58 Quotes About Difference

As I saw it, all my mother's life, my father held her down, like lead strapped to her ankles. She wasbuoyant by nature;she wanted to travel, go to the theater, go to museums. What he wantedwas to lie on the couchwith the Timesover his face, so that death, when it came, wouldn't seem a significant change. Unknown

Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference - those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older - know that survival is not an academic skill... For the master's tools will not dismantle the master's house. They will never allow us to bring about genuine change. Audre Lorde

We could choose to celebrate our differences, rather than over-analyze them. This might help us become more realistic about the generalizations to which we subscribe. For example, consider this. If women are the overemotional ones, why do so many bar fights break out between men? Such brawls do not spring from logical, calm places. Cathy Burnham Martin

My parents' work ethic amazed me. How could they put in such long hours, day after day? Part of the reason was to keep the family going - to keep me going. I realized that, although we had different values derived from different cultures and wouldn't agree on certain issues, they were good people, incredible people, and I loved and respected them. Harvey Pekar

Science fiction deals with improbable possibilities, fantasy with plausible impossibilities. Unknown

What if the puzzle of the world was a shape you didn't fit into? And the only way to survive was to mutilate yourself, carve away your corners, sand yourself down, modify yourself to fit? How come we haven't been able to change the puzzle instead? Jodi Picoult

It didn’t affect him because he couldn’t fathom how I felt. He never saw how I held or how I dealt. And when a breeze hits, his first thought is never a scent. We worked in different ways and different places, which were divided by a constellation. Dominic Riccitello

We are too focused in our differences to see how much we already share. Various

Father Brendan Flynn: "A woman was gossiping with her friend about a man whom they hardly knew - I know none of you have ever done this. That night, she had a dream: a great hand appeared over her and pointed down on her. She was immediately seized with an overwhelming sense of guilt. The next day she went to confession. She got the old parish priest, Father O' Rourke, and she told him the whole thing. 'Is gossiping a sin?' she asked the old man. 'Was that God All Mighty's hand pointing down at me? Should I ask for your absolution? Father, have I done something wrong?' 'Yes, ' Father O' Rourke answered her. 'Yes, you ignorant, badly-brought-up female. You have blamed false witness on your neighbor. You played fast and loose with his reputation, and you should be heartily ashamed.' So, the woman said she was sorry, and asked for forgiveness. 'Not so fast, ' says O' Rourke. 'I want you to go home, take a pillow upon your roof, cut it open with a knife, and return here to me.' So, the woman went home: took a pillow off her bed, a knife from the drawer, went up the fire escape to her roof, and stabbed the pillow. Then she went back to the old parish priest as instructed. 'Did you gut the pillow with a knife?' he says. 'Yes, Father.' 'And what were the results?' 'Feathers, ' she said. 'Feathers?' he repeated. 'Feathers; everywhere, Father.' 'Now I want you to go back and gather up every last feather that flew out onto the wind, ' 'Well, ' she said, 'it can't be done. I don't know where they went. The wind took them all over.' 'And that, ' said Father O' Rourke, 'is gossip!. John Patrick Shanley

There is a huge difference between learning about truth and experiencing truth. Touch the source. Bryant McGill

The stuffs you're good at and the stuffs you're bad at are just different parts of the same thing. Same goes for people you love and the people you don't. And the people who love you and the people who don't. The only thing that mattered was that you cared about a few people. Kami Garcia

We are all same, inside our homes! Jasleen Kaur Gumber

So you can be 'fantastic' or 'elastic' but can you ever be both lol?? Amber J.

Different people remember things differently, and you'll not get any two people to remember anything the same, whether they were there or not. You stand two of you lot next to each other, and you could be continents away for all it means anything. Neil Gaiman

The fact that we're all different is the one thing we all have in common. Justin Young

...we live in the same city but don't see the same things - you see buildings and I see memories... John Geddes

Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress. Mahatma Gandhi

It’s hard to be different, ” Scarborough said. “And perhaps the best answer is not to tolerate differences, not even to accept them. But to celebrate them. Maybe then those who are different would feel more loved, and less, well, tolerated. Bill Konigsberg

Cripples are not the stuff of romance. Only Lord Byron, dragging his club foot, springs to mind as an exception to the rule, but such a failing in a man is regarded as interesting, even provocative, rather than disfiguring. Women must submit to a more exacting measure. Mordecai Richler

The surest way of ruining a youth is to teach him to respect those who think as he does more highly than those who think differently from him. Friedrich Nietzsche

Don't accentuate our differences, but instead focus on our similarities. Anthony T. Hincks

