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Generalities Quotes

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Generalities Quotes

“I’d like them to appreciate the power of the individual—and I don’t mean me; I mean the power each person has to make choices and be accountable for himself or herself. I’ve noticed that people are quick to put you in a category—if you come from this place then you are that thing. But I’ve never placed much value in statistics and trends, bar graphs and socioeconomic data that sum people up. I stop listening when somebody asks me if I know what my chances are. I don’t know that I believe in probability. People are inexplicable and incomprehensible, and nobody really knows what’s possible until they try. I prefer the exceptions to the rules. I like people who try, even when their chances are zero.”

InspirationalInspirationSelf ConfidenceSelf DeterminationStereotypesGeneralities
Book:The Autumn Balloon
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“The word 'security' is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security.”

ShouldFirstsRealGovernmentLawSecretSecurityMilitaryFundamentalsExpensesBroadsAmendmentsRepresentativesVagueFirst AmendmentDiplomaticGeneralitiesGuardingRepresentative Government
Author:Hugo Black
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“People are mostly sane enough, of course, in the affairs of common life: the getting of food, shelter, and so on. But the moment they attempt any depth or generality of thought, they go mad almost infallibly. The vast majority, of course, adopt the local religious madness, as naturally as they adopt the local dress. But the more powerful minds will, equally infallibly, fall into the worship of some intelligent and dangerous lunatic, such as Plato, or Augustine, or Comte, or Hegel, or Marx.”

PeopleMindEnoughMomentsFallCoursesReligiousPowerfulCommonDangerousWorshipMadnessIntelligentDressesMadMajorityDepthAffairLocalsSaneShelterPlatoLunaticGeneralitiesHegelAugustineCommon LifePowerful Mind
Author:David Stove
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“I am looking forward very much to getting back to Cambridge, and being able to say what I think and not to mean what I say: two things which at home are impossible. Cambridge is one of the few places where one can talk unlimited nonsense and generalities without anyone pulling one up or confronting one with them when one says just the opposite the next day.”

ThinkingMeanTwoHomeAbleNextImpossibleOppositesTwo ThingsNonsensePullingUnlimitedNext DayLooking ForwardConfrontingCambridgeGeneralities
Book:The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The private years, 1884-1914
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“No organism can afford to be conscious of matters with which it could deal at unconscious levels. Broadly, we can afford to sink those sorts of knowledge which continue to be true regardless of changes in the environment, but we must maintain in an accessible place all those controls of behavior which must be modified for every instance. The economics of the system, in fact, pushes organisms toward sinking into the unconscious those generalities of relationship which remain permanently true and toward keeping within the conscious the pragmatic of particular instances.”

MatterFactsLevelsDealsEnvironmentParticularBehaviorConsciousEconomicsBeing TrueInstanceUnconsciousOrganismsSinkingPragmaticGeneralities
Author:Gregory Bateson
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“Eloquence, when at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection; but addressing itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. Happily, this pitch it seldom attains. But what a Tully or a Demosthenes could scarcely effect over a Roman or Athenian audience, every Capuchin, every itinerant or stationary teacher can perform over the generality of mankind, and in a higher degree, by touching such gross and vulgar passions.”

LittlesReasonPassionUnderstandingRoomsAudienceTeacherMankindEffectsWillingHigherDegreesHighestReflectionAffectionFancyTouchingVulgarGrossEloquenceGeneralitiesStationaryAthenians
Book:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
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“We shall be less apt to admire what this World calls Great, shall nobly despise those Trifles the generality of Men set their Affections on, when we know that there are a multitude of such Earths inhabited and adorned as Well as our own.”

