Categorize Quotes & Sayings

In addition to labeling kids who learn differently as problematic, sometimes defective, most schools classify, track, and categorize students from very early ages. As an abundance of research studies confirm, these classifications tend to become self-perpetuating and self-confirming. My interviewees illuminate the ways in which grades, tests, and opportunities to learn are often arbitrary or related to class, race, and gender. In the supposed meritocracy of schooling, these markers and estimations have profound impact, not just structuring how we fit into the learning hierarchy of an individual classroom, but who we are who whom we believe we will become. — Kirsten Olson

In this country, some aristocratic families automatically categorize persons with dark skin, thick lips, and kinky hair as "Barias" [Amharic for slave] ... let it be clear to everybody that I shall soon make these ignoramuses stoop and grind corn! — Mengistu Haile Mariam

You know how they categorize Shakespeare's plays, right? If it ends with a wedding, it's a comedy. And if it ends with a funeral, it's a tragedy. — Robyn Schneider

The mind always wants to categorize and compare, — Eckhart Tolle

Critics like to describe and categorize things, and categories often have a way of limiting people. — John Legend

Articulation! There, by Joe, was MY absolute, if I could be said to have one. At any rate, it is the only thing I can think of about which I ever had, with any frequency at all, the feelings one usually has for one's absolutes. To turn experience into speech - that is, to classify, to categorize, to conceptualize, to grammarize, to syntactify it - is always a betrayal of experience, a falsification of it; but only so betrayed can it be dealt with at all, and only in so dealing with it did I ever feel a man, alive and kicking. — John Barth

Life is a funny, funny thing. Not the 'ha-ha' kind of funny, but an odd kind of funny. The kind of funny that you know exists, yet you can't place your finger on. You know it's there, and when the funny strikes, you feel it, but you can't categorize it. It's almost a feeling of melancholy, fixed with a tickle in your stomach and an odd loss of balance. This feeling catches you when you least expect it. Sometimes it's better that way, sometimes it may feel like a curse. Regardless, once it passes, you feel different. You may even look different, though not to the naked eye. It may takes days or even months until you recognize the change within yourself, however apparent it may seem. One thing's for sure: Once this funny thing strikes, you will never be the same. — Leigh Hershkovich

Most people say, 'Well, Earl, you sing the blues,' or however they want to categorize it. I just sing songs. — Earl King

A cancer is not simply a lung cancer. It doesn't simply have a certain kind of appearance under the microscope or a certain behavior, but it also has a set of changes in the genes or in the molecules that modify gene behavior that allows us to categorize cancers in ways that is very useful in thinking about new ways to control cancer by prevention and treatment. — Harold E. Varmus

Charity is having patience with someone who has let us down. It is resisting the impulse to become offended easily. It is accepting weaknesses and shortcomings. It is accepting people as they truly are. It is looking beyond physical appearances to attributes that will not dim through time. It is resisting the impulse to categorize others. — Thomas S. Monson

It was very important thousands of years ago to categorize things. I can eat that plant, I can't eat that plant. Or this tribe, not that tribe. We don't have to do that anymore - we have processed food now! — Keegan-Michael Key

When you relate to thoughts obsessively, you are actually feeding them because thoughts need your attention to survive. Once you begin to pay attention to them and categorize them, then they become very powerful. You are feeding them energy because you are not seeing them as simple phenomena. If one tries to quiet them down, that is another way of feeding them. — Chogyam Trungpa

Life is funny. Life isn't categorized into comedy, drama, action, is it?So I don't know why they try to categorize everything. It drives me crazy-why it would have to be just a romantic comedy or ... I want to have a little integrity, a little story, you know — Jennifer Aniston

I don't categorize food as bad or a guilty pleasure. — Rachael Ray

I want to be an artist you cannot categorize at all. You can't put a box around me. You can't put anything around me. — Angel Haze

The NT brain learns to categorize and direct incoming signals. NT's "catch" what comes at them; this deadens the impact. The act of deadening or filtering stimuli is called "symbolic filtering" (a term developed for this book). Symbolic filtering converts real world stimuli into an internal symbolic representation of the real world. When the external world is taken in as words, it is physically painless. — Ian Ford

