Characteristic Quotes

• The way of a creative mind is always positive, it always asserts; it does not know the doubts which are so characteristic of the scientific mind.

  

  Naum Gabo
  • Mind
  • Scientific
  • Characteristic

• Expulsion and genocide, though both are international offenses, must remain distinct; the former is an offense against fellow-nations, whereas the latter is an attack upon human diversity as such, that is, upon a characteristic of the "human status" without which the very words "mankind" or "humanity" would be devoid of meaning.

  

  Hannah Arendt
  • Humanity
  • Meaning
  • Genocide

• It was the first and most striking characteristic of Socrates never to become heated in discourse, never to utter an injurious or insulting word -- on the contrary, he persistently bore insult from others and thus put an end to the fray.

  

  Epictetus
  • Characteristic
  • Discourse
  • Socrates

• The most attractive characteristic in a person is the story they are telling the world. We stop and stare at stories.

  

  Donald Miller
  • World
  • Stop
  • Person

• One of the characteristic problems of our time is how to close this gap between capabilities and foresight.

  

  Edward Tenner
  • Problems
  • Characteristic
  • Gap

• A gentleman's first characteristic is that fineness of structure in the body which renders it capable of the most delicate sensation; and of structure in the mind which renders it capable of the most delicate sympathies; one may say simply "fineness of nature.

  

  John Ruskin
  • Nature
  • Gentleman
  • Sensation

• The monstrous sameness and pervasive ugliness so highly characteristic of the findings of modern psychology, and contrasting so obviously with the enormous variety and richness of overt human conduct, witness to the radical difference between the inside and the outside of the human body.

  

  Hannah Arendt
  • Psychology
  • Human Body
  • Human Conduct

• There are two kinds of geniuses. The characteristic of the one is roaring, but the lightning is meagre and rarely strikes; the other kind is characterized by reflection by which it constrains itself or restrains the roaring. But the lightning is all the more intense; with the speed and sureness of lightning it hits the selected particular points - and is fatal.

  

  Soren Kierkegaard
  • Reflection
  • Geniuses
  • Lighting

• [Joseph] Stalin closes the exposition of these [Leon Trotsky] ideas with the words, "Such are in general the characteristic features of [Vladimir] Lenin's conception of the proletarian revolution."

  

  Leon Trotsky
  • Revolution
  • Stalin
  • Proletarian

• Courage, so far as it is a sign of race, is peculiarly the mark of a gentleman or a lady; but it becomes vulgar if rude or insensitive, while timidity is not vulgar, if it be a characteristic of race or fineness of make. A fawn is not vulgar in being timid, nor a crocodile "gentle" because courageous.

  

  John Ruskin
  • Courage
  • Gentleman
  • Rude

• It is the characteristic of a weak and diseased mind to fear the unfamiliar.

  

  Seneca the Younger
  • Weak
  • Unfamiliar
  • Diseased

• There is one characteristic of the present direction of public opinion, peculiarly calculated to make it intolerant of any marked demonstration of individuality. The general average of mankind are not only moderate in intellect, but also moderate in inclinations: they have no tastes or wishes strong enough to incline them to do anything unusual, and they consequently do not understand those who have, and class all such with the wild and intemperate whom they are accustomed to look down upon.

  

  John Stuart Mill
  • Opinion
  • Wishes
  • Demonstration

• This we take it is the grand characteristic of our age. By our skill in Mechanism, it has come to pass, that in the management ofexternal things we excel all other ages; while in whatever respects the pure moral nature, in true dignity of soul and character, we are perhaps inferior to most civilised ages.

  

  Thomas Carlyle
  • Nature
  • Mechanism
  • Respects

• Seeing race is always about discriminating, a discerning, trained eye recognizing the "essential" or defining characteristic in the individual that confers racial categorization.

  

  Barbara Katz Rothman
  • Race
  • Discriminating
  • Categorization

• Self-denial does not belong to religion as characteristic of it; it belongs to human life; the lower nature must always be denied when you are trying to rise to a higher sphere.

  

  Henry Ward Beecher
  • Religion
  • Characteristic
  • Self-Denial

• What is characteristic of illusions is that they are derived from human wishes.

  

  Sigmund Freud
  • Illusions
  • Characteristic
  • Human Wishes

• And it is characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes family and a state.

  

  Aristotle
  • Family
  • Man
  • Sense

• The dominant characteristic of an authentic spiritual life is the gratitude that flows from trust — not only for all the gifts that I receive from God, but gratitude for all the suffering. Because in that purifying experience, suffering has often been the shortest path to intimacy with God.

  

  Brennan Manning
  • God
  • Trust
  • Suffering

• The strong individual loves the earth so much he lusts for recurrence. He can smile in the face of the most terrible thought: meaningless, aimless existence recurring eternally. The second characteristic of such a man is that he has the strength to recognize - and to live with the recognition - that the world is valueless in itself and that all values are human ones. He creates himself by fashioning his own values; he has the pride to live by the values he wills.

  

  Friedrich Nietzsche
  • Human
  • Face
  • Recurrence

• More and more are turning to photography as a medium of expression as well as communication. The leavening of aesthetic approaches continues. While it is too soon to define the characteristic of the photographic style today, one common denominator, rooted in tradition, seems in the ascendancy. The direct use of the camera for what it can do best, and that is the revelation, interpretation, and discovery of the world of man and of nature. The greatest challenge to the photographer is to express the inner significance through the outward form.

  

  Beaumont Newhall
  • Challenge
  • Communication
  • Photography

• I think the biggest survival instinct that Midwesterners possess is self deprecation, it's almost a Buddha-like sense of humor in anything that is difficult to get through. They would prefer to laugh at difficulties, show their mettle through that, and toughen up and have a beer afterward. That's definitely the characteristic I've carried through me, and hope to never lose.

  

  Amy Pietz
  • Lose
  • Difficulties
  • Self Deprecation

• I'd been too intent on the room to hear her coming up the stairs. Leslie said that the capacity not to notice a traditional Dutch folk dancing band walk up behind you was not a survival characteristic in the complex, fast-paced world of the modern policing environment. I'd like to point out that I was trying to give directions to a slightly deaf tourist at the time, and anyway it was a Swedish dance troupe.

  

  Ben Aaronovitch
  • Environment
  • Dancing
  • Directions

• Whatever his mood—whether it was gay and breezy, or dark with rage—he had one pervading characteristic: he was purposeful.

  

  Alfred Lansing
  • Mood
  • Characteristic
  • Purposeful

• One charming characteristic of many flank attacks I could mention is that they do not very often lead to simplification: if the attack is parried, there usually are still opportunities left for initiating action in another sector.

  

  Bent Larsen
  • Action
  • Opportunities
  • Attacks

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