KnowsMenWorldWellsEarthThis WorldAffectionAdmireDespiseMultitudesTriflesGeneralities
Book:The Celestial Worlds Discover'd, Or, Conjectures Concerning the Inhabitants, Plants and Productions of the Worlds in the Planets
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“In a very real sense, the Constitution is our compact with history . . . [but] the Constitution can maintain that compact and serve as the lodestar of our political system only if its terms are binding on us. To the extent we depart from the document's language and rely instead on generalities that we see written between the lines, we rob the Constitution of its binding force and give free reign to the fashions and passions of the day.”

IfsGivingRealPoliticalPassionLanguageForceTermLinesWrittenFashionConstitutionRelyDocumentsReignPolitical SystemsBindingCompactGeneralitiesBetween The Lines
Author:Alex Kozinski
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“For the rich men without scruple drew the estate into their own hands, excluding the rightful heirs from their succession; and all the wealth being centred upon the few, the generality were poor and miserable. Honourable pursuits, for which there was no longer leisure, were neglected; the state was filled with sordid business, and with hatred and envy of the rich.”

MenStatesHandsPoliticsWealthPoorEconomyRichHatredFilledEnvyPursuitMiserableLiberalismLeisureEstatesNeglectedSuccessionRich ManHeirsGeneralitiesScruples
Book:The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, Volume II: (A Modern Library E-Book)
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“We meet With few utterly dull and stupid souls: the sublime and transcendent are still fewer; the generality of mankind stand between these two extremes: the interval is filled with multitudes of ordinary geniuses, but all very useful, and the ornaments and supports of the commonwealth.”

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Author:Jean de la Bruyere
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“We can no longer oversimplify. We can no longer build lazy and false stereotypes: Americans are like this, Russians are like that, a Jew behaves in such a way, a Negro thinks in a different way. The lazy generalities - 'You know how women are ... Isn't that just like a man?' The world cannot be understood from a single point of view.”

ThinkingKnowsMenWorldWayDifferentViewsKnow HowDiversityUnderstoodJewPoint Of ViewDiscriminationBehaveDifferent WaysLazyStereotypeGeneralities
Book:What I Hope to Leave Behind: The Essential Essays of Eleanor Roosevelt
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“It is very rare, indeed, for men to be wrong in their feelings concerning public misconduct; as rare to be right in their speculations upon the cause of it. I have constantly observed that the generality of people are fifty years, at least, behind in their politics.”

PeopleMenYearsFeelingsPoliticsCausesBehindsFiftySpeculationGeneralitiesMisconduct
Book:The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke ...: A vindication of natural society. An essay on the sublime and beautiful. Political miscellanies
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“The human mind feels restless and dissatisfied under the anxieties of ignorance. It longs for the repose of conviction; and to gain this repose it will often rather precipitate its conclusions than wait for the tardy lights of observation and experiment. There is such a thing, too, as the love of simplicity and system,--a prejudice of the understanding which disposes it to include all the phenomena of nature under a few sweeping generalities,--an indolence which loves to repose on the beauties of a theory rather than encounter the fatiguing detail of its evidences.”

FeelsMindHumansLightWaitingUnderstandingIgnoranceTheoryAnxietyEvidenceGainsPrejudiceSimplicityDetailsConvictionExperimentsConclusionObservationEncountersHuman MindRestlessReposeSweepingDissatisfiedIndolenceGeneralities
Book:Works
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“All artists, they say, are a little mad. This madness is, to a certain extent, a self-created myth designed to keep the generality away from the phenomenally close-knit creative community. Yet, in the world of the artists, the consciously eccentric are always respectful and admiring if those who have the courage to be genuinely a little mad.”

IfsWorldLittlesSelfArtistCertainCommunityCreativeMadnessMadMythRespectfulEccentricAdmiringGeneralities
Author:Angela Carter
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“Scientists themselves are of surprisingly little help. They find it difficult to talk of what they do because they tend to assume detailed knowledge is required for generalities to be understood. They find it hard to grasp the concept of the meaning of their work, assuming this to be a debate that takes place at a lower level than the specialized discussions with their colleagues. When they do generalize, - or "popularize" as it is usually called with a noticeable degree of contempt - they tend to reveal a startling philosophical naiveté.”