People – teachers, other students, parents – constantly made offhand comments that didn't mean much to them, but I read something else in their words. A hidden language that told me I was different. Or maybe I was so aware of my own difference that I was just looking to be offended by other people's words. Aditi Khorana

When we begin to see our differences as opportunities rather than threats, then we can work together. Bidemi MarkMordi

Too often, we pour the energy needed for recognizing and exploring difference into pretending those differences are insurmountable barriers, or that they do not exist at all. Audre Lorde

Life among clones would not be worth living, and a sane person will only rejoice that others have abilities that they do not share. That should be elementary. Noam Chomsky

She could not have been born gray. Hercolor, her color of brown, was an essential part of her, not an accident. Her anger, timidity, brashness, gentleness, all were elements of her mixed being, her mixednature, dark and clear right through, like Baltic amber. She could not exist in the gray people's world. She had not been born. Unknown

Harmony exists no less in difference than in likeness, if only the same key-note govern both parts. Margaret Fuller

The greatest unity comes from the greatest differences which are brought together in relationship. Saunsea

Our differences need not divide us because even as we are unique and individual, we are also all one. Henry KimseyHouse

We are all different expressions of one reality, different songs of one singer, different dances of one dancer, different paintings — but the painter is one. Osho

He was a kind of éminence grise, a political leader, in a clandestine movement. Everyone knows there are girls who go for that kind of thing. There are girls who go for Huysmanists, for that matter. I once met a girl -- a pretty, attractive girl -- who told me she fantasized about Jean-François Copé. It took me several days to get over it. Really, with girls today, all bets are off. Michel Houellebecq

I roam the streets, silent and still, I look for You, in each and everything. I have come a long way from myself, so away, so long, that I, myself have become a memory. And so i seek Your gaze, to See myself, But what am i ? without Your touch ?How distant You are, yet How close Iam, this place holds a fortune, for my lost self. Syed Murtaza Haroon

Marriage is what you make of it, and God has many versions of what that looks like based on what different souls need, in order to grow. Shannon L. Alder

I left myself out of humanity by focusing on differences. This isolation only strengthened Ed” (17) Jenni Schaefer

When feels that someone puts you aside, sometimes thinks in an act of selfishnessbut always its really to have afraid of something worst. Frank Jymz

Certainly there are very real differences between us of race, age, and sex. But it is not those differences between us that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences, and to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behavior and expectation. Audre Lorde

Star Trek was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms. […] If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, to take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there. Gene Roddenberry

You're different. And I'm different too. Different is good. But different is hard. Believe me, I know. Matthew Quick

Good or bad, if you’re not “normal, ” you can’t have a normal relationship. If you are different, people will relate to you differently. Donna Lynn Hope

Princess, the great difference between people in this world is not between the rich and the poor or the good and the evil, the biggest of all differences in this world is between the ones that had or have the pleasure in love and those that haven't and hadn't any pleasure in love, but just watched it with envy, sick envy. The spectators and the performers. Tennessee Williams

If differences can be hidden, perhaps there aren't differences at all Mohsin Hamid

Watch other people for clues about who they are, not just clues about how much they are or are not like you. Patti Digh

I've always seen the Olympics as a place where you could act out your differences on the athletic field with a sense of sportsmanship and fairness and mutual respect. Andrew Young

Strength lies in differences, not in similarities. Stephen Covey

I know there is strength in the differences between us. I know there is comfort where we overlap. Ani DiFranco

There'll be differences of opinion in just about every intelligence analysis that you make. Robert Mueller

We tend to see individual differences instead of human universals. Thus, when someone says the word 'intelligence, ' we think of Einstein instead of humans. Eliezer Yudkowsky

There is increasing social concern about our use of nonhumans for experiments, food, clothing and entertainment. This concern about animals reflects both our own moral development as a civilization and our recognition that the differences between humans and animals are, for the most part, differences of degree and not of kind. Gary L. Francione

From the viewpoint of what you can do, therefore, languages do differ - but the differences are limited. For example, Python and Ruby provide almost the same power to the programmer. Yukihiro Matsumoto

One can state, without exaggeration, that the observation of and the search for similarities and differences are the basis of all human knowledge. Alfred Nobel

Despite differences of faith or even the occasional collisions between them, Egypt is united. Ahmed Zewail

I think we should all be tolerant of each other and embrace each others' strengths and differences and uniqueness and beauty. Martina Mcbride

Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things. Percy Bysshe Shelley

While there continues to be differences, the important point is that all citizens and elected officials use democratic and legal avenues for solving those differences. Boris Trajkovski