In high school, I had to hide my comic book side, my nerd side from the civilian world so they wouldn't categorize me. They would try to marginalize me for what I like. I tried to give it up, believe me. I tried to kick the habit. But there's too much I liked about it to give it up completely. — Mark Hamill

Bureaucratic categories and organizational boxes do more than simply separate relevant from irrelevant information. They also produce the social optics that policymakers and bureaucrats use to see the world. Before policymakers can act, they first must come to create a definition and understanding of the situation, and that understanding is mediated by how the institution is organized to think. ...How organizations categorize and carve up the world has a profound impact on how policymakers see the world. — Michael Barnett

Your life is a trajectory. Every choice you make alters that trajectory, in a positive or negative way. Will you categorize that dinner with friends as a business expense? Will you be honest with your daughter? Will you take more credit than you're due? These are just the small questions that we face every day, and little by little, the answers influence the trajectory of our lives and beings. — Donald Van De Mark

Males categorize their worlds by counting, naming, and organizing the objects they confront. Women, in addition to personalizing their topics, talk in a more dynamic way, focusing on how their topics change. Discussions of change require more verbs. — James W. Pennebaker

My sound is constantly progressing and maturing. It's hard with all the songs that I have written over the years to compile them all into one album. It's almost impossible to categorize them into one genre. — Asher Monroe

Such arguments remind me of a scene from Woody Allen's movie Manhattan, where a group of people is talking about sex at a cocktail party and one woman says that her doctor told her she had been having the wrong kind of orgasm. Woody Allen's character responds by saying, "Did you have the wrong kind? Really? I've never had the wrong kind. Never, ever. My worst one was right on the money."
Grace works the same way. It is what it is and it's always right on the money. You can call it what you like, categorize it, vivisect it, qualify, quantify, or dismiss it, and none of it will make grace anything other than precisely what grace is: audacious, unwarranted, and unlimited. — Cathleen Falsani

I never want to be called the funniest Indian female comedian that exists. I feel like I can go head-to-head with the best white, male comedy writers that are out there. Why would I want to self-categorize myself into a smaller group than I'm able to compete in? — Mindy Kaling

I categorize nerds as creative-obsessive. A lot of nerds are creative people who obsess almost unnaturally over the minutiae of things. — Chris Hardwick

I was totally into football, totally into mainstream sports my whole life ... The media has tried to categorize me, call me a hippie, call me alternative. I work hard. My social life and beliefs don't get in the way of my training. — Gabe Jennings

It was relatively easy, we now realize, to categorize countries and nations. You knew who your enemies were and whom you could count on as collaborators and friends. And even more importantly, you had ready-made scapegoats to take the blame when things were going wrong. — Desmond Tutu

When you have a good movie, it's hard to categorize it. It's everything. It makes you laugh, makes you cry and makes you think. — Ice Cube

There is no real way to categorize McLean's 'American Pie' for its hybrid of modern poetry and folk ballad, beer-hall chant and high-art rock. — Douglas Brinkley

Class, race, sexuality, gender and all other categories by which we categorize and dismiss each other need to be excavated from the inside. — Dorothy Allison

I don't think you should categorize yourself as an artist. — Laura Nyro

I consider myself a logical person and, you know, a lot of people try to categorize me in one way or another. — Benjamin Carson

Naming a fairy is notoriously difficult, because they don't particularly like to be named. There are so many of them, and humans have always wanted to categorize them. In that way, we think we can have more control over them. — Brian Froud

I think we have to get beyond the idea that we have to categorize people. — Roger Ebert

By now you will not be surprised to learn that Gaston Bachelard had a few things to say about the element of air. In a book called "Air and Dreams". he points out that we categorize many of our emotions by their relative weight; they make us feel heavier or lighter. Perhaps because uprightness is the human quality, we imagine human emotions arranged on a vertical scale from ground to sky. So sadness is weighed down and earthbound. joy is aerial, and the sensation of freedom defies the bonds of gravity. "Air," Bachelard writes, "is the very substance of our freedom, the substance of superhuman joy." Elation, effervescence, elevation, levity, inspiration: air words all, alveolated with vowels, leavening the dough of everyday life. — Michael Pollan

