Deference Quotes - Page 2

• Among the arts of conversation no one pleases more than mutual deference or civility, which leads us to resign our own inclinations to those of our companions, and to curb and conceal that presumption and arrogance so natural to the human mind.

  David Hume

  Art, Arrogance, Mind

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.651, Delphi Classics

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• Caprice, independence and rebellion, which are opposed to the social order, are essential to the good health of an ethnic group. We shall measure the good health of this group by the number of its delinquents. Nothing is more immobilizing than the spirit of deference.

  Jean Dubuffet

  Order, Numbers, Independence

  "Asphyxiating Culture". Book by Jean Dubuffet, 1968.

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• What I find is with all due deference to - deference to our male colleagues, that women's styles tend to be more collaborative.

  Susan Collins

  Style, Males, Colleagues

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• If the man succeeds in becoming indifferent to the opinions of his neighbors he runs into another danger, that of a distorted and extravagant self of the pride sort, since by the very process of gaining independence and immunity from the stings of depreciation and misunderstanding, he has perhaps lost that wholesome deference to some social tribunal that a man cannot dispense with and remain quite sane.

  Charles Horton Cooley

  Running, Pride, Men

  Charles Horton Cooley (1992). “Human Nature and the Social Order”, p.258, Transaction Publishers

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• Death is an unsurpassable limit of human existence... We discover the relationship which is the basis for all feelings of reverence, fear, awe, wonder, sorrow, and deference in the face of something greater and more powerful... Only such a being-unto-death can guarantee the precondition that the Da-sein be able to free itself from its absorption in, its submission and surrender of itself to the things and relationships of everyday living and to return to itself.

  Medard Boss

  Powerful, Feelings, Everyday

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• A French observer is surprised to hear how often an English or an American lawyer quotes the opinions of others, and how little he alludes to his own; ... This abnegation of his own opinion, and this implicit deference to the opinion of his forefathers, which are common to the English and American lawyer, this servitude of thought which he is obliged to profess, necessarily give him more timid habits and more conservative inclinations in England and America than in France.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  England And America, Law, Giving

  Alexis De Tocqueville (2004). “Democracy in America: The Complete and Unabridged Volumes I and II”, p.235, Bantam Classics

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• However much I have been blamed for not showing more deferences to a great party, and for not acting more steadily on party principles, all I have to regret is that I showed so much.

  Robert Peel

  Regret, Party, Acting

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• Most of these students are so conditioned to success that they become afraid to take risks. They have been taught from a young age by zealous parents, schools, and institutional authorities what constitutes failure and success. They are socialized to obey. They obsess over grades and seek to please professors, even if what professors teach is fatuous. The point is to get ahead, and getting ahead means deference to authority. Challenging authority is never a career advancer.

  Chris Hedges

  Mean, School, Careers

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• The death of deference seems to be general at the moment, so everybody has to earn their reputation and trust all over again. You don't just get it by virtue of being a professor or a politician or anybody else.

  Duncan Green

  Reputation, Moments, Politician

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• There are very many characteristics which go into making a model civil servant. Prominent among them are probity, industry, good sense, good habits, good temper, patience, order, courtesy, tact, self-reliance, many deference to superior officers, and many consideration for inferiors.

  Chester A. Arthur

  Order, Self, Habit

  First annual message, 1881.

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• I just think that we show an awful lot of deference to chefs in our culture and maybe not enough deference to customers.

  Pete Wells

  Thinking, Awful, Culture

  Source: www.wbur.org

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• Those who believe they have pleased God by the quality of their devotion and moral goodness naturally feel that they and their group deserve deference and power over others. The God of Jesus and the prophets, however, saves completely by grace. He cannot be manipulated by religious and moral performance--he can only be reached through repentance, through the giving up of power. If we are saved by sheer grace we can only become grateful, willing servants of God and of everyone around us.

  Timothy Keller

  Religious, Jesus, Giving Up

  Timothy Keller (2008). “The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism”, p.74, Penguin

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• It is superfluous to try by the standards of theory, a part of the constitution which is allowed on all hands to be the result not of theory, but "of a spirit of amity, and that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable" . . . the equal vote allowed to each state, is at once a constitutional recognition of the portion of sovereignty remaining in the individual states, and an instrument for preserving that residuary sovereignty.

