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.”

WomenFeminismEmpowermentDignityIndividualityGenderDiscriminationSelf DeterminationMisogynyStereotypesSocial NormsClassificationDouble StandardsClichés
Book:Are Women Human? Penetrating, Sensible and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society
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“I have it in my mind that classification is a necessary condition of the working of the mental implement but that it is a departure from the objective truth of things, that classification is very serviceable for the practical purposes of life but a very doubtful preliminary to those fine penetrations the philosophical purpose, in its more arrogant moods, demands. All the peculiarities of my way of thinking derive from that. I submit to you that syllogism is based on classification, that all hard logical reasoning tends to imply and is apt to imply a confidence in the objective reality of classification. Consequently in denying that I deny the absolute validity of logic. Classification and number, which in truth ignore the fine differences of objective realities, have in the past of human thought been imposed upon things. [...] The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it. It was about this difficulty that the mind of Plato played a little inconclusively all his life. For the most part he tended to regard the idea as the something behind reality, whereas it seems to me that the idea is the more proximate and less perfect thing, the thing by which the mind, by ignoring individual differences, attempts to comprehend an otherwise unmanageable number of unique realities.”

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Author:H. G. Wells
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“We aren't human." "Yes. We. Are." His voice turns fierce. "I don't give a shit what the something-somethingth council of big important farts decreed, or how the geomests classify things, or any of that. That we're not human is just the lie they tell themselves so they don't have to feel bad about how they treat us.”

HumanityOppressionLabelsAlienationOutcastClassificationLabelingCasteCaste SystemTaxonomyOutcasts
Book:The Fifth Season
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“For there to be harmony and peace, everything must be balanced. And for there to be balance, there must be equality. And where there is equality, there will be justice. And where justice is honored and preserved, there will always be truth. Eliminate the concept of division by class, skills, race, income, and nationality. We are all equals with a common pulse to survive. Every human requires food and water. Every human has a dream and desire to be happy. Every human responds to love, suffering and pain. Every human bleeds the same color and occupies the same world. Let us recognize that we are all part of each other. We are all human. We are all one.”

WorldNeedsDreamTruthHappinessPeaceWaterSpaceRaceClassBloodFoodBalanceHonorSkillsEqualSurvivalHumanHarmonyEqualityIncomeDivisionRequirementsWorld PeacePulseSurviveClassificationOccupyHarmonicJustiveSegegation
Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
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“There is something about sex classification that make different sex reclassification policies seem not just unfair, but contradictory, even paradoxical. Perhaps because sex is thought to be prior to or outside of politics, unearthing its production as a legal classification seems qualitatively different than thinking through the politics of many other sorts of classifications.”

LawSexTransgenderClassification
Book:Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity
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“The aim of the research is to determine what groups can be drawn up as a result of regular association of place-names. A further step is to consider whether such groups have a geographical significance. This was accepted by Palmer as a reasonable hypothesis; Wilson argued the case for it by considering possible ways in which information to be recorded on the tablets was received by the scribes. Underlying this work is the assumption that groupings may have a geographical basis, but it has still to be shown that this is a reasonable assumption.”

GeographyClassificationStatistical AnalysisDeciphermentLinear BMycenology
Book:Place-Names in the Knossos Tablets Identification and Location
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“When you want to organize knowledge. you will be careful to base the classification upon essential qualities. You will thus derive classes in which the members have the greatest amount of resemblance to one another and the greatest amount of difference from the members of other classes. But suppose that, instead of organizing knowledge, you set out to organize ignorance and prejudice. You will then do precisely the opposite.You will keep the classification vague and flexible, so that it can be made to include just whatever individuals you choose.”

WantMadeIndividualDifferencesQualityClassIgnoranceAmountMembersEssentialsOppositesPrejudiceCarefulBe CarefulYou ChooseOrganizeVagueFlexibleResemblanceClassificationIgnorance And Prejudice
Author:Barrows Dunham
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“Paris is a city of centralisation--and centralisation and classification are closely allied. In the early times, when centralisation is becoming a fact, its forerunner is classification. All things which are similar or analogous become grouped together, and from the grouping of groups rises one whole or central point. We see radiating many long arms with innumerable tentaculae, and in the centre rises a gigantic head with a comprehensive brain and keen eyes to look on every side and ears sensitive to hear--and a voracious mouth to swallow.”