Like every human we have to categorize ourselves, so you kind of start to build a mythos 'cause I had no information about [ biological mother]. So you have to build a mythos around yourself. And so my mythos included me not being wanted or me being a wretched person, which is just great fertilizer for comedy. — Keegan-Michael Key

Scholars note that human reasoning is limited not only by imperfect information and innate intellectual capacities but also by the broader culture that subsequently shapes the very optics that individuals use to categorize the world. — Michael Barnett

Society wants to categorize everything, but to me it's all African-American music. — Johnny Otis

Sometimes I forget what I put in. I want to capture things in that way, where you're looking into your memory, a dream or hallucination. The characters become a mixture of archetypes, [and] that's what I like. You're trying to figure it out and your brain wants to categorize things, but it can't because of this motion. You want to solve the problem, but it never gets solved. It's like when you read a really good book and the story never leaves you. — Ali Banisadr

To be irrelevant is to categorize your live into separate pursuit — Sunday Adelaja

I understand that it's good tactics to categorize me as a close-minded, unobjective extremist, but nobody that respects me has those views. — Alan Dershowitz

Society cannot continue to disable themselves through their need to categorize people or make assumptions as to another individual's abilities. — Evelyn Glennie

With anything I do, it's hard to categorize it. With any project, I just go in and blindly start writing songs and then find out which way we want to go with it. — Travie McCoy

I want to go down in history in a chapter marked miscellaneous because the writers could find no other way to categorize me In this world where classification is key I want to erase the straight lines So I can be me — Staceyann Chin

We cannot categorize sin if we are to live a life of holiness. God will not let us get away with that kind of attitude. — Jerry Bridges

The Only Group That Can Categorize Everything Is Everybody — Clay Shirky

If we relate to people believing that we can categorize them, we will neither identify nor nuture the parts, the vital parts, of the other that transcends category. The enabling relationship always assumes that the other is never fully knowable. — Irvin D. Yalom

We, as a people, we have a strong need to categorize everything. We put labels on everything and it's a totally understandable need because we are animals and we need to understand order and where to fit in. — Armin Van Buuren

My own task these past twenty years or so of living by words has been to try to find or make a language to describe the subtleties, the incalculables, the pleasures and meanings - impossible to categorize - at the heart of things My friend Chip Ward speaks of "the tyranny of the quantifiable," of the way what can be measured almost always takes precedence over what cannot. — Rebecca Solnit

Throughout life, we are put into boxes to categorize how people see and know us. This is how stereotypes originate, because people would rather read the labels on the box instead of taking a look and seeing what's inside — Gaby Rodriguez

To label myself is similar to thinking that I can come up with a single phrase to explain the universe. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Don't let the world define you. In the world of acting, and I think in any profession, really, people are really eager to put you in a box and categorize you as one particular thing. — Jonathan Groff

So many misconceptions surround the notion of heroism. Far too many categorize a hero as a champion on the battlefield, a commander of legions, a master of rare talent or ability. Granted, there have been heroes who fit those descriptions. But many men of great evil as well. Heed me. A hero sacrifices for the greater good. A hero is true to his or her conscience. In short, heroism means doing the right thing regardless of the consequences. Although any person could fit that description, very few do. Choose this day to be one of them.
(Beyonders - A World Without Heroes) — Brandon Mull

It seems like
especially in religious circles and Christian circles, we want to first talk about the things we're opposed to. That means we have to categorize that person. We can call them emergent or neo orthodox or someone who feminizes scripture. There's the category, let's stick them in the category then just blow up the box and him along with it. — William P. Young

It's easy to minimize a person's hurt without understanding the nature of pain. People often like to categorize how much a person should or shouldn't hurt about things. For example, when someone is upset about something, they say, "At least you're not paralyzed, or starving in Africa." While it's imperative to be grateful for what we have, I think people often mistaken the nature of pain, when they 'categorize' in this way. The criteria for how much something hurts is not dependent on the thing itself. It is dependent on 2 things:
1. The strength of the attachment.
2. The level of Divine help.
Therefore to minimize the devastation of pain:
1. Don't be attached to (dependent on) temporary things.
2. Seek Divine help.
And don't assign judgement for people's pain. — Yasmin Mogahed

