Distinction Without A Difference Quotes

#1. Liberals and international diplomats (a distinction without a difference) have notorious difficulty understanding how to deal with totalitarian regimes.

Mona Charen

#2. Darwin called such a process artificial, as opposed to natural, selection, but from the flower's point of view, this is a distinction without a difference: individual plants in which a trait desired by either bees or Turks occurred wound up with more offspring.

Michael Pollan

#3. To say "He was a young fool, and now he's an old fool" is to make a distinction without a difference.

Gary Inbinder

#4. By instinct and tradition, I don't like the thing. I like to look someone in the eye.

Walter F. Mondale

#5. We always think we have more time and that is the wrong way to think, because time is something we never have enough of.

Lindy Zart

#6. The difference between a tool and a machine is not capable of very precise distinction; nor is it necessary, in a popular explanation of those terms, to limit very strictly their acceptation.

Charles Babbage

#7. It's misleading to suppose there's any basic difference between education & entertainment . This distinction merely relieves people of the responsibility of looking into the matter.

Marshall McLuhan

#8. We may conceive an hope that the next generation will in tongue and heart and every way else become English; so as there will be no difference or distinction but the Irish sea betwixt us.

Sir John Davies

#9. Some people confuse acceptance with apathy, but there's all the difference in the world. Apathy fails to distinguish between what can and what cannot be helped; acceptance makes that distinction. Apathy paralyzes the will- to- action; acceptance frees it by relieving it of impossible burdens.

Arthur Gordon Webster

#10. The crucial distinction between systems ... was no longer ideological. The main political difference was between those who did, and those who did not, believe that the citizen could
or should
be the property of the state.

Christopher Hitchens

#11. Wait, this guy has a kid?" Elliot gasped over the phone. "What hot mess have you gotten yourself into, girl?"
"Shut up, Elliot. Like you haven't slept with a load of hairy daddies in your time."
"But they weren't, like, actual daddies.

Leta Blake

#12. It is fear that turns minor difference into major, that makes the gulf between ethnicities into a distinction between species, between human and non-human.

Michael Ignatieff

#13. You can't tell a woman who is called by God to teach that she cannot teach the Word of God ... So I think the distinction is that there's a difference between the authority of a pastor and a Bible teacher.

Charles Stanley

#14. As you got older and time went on, you realized that the distinction between truth and fiction didn't really matter because eventually everything disappeared into the soupy, amnesiac mess of history. Personal or political, it made no difference.

Kate Atkinson

#15. I have stressed this distinction because it is an important one. It defines the fundamental difference between probability and statistics: the former concerns predictions based on fixed probabilities; the latter concerns the inference of those probabilities based on observed data.

Leonard Mlodinow

#16. I subscribe to the myth that an artist's creativity comes from torment. Once that's fixed, what do you draw on?

David Byrne

#17. Yet as a distinction, citizenship is entirely artificial. An accident of birth, a quirk in the law, or the whim of a bureaucrat can mean the difference between a life of comfort or a life of struggle.

Stephan Faris

#18. When we talk about compassion we talk in terms of being kind. But compassion is not so much being kind; it is being creative [enough] to wake a person up

Chogyam Trungpa

#19. The main distinction for fresh chillies is whether they are red or green, the difference being one of ripeness.

Yotam Ottolenghi

#20. Mr. and Mrs. Darling and Nana rushed into the nursery too late. The birds were flown

J.M. Barrie

#21. After all, life is never so jolly or so miserable as people seem to think.

Guy De Maupassant

#22. There is no morally coherent difference between fur and other animal clothing, such as leather, wool, etc., just as there is no morally coherent distinction between meat and milk or eggs.

Gary L. Francione

#23. There is a difference between going to a service "for the worship" and going to a service "to worship the Lord." The distinction appears to be a minor one, but it may imply the difference between the worship of God and the worship of music!

Sinclair B. Ferguson

#24. People who write finely must not expect to be left in repose; they will be molested with thanks, at least.

George Eliot

#25. There should be as much difference between the worldling and the Christian, as between hell and heaven, between destruction and eternal life.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

#26. We look at, the absurdity of the system provides us the most material. And that is best served by sort of the theater of it all, you know, which, by the way, thank you both, because it's been helpful.

Jon Stewart

#27. Climate change is obviously happening and there is obviously a man-made contribution.

Owen Paterson

#28. It is my sincerest hope to leave this world in better shape than which I found it. Everyone says that. However the distinction I feel that is necessary to make is. I hope to leave this world better in spite of my departure, not because of it.

Kay Whitley

#29. I love yoga. I do yoga when I have time, which is not very often.

Maria Sharapova

#30. difference in kind between empirical questions characteristic of science and philosophical questions about the fact of existence itself (a distinction lost on those who think that the universe as a whole, or matter-energy, or anything else that exists, might adequately explain its own being).135

Brad S. Gregory

#31. The distinction between a delusion and a lie is the very difference between a successful saint and a fraud.

Manu Joseph

#32. Something even minor I do is going to be reported because of things that have happened in the past. You have to be aware of that.

Patrick Kane

#33. There's a big difference between being alone and being lonely. And I'm guessing that once you've discovered this distinction you can't go back to solitary confinement without serious emotional repercussions.

Tiffanie DeBartolo

#34. Pain now is better than pain deferred.

David Brooks

#35. That's a distinction that's going to make a lot of difference to the ninety percent of humanity that doesn't know the difference between astrology and astronomy,

John Scalzi

#36. The most worthless of mankind are not afraid to condemn in others the same disorders which they allow in themselves; and can readily discover some nice difference in age, character, or station, to justify the partial distinction.

Edward Gibbon

#37. An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: "There is very little difference between one man and another; but what little there is, is very important." This distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter.

William James

#38. I aspire to be useful.

Anthony Foxx

#39. One of the first things a family tries to teach its children is the difference between good and evil, right and wrong. One of the first things our schools do is destroy that distinction.

John Taylor Gatto