Uniformity Quotes - Page 5

• Hitherto my observations have only aimed at a vindication of the provision in question, on the ground of theoretic propriety . . . . But there remains to be mentioned a positive advantage . . . I allude to the circumstance of uniformity in the time of elections for the House of Representatives. It is more than possible, that this uniformity may be found by experience to be of great importance to the public welfare; both as a security against the perpetuation of the same spirit in the body; and as a cure for the diseases of faction.

  Alexander Hamilton

  House, Public Opinion, Body

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• War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society these irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense.

  Randolph Bourne

  War, Government, Groups

  Randolph Silliman Bourne (1965). “The world of Randolph Bourne: an anthology edited”

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• A media system wants ostensible diversity that conceals an actual uniformity

  Joseph Goebbels

  Dark, Media, Diversity

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• It is commonly supposed that the uniformity of a studious life affords no matter for narration: but the truth is, that of the most studious life a great part passes without study. An author partakes of the common condition of humanity; he is born and married like another man; he has hopes and fears, expectations and disappointments, griefs and joys, and friends and enemies, like a courtier or a statesman; nor can I conceive why his affairs shuld not excite curiosity as much as the whisper of a drawing-room, or the factions of a camp.

  Samuel Johnson

  Disappointment, Grief, Drawing

  Samuel Johnson (1836). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.: D., with an Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.453

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• The uniformity of the earth's life, more astonishing than its diversity, is accountable by the high probability that we derived, originally, from some single cell, fertilized in a bolt of lightning as the earth cooled.

  Lewis Thomas

  Cells, Diversity, Lightning

  Lewis Thomas (1990). “A Long Line of Cells Collected Essays”

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• The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime.

  Emma Goldman

  Crime, Authority, Strongest

  Alphonso Lingis, Emma Goldman (1996). “Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader”, Humanities Press International

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• When she is older she will see in these resemblances a regrettable uniformity among individuals (they all stop at the same spots to kiss, have the same tastes in clothing, flatter a woman with the same metaphor) and a tedious monotony among events (they are all just an endless repetition of the same one); but in her adolescence she welcomes these coincidences as miraculous and she is avid to decipher their meanings.

  Milan Kundera

  Kissing, Avid, Events

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• To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone— to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink — greetings!

  George Orwell

  Brother, Past, Men

  George Orwell (2014). “1984”, p.25, Arcturus Publishing

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• Everything which might cause doubt about the wisdom of the government or create discontent will be kept from the people. The basis of unfavorable comparisons with elsewhere, the knowledge of possible alternatives to the course actually taken, information which might suggest failure on the part of the government to live up to its promises or to take advantage of opportunities to improve conditions--all will be suppressed. There is consequently no field where the systematic control of information will not be practiced and uniformity of views not enforced.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Taken, Opportunity, Government

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• If liberty of speech is to be untrammeled from the grosser forms of constraint, the uniformity of opinion will be secured by a moral terrorism to which the respectability of society will give its thorough approval.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Giving, Liberty, Speech

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1958). “Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance)”, p.110, Courier Corporation

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• We want a vernacular in art. No mere verbal or formal agreement, or dead level of uniformity but that comprehensive and harmonizing unity with individual variety which can be developed among people politically and socially free.

  Walter Crane

  Art, Agreement, People

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• Imitation is often a shortcut to a solution. We copy when we lack the inclination, the ability or the time to work out an independent solution. People in a hurry will imitate more readily than people at leisure. Hustling thus tends to produce uniformity. And in the deliberate fusing of individuals into a compact group, incessant action will play a considerable role.

  Eric Hoffer

  Independent, Play, People

  Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

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• Our institutions were not devised to bring about uniformity of opinion; if they had we might well abandon hope. It is important to remember, as has well been said, 'the essential characteristic of true liberty is that under its shelter many different types of life and character and opinion and belief can develop unmolested and unobstructed.'

  Charles Evans Hughes

  Character, Equality, Liberty

  Speech to the American Bar Association, September 02, 1925.

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• Knowing is a veneer out minds create and lay over the landscape like a painter's drop cloth set upon a forest floor. Its uniformity protects us from the pine needles and beetles, but it also obscures them, as well as the soft moss, fragrant soil, and the teeming complexity of nature's bed. In moments, however, we catch glints and feel the breezes of something more direct, something outside that self system.