I don't categorize characters into one syllable. These are fully-rounded characters that I don't judge; I just play them. — Kevin Spacey

In this world we live in, racism is alive and well in all venues. We immediately categorize people, and that's just not right. — Leigh Anne Tuohy

It's easy for the body to be open to desiring different people because desire wells up & demands to be satisfied. It's easy to categorize corporeal desire as sexuality, but if it has no means of merging with spiritual desire, then a rupture will occur between sprit & flesh. For ultimately passion & sex aren't only expressed physically but through a true union between two spirits. When the spirit can truly love & find contentment, both the body & the other key aspects of life will fall naturally into place, working in unison, merging. — Qiu Miaojin

A lover has four streams inside, of water, wine, honey, and milk. Find those in yourself, and pay no attention what so-and-so says about such-and-such. The rose does not care if someone calls it a thorn, or a jasmine. Ordinary eyes categorize human beings, That one is a Zoroastrian. This one, Muslim. Walk instead with the other vision given you, your first eyes. — Jalaluddin Rumi

I think ... the history of civilization is an attempt to codify, classify and categorize aspects of human nature that hardly lend themselves to that process. — Tom Stoppard

The framing of women's abuse narratives as quasi-legal testimony encourages the public, as interpreters, to take the stance of cross-examiners who categorize forgetting as memory failure and insist on completeness and consistency of memory detail through all repeated tellings. The condensed, summarized, or fragmentary nature of abuse memories will rarely withstand this aggressive testing. Few people's memories can. — Sue Campbell

Fundamentally there is just open space, the basic ground, what we really are. Our most fundamental state of mind, before the creation of ego, is such that there is basic openness, basic freedom, a spacious quality; and we have now and have always had this openness. Take, for example, our everyday lives and thought patterns. When we see an object, in the first instant there is a sudden perception which has no logic or conceptualization to it at all; we just perceive the thing in the open ground. Then immediately we panic and begin to rush about trying to add something to it, either trying to find a name for it or trying to find pigeonholes in which we could locate and categorize it. Gradually things develop from there. This development does not take the shape of a solid entity. Rather, this development is illusory, the mistaken belief in a "self" or "ego." Confused mind is inclined to view itself as a solid, ongoing thing, but it is only a collection of tendencies, events. — Chogyam Trungpa

I don't categorize people by who I'm allowed to like and who I'm allowed to love. — Leah Raeder

You might categorize your own fear as anxiety. But while the reality of fear is different for each of us, one thing remains constant: fear robs us of joy. When fear takes center stage, we find it impossible to live in the "what is" because of the "what might be. — Sheila Walsh

I see, or at least it appears to me, that there is some concerted effort to discredit them, and categorize the American Indian Movement as some adverse entity, as opposed to it being a manifestation of the desperations of a whole race of people. — Leonard Peltier

According to your holy book, every single Buddhist, Jew, Hindu, Muslim, follower of various minor traditions or sects, those who do not affiliate themselves with a religious tradition and the approximately 2.74 billion humans who have never had the 'privilege' of hearing the word of your Messiah will be sentenced to eternal damnation in a lake of fire - regardless of moral standings or positive worldly accomplishments. If this sounds like a fair proposition to you, then I bite my tongue - but I honestly believe that the majority of Christians do not agree with these doctrinal assertions, and instead categorize themselves as 'Christians' out of cultural familiarity or perhaps out of complete ignorance in regards to the topic. — David G. McAfee

On a scale ranging from very little to too much, Merkin could just about categorize the amount of personal data stored in Master Loo's computer as a shitload. — Sorin Suciu

People who are intolerant, categorize and over-react ... should all be dragged against a wall and shot. — Arthur M. Jolly

It turns out that I'm far too schizophrenic musically for people to categorize me. I think people judge me a lot before they ever really know who I am. — Michael Buble

One of the problems when you become successful is that jealousy and envy inevitably follow. There are people - I categorize them as life's losers - who get their sense of accomplishment and achievement from trying to stop others. As far as I'm concerned, if they had any real ability they wouldn't be fighting me, they'd be doing something constructive themselves. — Donald J. Trump

To name is to dominate, to categorize, to subjugate and, quite literally, to objectify — Charles Eisenstein