LooksLongWholeFactsEyeTogetherSidesCitiesBrainGroupsArmsBecomingMouthsAll ThingsEarsParisSensitiveCentreComprehensiveClassificationForerunners
Book:The Burial of the Rats
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“I contend that the continued racial classification of Homo sapiens represents an outmoded approach to the general problem of differentiation within a species. In other words, I reject a racial classification of humans for the same reasons that I prefer not to divide into subspecies the prodigiously variable West Indian land snails that form the subject of my own research.”

HumansReasonProblemFormMy OwnLandSubjectsApproachResearchWestSpeciesIndianRejectsDividesHomo SapiensVariablesClassificationSnailDifferentiation
Author:Stephen Jay Gould
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“Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories: those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost. The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately to defeat him, and the three major classifications are based on the method each object uses to achieve its purpose. As a general rule, any object capable of breaking down at the moment when it is most needed will do so.”

MenMomentsUsePurposeThreeLostGoalBreakAchieveObjectsNeededMajorsCapableDown AndMethodDefeatCategoriesBreaking DownClassificationInanimate Objects
Author:Russell Baker
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“Physics admits of a lovely unification, not just at the level of fundamental forces, but when considering its extent and implications. Classifications like "optics" or "thermodynamics" are just straitjackets, preventing physicists from seeing countless intersections.”

ForceLevelsSeeingFundamentalsPhysicsLovelyConsideringPhysicistImplicationsPreventingClassificationIntersectionsUnificationThermodynamicsOptics
Book:Arrival (Stories of Your Life MTI)
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“I maintain that I have been a Negro three times--a Negro baby, a Negro girl and a Negro woman. Still, if you have received no clear cut impression of what the Negro in America is like, then you are in the same place with me. There is no The Negro here. Our lives are so diversified, internal attitudes so varied, appearances and capabilities so different, that there is no possible classification so catholic that it will cover us all, except My people! My people!”

PeopleIfsHas BeensStillsDifferentAmericaGirlThreeAttitudeClearOur LivesCuttingBabyCatholicAppearanceImpressionAfrican AmericanInternalsCapabilityThree TimesClassification
Author:Zora Neale Hurston
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“On those remote pages [of 'a certain Chinese encyclopedia'] it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f ) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush, (l) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance.”

IfsCertainAnimalWrittenDogFlowerHairBrokenFinePagesMadDistanceChineseDividedPigsBrushesFabulousEmperorMermaidCamelsClassificationEncyclopediaVasesStray Dogs
Author:Jorge Luis Borges
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“A … difference between most system-building in the social sciences and systems of thought and classification of the natural sciences is to be seen in their evolution. In the natural sciences both theories and descriptive systems grow by adaptation to the increasing knowledge and experience of the scientists. In the social sciences, systems often issue fully formed from the mind of one man. Then they may be much discussed if they attract attention, but progressive adaptive modification as a result of the concerted efforts of great numbers of men is rare.”

IfsMenMindMaySocialGrowsNaturalDifferencesResultsNumbersEffortAttentionKnowledgeIssuesBuildingTheoryEvolutionScientistOne ManProgressiveAdaptationSocial ScienceNatural ScienceClassificationModificationKnowledge And ExperienceAdaptiveIncreasing Knowledge
Author:Lawrence Joseph Henderson
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“Our electrically-configured world has forced us to move from the habit of data classification to the mode of pattern recognition. We can no longer build serially, block-by-block, step-by-step, because instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience co-exist in a state of active interplay.”

WorldStatesMovingStepsEnvironmentCommunicationHabitPatternsActiveBlockFactorsRecognitionDataInstantClassificationInstant Communication
Book:The medium is the massage: an inventory of effects
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“I think all senior politicians tend to be rather more subtle then the commentators would have it. It is a natural tendency for human beings to try to classify. We all have this classification urge - so and so is such and such, that person is in that camp - but look, most sophisticated people defy stereotype.”

PeopleThinkingTryingHumansLooksPersonsNaturalHuman BeingsPoliticianTendenciesSubtleUrgesCampsSophisticatedSeniorStereotypeCommentatorsClassification
Author:Tony Abbott
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