quotations about differences
We have an instinct, that in spite of seeming difference, men are all of one pattern. We readily assume this, with out mates, with those with whom we talk and deal, and are disappointed and angry, if we find we are premature, and that their watches are slower than ours. In fact, the only sin which we never forgive in each other, is difference of opinion.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Society and Solitude
If you want to be different nowadays, just act normal.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Imagine a world in which we saw beyond the lines that divide us, and celebrated our differences, instead of hiding from them. Imagine a world in which we finally recognized that, fundamentally, we are all the same. And imagine if we allowed that new understanding to build relations between people and between nations.
WESLEY CLARK
speech, Jan. 20, 2004
Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.
BELL HOOKS
Killing Rage
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
ROBERT FROST
"The Road Not Taken"
But every little difference may become a big one if it is insisted on.
VLADIMIR LENIN
"Paragraph One of the Rules", One Step Forward
I want there to be a place in the world where people can engage in one another’s differences in a way that is redemptive, full of hope and possibility. Not this "In order to love you, I must make you something else." That’s what domination is all about, that in order to be close to you, I must possess you, remake and recast you.
BELL HOOKS
Reel to Real
There never was anything useful or great, about which men have not differed.
ORIGEN
attributed, Day's Collacon
There is nothing like a sense of difference for getting a man lined up, shoulder to shoulder, with everybody as different as he is, in a dedicated campaign for the Common Good; which means a campaign either for the ramming of that difference down the throat of an ignorant and underprivileged and unholy world--this is only true, of course, in the case of a bona fide holy difference--or, at the other extreme, a campaign for the stamping out of the thing that caused the damned difference in the first place.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
If men would once consider one another reasonably, they would either reconcile their differences, or more amicably maintain them.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Our differences are only skin deep, but our sames go down to the bone.
MARGE SIMPSON
The Simpsons
In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different.
COCO CHANEL
Woman's Day, Feb. 17, 2010
If you are different from the rest of the flock, they bite you.
VINCENT O'SULLIVAN
The Next Room
Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do.
IVAN TURGENEV
attributed, 20,000 Quips & Quotes
In places where men are used to differences they inevitably become tolerant.
WALTER LIPPMANN
The Stakes of Diplomacy
You don't get harmony when everybody sings the same note.
DOUG FLOYD
attributed, 1,600 Quotes & Pieces of Wisdom That Just Might Help You Out
We lie if we say we do not see color and culture and difference. We fool ourselves and cheat ourselves when we say that all of us are the same. We should not want to be the same as others and we should not want others to be the same as us. Rather, we ought to glory and shine in all of our differences, flaunting them fabulously for all to see!
C. JoyBell C.
attributed, goodreads
A joker is a little fool who is different from everyone else. He's not a club, diamond, heart, or spade. He's not an eight or a nine, a king or a jack. He is an outsider. He is placed in the same pack as the other cards, but he doesn't belong there. Therefore, he can be removed without anybody missing him.
JOSTEIN GAARDER
The Solitaire Mystery
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.
MARK TWAIN
The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have in common. If you see it, black and white people, both sides look to see the differences, they don't look at what they have together. Men and women, and old and young, and so on. And this is a disease of the mind, the way I see it. Because in actual fact, men and women have much more in common than they are separated.
DORIS LESSING
interview, Salon, Nov. 11, 1997