Germans try to categorize films: in a comedy, you just laugh and in a drama, you're not allowed to laugh. I don't believe in that, sometimes we laugh and cry in the same hour. — Fatih Akin

I absolutely would categorize myself as one of successful professional females. I think you can be successful and still be extremely present in a healthy life. — Brooke Shields

For me, genres are a way for people to easily categorize music. But it doesn't have to define you. It doesn't have to limit you. — Taylor Swift

In America, even the critics - which is a pity - tend to genre-ize things. They have a hard time when genres get mixed. They want to categorize things. That's why I love Wes Anderson's films and the Coen Brothers, because you don't know what you're going to get, and very often you get something that you don't expect and that's just what a genre's not supposed to do. — Francis Ford Coppola

Clothing, hair, shoes, accessories: these were props, visual cues, that people used to filter information and make instant assessments out of random connections, to categorize and assign value to those who populated their world. And layered beneath the props for sight came those for smell, and hearing, and more, that sense of intangibility that allowed people to read nuance and body language and interpret what the other senses didn't grasp directly; cues that together formed a picture that matched perceptions based on expectations and that, when adjusted one way or the other, filtered past the gatekeepers of the mind, allowing Munroe to become whatever she needed to be. — Taylor Stevens

People shouldn't be forced to categorize themselves as "gay," "straight," or "bi." People are just people. Maybe you're mostly attracted to men. Maybe you're mostly attracted to women. Maybe you're attracted to everyone. These are historical claims - not future predictions. If we truly want to expand the scope of human freedom, we should encourage people to date who they want; not just provide more categorical boxes for them to slot themselves into. A man who has mostly dated men should be just as welcome to date women as a woman who's mostly dated men.
So that's why I'm not gay. I hook up with people. I enjoy it. Sometimes they're men, sometimes they're women. I don't see why it needs to be any more complicated than that. — Aaron Swartz

The Numerati too, are grappling with towering complexity. They're looking for patterns in data that describe something almost hopelessly complex: human life and behavior. The audacity of their mission is almost maddening. They're going to figure out who we're likely to vote for, who we want to work with, perhaps even who we're best suited to love, all from the statistical patterns of data? It's the height of presumption, and it leads to humbling disappointments. Like the trees growing in the forests of Minnesota, we confound those who try to categorize us, and we do it most of the time without even trying. Life is complex. — Stephen Baker

Life is the tragedy,' she said bitterly. 'You know how they categorize Shakespeare's plays, right? If it ends with a wedding, it's a comedy. And if it ends with a funeral, it's a tragedy. So we're all living tragedies, because we all end the same way, and it isn't with a goddamn wedding. — Robyn Schneider

Say someone tells me their name - that name can turn into a taste or a color and that's how I categorize it in my mind. It's an easy way of categorizing things. — Ali Banisadr

The world, every day, is New. Only for those born in, say, 1870 or so, can there be a meaningful use of the term postmodernism, because for the rest of us we are born and we see and from what we see and digest we remake our world. And to understand it we do not need to label it, categorize it. These labels are slothful and dismissive, and so contradict what we already know about the world, and our daily lives. We know that in each day, we laugh, and we are serious. We do both, in the same day, every day. But in our art we expect clear distinction between the two ... But we don't label our days Serious Days or Humorous Days. We know that each day contains endless nuances - if written would contain dozens of disparate passages, funny ones, sad ones, poignant ones, brutal ones, the terrifying and the cuddly. But we are often loathe to allow this in our art. And that is too bad ... — Dave Eggers

What's a feminist?" Julie asked.
"Someone who thinks women are fish," Barton replied. He was smiling at Lily. "And that men are bicycles, which makes us basically useless to anyone of the fish persuasion. But it does categorize us as creatures who exist solely for the purpose of being ridden. — Dianne Dixon

I don't categorize myself. I don't think I'm perceived as a female act by my audience. My fans include just as many men as women. — Elayne Boosler

Without words to objectify and categorize our sensations and place them in relation to one another, we cannot evolve a tradition of what is real in the world. — Ruth Hubbard

If I were to categorize what I sing, I have many different influences, and a lot of them are from back in time. — Haley Reinhart

