Comparison Quotes - Page 24

• After adjusting for inflation, the average income of the top 5% of households grew by 38% from 1989 to 2013. …By comparison, the average real income of the other 95% of households grew less than 10%.

  Janet Yellen

  Real, Average, Income

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• No one as yet has approached the management of New York in a proper spirit; that is to say, regarding it as the shiftless outcome of squalid barbarism and reckless extravagance. No one is likely to do so, because reflections on the long narrow pig-trough are construed as malevolent attacks against the spirit and majesty of the American people, and lead to angry comparisons.

  Rudyard Kipling

  New York, Reflection, Pigs

  Rudyard Kipling (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated)”, p.4529, Delphi Classics

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• The last copy of the Chicago Daily News I picked up had three crime stories on its front page. But by comparison to the gaudy days, this is small-time stuff. Chicago is as full of crooks as a saw with teeth, but the era when they ruled the city is gone forever.

  John Gunther

  Cities, Forever, Chicago

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• I don't know why, but the older I get the more interested I get in my parents' marriage. And it's interesting to be married yourself, too, because there is an inevitable comparison.

  Jhumpa Lahiri

  Parents Marriage, Interesting, Married

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• We live in a world of communication, everyone gets information about everyone else. There is universal comparison and you don't just compare yourself with the people next door, you compare yourself to people all over the world and with what is being presented as the decent, proper and dignified life. It's the crime of humiliation.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Communication, Doors, People

  "Passion and pessimism" by Madeleine Bunting, www.theguardian.com. April 5, 2003.

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• The rose and thorn, the treasure and dragon, joy and sorrow, all mingle into one.

  Saadi

  Dragons, Rose, Joy

  "Gulistan". Book by Saadi Shirazi, Chapter VII. Apologue 21, 1258.

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• All comparisons between America's current place in the world and anything legitimately called an empire in the past reveal ignorance and confusion about any reasonable meaning of the concept empire, especially the comparison with the Roman Empire.

  Donald Kagan

  Ignorance, Past, America

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• If real Satanism were allowed the kind of television time that Christianity has now, the kind of drawing out and patience that interviewers give sports figures, or the kind of coverage that a baseball game gets, Christianity would be completely eliminated in a few short months. If people were allowed to see the complete, unbiased truth, even for 60 minutes, it would be too dangerous. There would be no comparison.

  Anton Szandor LaVey

  Sports, Baseball, Real

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• The measure of (mental) health is flexibility (not comparison to some 'norm'), the freedom to learn from experience ... to be influenced by reasonable arguments ... and the appeal to the emotions ... and especially the freedom to cease when sated. The essence of illness is the freezing of behavior into unalterable and insatiable patterns.

  David Brin

  Essence, Patterns, Emotion

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• There's too much political hay to be made undercutting the war, and the consequences be damned. If they want to defeat the war to defeat Bush, well, noted. If they truly believe that the United States is in the same group as the Nazis, the Soviets and Pol Pot, then they've shown they have no perspective, no judgment, no sense of nuance, shall we say. And the idea that such comparisons might be picked up in the Middle East and broadcast with glee is irrelevant; they're parochial to a fault, and care little for anything beyond their reputation and power in Washington.

  James Lileks

  War, Believe, Ideas

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• You and I can profit by asking ourselves: What do I see when I look through the lens of my attitude toward myself? Am I more a critic than a friend? Do I look beyond the surface blemishes to find the truly beautiful and unique person that I am? Or do I play the destructive "comparison game"? What verdict does the juror of my mind pass on me: "good at heart" or "guilty on all counts"?

  John Powell

  Beautiful, Attitude, Heart

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• Never, never, will I accept, on issues of integrity, comparisons with the Liberal party.

  Pauline Marois

  Integrity, Party, Issues

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• Many of our feelings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction have their roots in how we compare ourselves to others. When we compare ourselves to those who have more, we feel bad. When we compare ourselves to those who have less, we feel grateful. Even though the truth is we have exactly the same life either way, our feelings about our life can vary tremendously based on who we compare ourselves with. Compare yourself with those examples that are meaningful but that make you feel comfortable with who you are and what you have.

  David Niven

  Meaningful, Grateful, Roots

  David Niven, PhD (2009). “The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People: What Scientists Have Learned and How You Can Use It”, p.9, Harper Collins

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• Practice being gentle, respectful and loving toward the life force in all things. Remind yourself that your efforts do make a difference, even if you think they are miniscule in comparison to the magnitude of the problem.

  Wayne Dyer

  Thinking, Practice, Differences

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• A sentence begins quite simply, then it undulates and expands, parentheses intervene like quick-set hedges, the flowers of comparison bloom, and three fields off, like a wounded partridge, crouches the principal verb, making one wonder as one picks it up, poor little thing, whether after all it was worth such a tramp, so many guns, and such expensive dogs, and what, after all, is its relation to the main subject, potted so gaily half a page back, and proving finally to have been in the accusative case.

  E. M. Forster

  Dog, Flower, Gun

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• Education in our family was not merely emphasized, it was our raison d'etre ... In this family of accomplished scholars, I was to become the academic black sheep. I performed adequately at high school, but in comparison to my older brother, who set the record for the highest cumulative average for our high school, my performance was decidedly mediocre.

  Steven Chu

  Brother, School, Sheep

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• By comparison with a night-club, churches are positively gay.

  Aldous Huxley

  Gay, Night, Church

  Aldous Huxley (1932). “Rotunda: a selection from the works of Aldous Huxley”

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• The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Reading, Thinking

  Samuel Johnson (2009). “Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings”, p.398, Harvard University Press

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• The traveller must be somebody and come from somewhere, so that his definite character and moral traditions may supply an organ and a point of comparison for his observations.

  George Santayana

  Travel, Character, May

  George Santayana (1953). “Persons and Places: My host the world”

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• But I cannot bring myself to believe that I was intended for a musician, because it seems so small a business in comparison with other things which, it seems to me, I might do. Question here: 'What is the province of music in the economy of the world?

  Sidney Lanier

  Believe, Musician, World

  Sidney Lanier (1999). “Poems of Sidney Lanier”, p.14, University of Georgia Press

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• Your meditations may be as profound, as exalted, as devout as you like; you may practise every pious exercise you can manage, but all this is as nothing in comparison with the Blessed Sacrament. What we do may be godly, but this sacrament is God Himself!

  Johannes Tauler

  Blessed, Godly, Exercise

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• In America and in most of the industrialized world, men are coming to be thought of by feminists in very much the same way that Jews were thought of by early Nazis. The comparison is overwhelmingly scary.

  Warren Farrell

  Men, America, Feminist

  Interview with J. Steven Svoboda, www.menweb.org. 1997.

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• I'm OCD beyond comparison.

  Fred Durst

  Ocd

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• If I were related to Monet, I don't know if I would be comfortable becoming an artist because it's too much, the comparison. If I wrote a book and put it out, the comparison to my great-grandfather, the comparison would be hilarious. Every critic, it would be their dream, they'd tear me apart.

  Dree Hemingway

  Dream, Book, Artist

  "Dree Hemingway on 'Starlet,' Porn and Her Famous Great-Grandfather, Ernest". Interview with Jordan Zakarin, www.hollywoodreporter.com. November 21, 2012.

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• I only know from my own personal experience, and I personally feel that there's a cyclical nature to things, so you don't want to start making generalizations about how bad things have become in comparison to the old days.

  Jeffrey Jones

  Want, Feels, Generalization

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