  Greg Kramer

  Knowing, Self, Meditation

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• Bad acting, like bad writing, has a remarkable uniformity, whether seen on the French, German, or English stages; it all seems modeled after two or three types, and those the least like types of good acting. The fault generally lies less in the bad imitation of a good model, than in the successful imitation of a bad model.

  George Henry Lewes

  Lying, Writing, Successful

  George Henry Lewes (1875). “On Actors and the Art of Acting”, p.185, London Smith, Elder 1875.

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• I describe what is happening as 'food fascism' because this system can only survive through totalitarian control. With patents on seed, an illegitimate legal system is manipulated to create seed monopolies. Seed laws that require uniformity - which criminalize diversity and the use of open-pollinated seeds - are fascist in nature. Suing farmers after contaminating their crops, [...] is another aspect of this fascism. Pseudo-hygiene laws that criminalize local, artisanal food are food fascism. And attacks on scientists and the silencing of independent research [...] are examples of knowledge fascism.

  Vandana Shiva

  Independent, Law, Hygiene

  "Farming Free: An Interview With Food Sovereignty Activist Vandana Shiva". Interview with Thaddeus Christian, www.motherearthnews.com. June/July 2014.

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• We find not in the Gospel, that Christ hath anywhere provided for the uniformity of churches, but only for their unity.

  Roger Williams

  Unity, Church, Christ

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• Withdraw allegiance from the old categories of the Negative (law, limit, castration, lack, lacuna), which the Western thought has so long held sacred as a form of power and an access to reality. Prefer what is positive and multiple, difference over uniformity, flows over unities, mobile arrangements over systems. Believe that what is productive is not sedentary but nomadic.

  Michel Foucault

  Believe, Reality, Law

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• The Corporate impulse for human uniformity instills shame at difference and, thus, the contemporary zeal for privacy.

  John Perry Barlow

  Differences, Privacy, Shame

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• If you have unity without variety, you have uniformity and that's boring. If you have variety without unity, you have anarchy.

  Skip Heitzig

  Unity, Anarchy, Boring

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• What are Americans? We've got everything from sharecroppers to atomic physicist here, and there's certainly no uniformity in their thought processes. There's very little they have in common. In fact, Americans should we say, have less in common than any other nationality.

  William S. Burroughs

  Here And There, Littles, Facts

  William S. Burroughs (2001). “Burroughs Live: The Collected Interviews of William S. Burroughs, 1960-1997”, Semiotext

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• Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Passion, Men

  Thomas Jefferson (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Inaugural addresses and messages. Replies to public addresses. Indian addresses. Miscellaneous: 1. Notes on Virginia; 2. Biographical sketches of distinguished men; 3. The batture at New Orleans”, p.401

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• I have often thought that there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful; for not only every man has, in the mighty mass of the world, great numbers in the same condition with himself, to whom his mistakes and miscarriages, escapes and expedients, would be of immediate and apparent use; but there is such a uniformity in the state of man, considered apart from adventitious and separable decorations and disguises, that there is scarce any possibility of good or ill but is common to human kind.

  Samuel Johnson

  Mistake, Miscarriage, Men

  Samuel Johnson (1840). “The Life and Writings of Samuel Johnson...”, p.259

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• Whether moral and social phenomena are really exceptions to the general certainty and uniformity of the course of nature; and how far the methods, by which so many of the laws of the physical world have been numbered among truths irrevocably acquired and universally assented to, can be made instrumental to the gradual formation of a similar body of received doctrine in moral and political science.

  John Stuart Mill

  Nature, Science, Law

  John Stuart Mill (2017). “The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism, The Subjection of Women, On Liberty, Principles of Political Economy, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, Memoirs…”, p.1092, e-artnow

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• Nothing can be defined or derided on the basis of its origin. The important thing is what is done with it and how far a community identifies with something that symbolizes its favourite way of dreaming, living, dancing, playing or loving. This is the positive side of the world: a constant intermingling that produces new responses to new challenges. But because of forced globalization, there's a clear trend these days towards uniformity. This trend comes largely from the ever-greater concentration of power in the hands of large media groups.

  Eduardo Galeano

  Dream, Media, Hands

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