We celebrate the differences among us, even that which we cannot reconcile, not in denial of the absolute, but in the gift of humility that those differences require of us. Without denying our differences, we no longer allow them to categorize or divide us. It is in the diversity that the image of God is most fully reflected in and through us. — Jamie Arpin-Ricci

Think for a moment about the process that humans have used to record events throughout history. The first evidence we know of is paintings on cave walls. A little further along in time, after many intermediate steps, we see the development of writing. In the more recent past, we see the invention of the camera, audio recording devices, and ultimately video. The manner in which humans have recorded history (and to a lesser extent our own lives) has evolved. We've come a long way. Consider the implications of time. Much of the technology we take for granted today was pure science fiction 50-100 years ago, a dream 200 years ago, and inconceivable 500 years ago. Using these groupings of viewpoints, we can project into the future and categorize the possibilities. In — Todd William

As an actor, you're constantly searching for that great character. Also, being a history buff and learning about people in our past and amazing things that they've done, I came across a book about Howard Hughes and he was set up as basically, the most multi-dimensional character I could ever come across. Often, people have tried to define him in biographies, but no one seems to be able to categorize him. — Leonardo DiCaprio

We categorize as we do because we have the brains and bodies we have and because we interact in the world as we do. — George Lakoff

The fact that....you categorize everything as either sexist, or racist, or homophobic, whether it is or not, and therefore harmful to you and you just can't take it, is a kind of mania, a delusion, a psychosis that we have been coddling, encouraging people to think that life should be a smooth utopia built only for them and their fragile sensibility. — Bret Easton Ellis

If you can't categorize a film for a studio, it's really difficult for them to wrap their heads around it and give you the money. — Sandra Bullock

For some people, they may categorize it as "gay love". And for me, I simply see it as love. And there's no corner of the universe where love cannot abide and grow. — Jennifer Beals

You cannot understand what makes things live when you must first rob their life. And so when man learned to categorize, number and dissect nature, he lost its living quality and no longer felt a part of it. — Jane Roberts

In the male homosexual community, we love to label and categorize and organize each other as if we are in a never-ending high school biology class. — Blake McIver Ewing

I chose the name "Padded Room," because, when I'm in the booth, it would be the padded room. When I'm in the booth, I can say a lot of things and speak about a lot of things that normally I wouldn't be able to speak about to a friend or to family or to a crowd. A lot of times, the things that I say, if you had to categorize it, they would probably call me nuts or crazy. So, you add that aspect of "The Padded Room," which would be almost like an insane asylum. — Joe Budden

Love is never static, but always evolving. Love is simultaneously random and ordered, so intangible and yet a part of everything, and when we attempt to limit it or categorize it, we get into trouble. — James Van Praagh

You really can't categorize my music, it's human music. — Kendrick Lamar

I never favored any political party. Being a conservative or a liberal, a Republican or a Democrat, these are just labels that people use to categorize each other so that they can quickly decide whether or not they want to listen to what they have to say. Politicians are not interested in empathizing with each other. They simply try to do as little as possible in the way of serving the public while building their reputation among their peers, amassing power and wealth that is unimaginable to the common American citizen that they supposedly represent. — Aaron B. Powell

I submit these assorted pieces of evidence I'm unwilling to categorize! — Lemony Snicket

If I was gay, I wouldn't need an asterisk beside my name. I could stop worrying if the girl I like will bounce when she finds out I also like dick. I could have a coming-out party without people thinking I just want attention. I wouldn't have to explain that I fall in love with minds, not genders or body parts. People wouldn't say I'm 'just a slut' or 'faking it' or 'undecided' or 'confused.' I'm not confused. I don't categorize people by who I'm allowed to like and who I'm allowed to love. Love doesn't fit into boxes like that. It's blurry, slippery, quantum. It's only limited by our perceptions and before we slap a label on it and cram it into some category, everything is possible. — Leah Raeder

I can't blame you for trying to categorize me. It's a human instinct. It's why scientists are, to this day, completely flabbergasted by the duck-billed platypus: it's furry like a mammal, but lays eggs like a bird. It defies conventional classification.
I AM THE PLATYPUS (Coo coo ka-choo) — Jeff Garvin