Classification Quotes
-
The ends of scientific classification are best answered, when the objects are formed into groups respecting which a greater number of general propositions can be made, and those propositions more important, than could be made respecting any other groups into which the same things could be distributed. ... A classification thus formed is properly scientific or philosophical, and is commonly called a Natural, in contradistinction to a Technical or Artificial, classification or arrangement.
John Stuart Mill
-
Things which stimulate my curiosity are pretty far removed from the practical and therefore from classification.
J. Robert Oppenheimer
-
Paris is a city of centralisation--and centralisation and classification are closely allied. In the early times, when centralisation is becoming a fact, its forerunner is classification. All things which are similar or analogous become grouped together, and from the grouping of groups rises one whole or central point. We see radiating many long arms with innumerable tentaculae, and in the centre rises a gigantic head with a comprehensive brain and keen eyes to look on every side and ears sensitive to hear--and a voracious mouth to swallow.
Bram Stoker
-
Reality is infinitely diverse, compared with even the subtlest conclusions of abstract thought, and does not allow of clear-cut and sweeping distinctions. Reality resists classification.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
-
I think all senior politicians tend to be rather more subtle then the commentators would have it. It is a natural tendency for human beings to try to classify. We all have this classification urge - so and so is such and such, that person is in that camp - but look, most sophisticated people defy stereotype.
Tony Abbott
-
One's own free unfettered choice, one's own caprice-however wild it may be, one's own fancy worked up at times to frenzy-is that very "most advantageous advantage" which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms... [an]will attain his object-that is, convince himself he is a man and not a piano-key!
Fyodor Dostoevsky
-
The first step in wisdom is to know the things themselves; this notion consists in having a true idea of the objects; objects are distinguished and known by classifying them methodically and giving them appropriate names. Therefore, classification and name-giving will be the foundation of our science.
Carl Linnaeus
-
Race is not, as I have often been reminded while working on this project, a system of classification: it is a system of oppression. There has never been, and I can't imagine how there could ever be, a way of classifying the peoples of the world that isn't also a way of controlling people.
Barbara Katz Rothman
-
Nomenclature, the other foundation of botany, should provide the names as soon as the classification is made... If the names are unknown knowledge of the things also perishes... For a single genus, a single name.
Carl Linnaeus
-
Science is not, as so many seem to think, something apart, which has to do with telescopes, retorts, and test-tubes, and especially with nasty smells, but it is a way of searching out by observation, trial and classification; whether the phenomena investigated be the outcome of human activities, or of the more direct workings of nature's laws. Its methods admit of nothing untidy or slip-shod; its keynote is accuracy and its goal is truth.
Archibald Garrod
-
The Greek word pseudepigrapha is a Greek word meaning 'falsely superscribed,' or what we moderns might call writing under a pen name. The classification, 'OT Pseudepigrapha,' is a label that scholars have given to these writings.
Craig A. Evans
-
Rumour has it that the gardens of natural history museums are used for surreptitious burial of those intermediate forms between species which might disturb the orderly classifications of the taxonomist.
David Lack
-
If you can play, you can play anything. I don't like classifications.
Buddy Rich
-
Science is the systematic classification of experience.
George Henry Lewes
-
...Once again confirms that there is no such thing as genetically pure classification into different races.
Bryan Sykes
-
When the government is looking for a criminal in the crowd, it construes people in terms of culpability: innocence or guilt. When a corporation uses emotion recognition software to gauge your reaction to a carton of milk, it construes your body as a consumer. So there are these different modes of seeing what it is to be human, which have important implications for social classification, stereotyping, and racial profiling.
Nicole Miller
-
Because it's important. Laws can be reversed, Supreme Court decisions can be overturned, gender classifications can continue.
Carolyn Maloney
-
Classification is now a pejorative statement. You know, these classifiers look like "dumb fools." I'm a classifier. But I'd like to use a word that includes more than what people consider is encompassed by classification. It is more than that, and it's something which can be called phenomenology.
William Wilson Morgan
-
There's no genetic basis for any kind of rigid ethnic or racial classification. I'm always asked is there Greek DNA or an Italian gene, but, of course, there isn't. We're very closely related.
Bryan Sykes
-
In my opinion the separation of the c- and ac-stars is the most important advancement in stellar classification since the trials by Vogel and Secchi ... To neglect the c-properties in classifying stellar spectra, I think, is nearly the same thing as if a zoologist, who has detected the deciding differences between a whale and a fish, would continue classifying them together.
Ejnar Hertzsprung
-
There are a few instances that arise in the unique context of domestic equal-protection challenges to governmental actions that are facially neutral but produce substantial discriminatory impacts on groups of people, based on such suspect classifications as race, nationality, ethnic origin, etc. This doctrine has never been used in foreign affairs.
David B. Rivkin