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Book:Understanding the Present: An Alternative History of Science
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“I should tell you that honestly, on my honour of a Nearwicked, I always think in a wordworth's of that primed favourite continental poet, Daunty, Gouty and Shopkeeper, A.G., whom the generality admoyers in this that is and that this is to come.”

ThinkingShouldPoetryPoetHonestlyHonourFavouriteGeneralitiesContinentalShopkeepers
Book:The Complete Works of James Joyce: Novels, Short Stories, Plays, Poetry, Essays & Letters: Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Finnegan’s Wake, Dubliners, The Cat and the Devil, Exiles, Chamber Music, Pomes Penyeach, Stephen Hero, Giacomo Joyce, Critical Writings & more
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“I shall venture to affirm, that there never was a popular religion, which represented the state of departed souls in such a light,as would render it eligible for human kind, that there should be such a state. These fine models of religion are the mere product of philosophy. For as death lies between the eye and the prospect of futurity, that event is so shocking to nature, that it must throw a gloom on all the regions which lie beyond it; and suggest to the generality of mankind the idea of Cerberus and Furies; devils, and torrents of fire and brimstone.”

ShouldHumansKindIdeasSoulStatesPhilosophyLightEyeDeathLyingReligionFireMankindEventsProductsFineModelsDevilMereRegionsAfterlifeVentureShockingFuryGloomDepartedGeneralitiesCerberusDeparted Soul
Book:Dialogues and Natural History of Religion
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“Conventions of generality and mathematical elegance may be just as much barriers to the attainment and diffusion of knowledge as may contentment with particularity and literary vagueness... It may well be that the slovenly and literary borderland between economics and sociology will be the most fruitful building ground during the years to come and that mathematical economics will remain too flawless in its perfection to be very fruitful.”

YearsWellsMayBuildingEconomicsPerfectionMathematicalContentmentBarriersConventionsSociologyEleganceAttainmentFlawlessGeneralitiesVaguenessDiffusion
Author:Kenneth E. Boulding
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“The generality of men are so bound within the sphere of their circumstances that they have not even the courage to get out of them through their ideas, and if we see a few whom, in a way, speculation over great things makes incapable of mean ones, we find still more with whom the practice of small things takes away the feeling for great ones.”

IfsMenWayMeanStillsIdeasFeelingsPracticeCircumstancesBoundsGreat ThingsSpheresIncapableSpeculationSmall ThingsGreat OnesGeneralities
Author:Luc de Clapiers
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“To criticize mathematics for its abstraction is to miss the point entirely. Abstraction is what makes mathematics work. If you concentrate too closely on too limited an application of a mathematical idea, you rob the mathematician of his most important tools: analogy, generality, and simplicity. Mathematics is the ultimate in technology transfer.”

IfsImportantIdeasTechnologyMissingToolsUltimateMathematicsSimplicityMathematicalCriticizeApplicationMathematicianAbstractionTransfersAnalogiesGeneralities
Author:Ian Stewart
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“Yet it would be unfair to the generality of our kind to ascribe to their intellectual and moral weakness the gradual divergence of Buddhism and Christianity from their primitive patterns. For it should not be forgotten that by their glorification of poverty and celibacy both these religions struck straight at the root not merely of civil society but of human existence. The blow was parried by the wisdom or the folly of the vast majority of mankind, who refused to purchase a chance of saving their souls with the certainty of extinguishing the species.”

ShouldHumansKindSoulWould BeChanceExistenceMoralChristianityPovertyMankindBuddhismIntellectualWeaknessRootsMajoritySpeciesForgottenPatternsBlowSavingCertaintyFollyPrimitiveUnfairHuman ExistenceCivil SocietyCelibacyGeneralitiesGlorificationDivergenceBuddhism And Christianity
Author:James G. Frazer
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