  James Madison

  Hands, Political, Trying

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• [God] arranged that the boy Samuel should be chosen but instead of teaching him directly He had him turn once or twice to an old man. This youngster, to whom He had granted a direct encounter with Himself, had nevertheless to go for instruction to someone who had offended God, and all because that person was an old man. He decided that Samuel was most worthy of a high calling and yet He made him submit to the guidance of an old man so that once summoned to a divine ministry he might learn humility and might himself become for all the young a model of deference.

  John Cassian

  Christian, Teaching, Humility

  "Conferences".

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• There is a form of eminence which does not depend on fate; it is an air which sets us apart and seems to prtend great things; it is the value which we unconsciously attach to ourselves; it is the quality which wins us deference of others; more than birth, position, or ability, it gives us ascendance.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Life, Success, Fate

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• [On Christianity:] Its lip-service and its empty rites have made it the easiest of all tasks for the usurer to cloak his cruelties, the miser to hide his avarice, the lawyer to condone his lies, the sinner of all social sins to purchase the social immunity from them by outward deference to churches.

  Ouida

  Lying, Hypocrisy, Religion

  Ouida (1896). “Views and Opinions”

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• Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference

  Ambrose Bierce

  Military, Silence, Form

  Ambrose Bierce (2015). “Tales of Soldiers and Civilians”, p.11, Ambrose Bierce

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• It is important that Miers not be confirmed unless, in her 61st year, she suddenly and unexpectedly is found to have hitherto undisclosed interests and talents pertinent to the court's role. Otherwise the sound principle of substantial deference to a president's choice of judicial nominees will dissolve into a rationalization for senatorial abdication of the duty to hold presidents to some standards of seriousness that will prevent them from reducing the Supreme Court to a private plaything useful for fulfilling whims on behalf of friends.

  George Will

  Years, Choices, Important

  "Can This Nomination Be Justified?" by George F. Will, www.washingtonpost.com. October 5, 2005.

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• The affairs of the world are no more than so much trickery, and a man who toils for money or honour or whatever else in deference to the wishes of others, rather than because his own desire or needs lead him to do so, will always be a fool.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Wish, Desire

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2006). “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, p.59, Penguin UK

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• In deference to such spectacular carnage it is perhaps perverse to dwell upon one person's death, but we are creatures so constituted that the passing of one friend or one acquaintance has a profounder effect that that of 100,000 strangers. If there is any metaphorical truth in the Jewish proverb that he who saves one life saves the whole world, then there is equal metaphorical truth in the proposition that when one person dies, the whole world dies with them.

  Louis de Bernieres

  World, Stranger, Passing

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• I protest against deference to any man, whether John Stuart Mill, or Adam Smith, or Aristotle, being allowed to check inquiry. Our science has become far too much a stagnant one, in which opinions rather than experience and reason are appealed to.

  William Stanley Jevons

  Men, Inquiry, Too Much

  William Stanley Jevons (1970). “The Theory of Political Economy”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• We show deference to the civil authorities when they respect the divine origin of their power and when they serve the people with objective reference to the law of God.

  Angelo Scola

  Respect, Objectivity, Law

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• In deference to American traditions, my family put our oven to rare use at Thanksgiving during my childhood, with odd roast-turkey experiments involving sticky-rice stuffing or newfangled basting techniques that we read about in magazines.

  Jennifer Lee

  Turkeys, Childhood, Technique

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• So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice of wealth and chastity which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Sacrifice, Hair

  Virginia Woolf, Hermione Lee (2000). “A room of one's own and other essays”

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• Her companion's discourse now sunk from its hitherto animated pitch, to nothing more than a short, decisive sentence of praise or condemnation on the face of every woman they met; and Catherine, after listening and agreeing as long as she could,with all the civility and deference of the youthful female mind, fearful of hazarding an opinion of its own in opposition to that of a self-assured man, especially where the beauty of her own sex is concerned, ventured at length to vary the subject.

  Jane Austen

  Sex, Men, Self

  Jane Austen, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Jane Austen: All novels, short stories, letters and poems”, p.974, GENERAL PRESS

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