Classifications Quotes & Sayings

I am 100 percent confident. This is a security review that was requested. It is being carried out. It will be resolved. But I have to add if there's going to be a security review about me, there's going to have to be security reviews about a lot of other people, including Republican office holders, because we've got this absurd situation of retroactive classifications. — Hillary Clinton

Order streamed from Noah in blue triangles and as the pure fury of his classifications rose around him, engulfing his life, they came to be called waves by others, who drowned, a world of them. — Anne Carson

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

The natural sciences have the clearest patterns. Physics admits of a lovely unification, not just at the level of fundamental forces, but when considering its extent and implications. Classifications like 'optics' or 'thermodynamics' are just straitjackets, preventing physicists from seeing countless intersections. Even putting aside aesthetics, the practical applications that have been overlooked are legion; years ago engineers could have been artificially generating spherically symmetric gravity fields. Having — Ted Chiang

It's tough to know who's better in cliff diving. Like, you see a guy diving off a cliff and you go, Oh, man, a guy diving off a cliff! And then another guy'd dive- Oh, there's another guy diving off a cliff there. But you can't tell who's better, y'know? Like, uh- if you survive at all, hey, you're a great- you're a great cliff diver there. There's only two classifications in cliffdiving. There's, uh- 'Grand Champion' and then, uh- 'Stuff On a Rock.' Very hard to make a comeback in that sport, I'll tell you that. — Norm MacDonald

The challenge of the politics of atypicality becomes particularly pressing within neoliberal biopolitics, particularly in that much of disability's social oppression is based on medical classifications that overindividuate bodies within categories of pathology while turning labeled subjects into generic representations of their medicalized condition group. — David T. Mitchell

But as almost all objects differ in some qualities and almost all have some qualities in common, it follows that, contrary to common belief, there is no one classification absolutely essential to any group of objects.
An infinite number of classifications may be made, because every object has an infinite number of attributes, depending on the aspect we take of it. Nor is any one aspect of a thing "truer" than any other. The aspect we take depends entirely on the purpose we have in mind or the problem we wish to solve. — Henry Hazlitt

I once offhandedly mentioned that I wanted to pick out my own ring, something I have to look at every day, but there is something decidedly unromantic and a little bit depressing about having a symbol of love reduced to such scientific classifications - especially classifications focusing on imperfections. — Emily Giffin

Taxonomy (the science of classification) is often undervalued as a glorified form of filing-with each species in its folder, like a stamp in its prescribed place in an album; but taxonomy is a fundamental and dynamic science, dedicated to exploring the causes of relationships and similarities among organisms. Classifications are theories about the basis of natural order, not dull catalogues compiled only to avoid chaos. — Stephen Jay Gould

Geneticists believe that anthropologists have decided what a race is. Ethnologists assume that their classifications embody principles which genetic science has proved correct. Politicians believe that their prejudices have the sanction of genetic laws and the findings of physical anthropology to sustain them. — Lancelot Hogben

Distinction between species and specimen is very much like the distinction between images and actual pictures, or, you know, objects that have a definite material identity. The classifications, the categories, the stereotypes, and the images are on one side, and the material pictures, statues, texts, and so forth are on the other. — W. J. T. Mitchell

Physics admits of a lovely unification, not just at the level of fundamental forces, but when considering its extent and implications. Classifications like "optics" or "thermodynamics" are just straitjackets, preventing physicists from seeing countless intersections. — Ted Chiang

All classifications in this world lack sharp boundaries, and all transitions are gradual. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The seminaries have generally been so covetous of academic recognition, and so anxious for locus within the ethos and hierarchy of the university, that they have not noticed how alien and hostile those premises are to the peculiar vocation of the seminary. Thus the seminaries succumb to disseminating ideological renditions of the faith which demean the vitality of the biblical witness by engaging in endless classifications and comparisons of ideas. All this eschews commitment and precludes a confessional study of theology. — William Stringfellow

Melancholy, being a kind of vacatio, separation of soul from body, bestowed the gift of clairvoyance and premonition. In the classifications of the Middle Ages, melancholy was included among the seven forms of vacatio, along with sleep, fainting, and solitude. The state of vacatio is characterized by a labile link between soul and body which makes the soul more independent with regard to the sensible world and allows it to neglect its physical matrix in order, in some way, better to attend to its own business. — Ioan Petru Culianu

Rooms, corridors, bookcases, shelves, filing cards, and computerized catalogues assume that the subjects on which our thoughts dwell are actual entities, and through this assumption a certain book may be lent a particular tone and value. Filed under Fiction, Jonathon Swift's Gulliver's Travels is a humorous novel of adventure; under Sociology, a satirical study of England in the eighteenth century; under Children's Literature, an entertaining fable about dwarfs and giants and talking horses; under Fantasy, a precursor of science fiction; under Travel, an imaginary voyage; under Classics, a part of the Western literary canon. Categories are exclusive; reading is not--or should not be. Whatever classifications have been chosen, every library tyrannizes the act of reading, and forces the reader--the curious reader, the alert reader--to rescue the book from the category to which it has been condemned. — Alberto Manguel

If you can play, you can play anything. I don't like classifications. — Buddy Rich

Without the discovery of uniformities there can be no concepts, no classifications, no formulations, no principles, no laws; and without these no science can exist. — Clyde Kluckhohn

Our categories are important. We cannot organize a social life, a political movement, or our individual identities and desires without them. The fact that categories invariably leak and can never contain all the relevant "existing things" does not render them useless, only limited. Categories like "woman," "butch," "lesbian," or "transsexual" are all imperfect, historical, temporary, and arbitrary. We use them, and they use us. We use them to construct meaningful lives, and they mold us into historically specific forms of personhood. Instead of fighting for immaculate classifications and impenetrable boundaries, let us strive to maintain a community that understands diversity as a gift, sees anomalies as precious, and treats all basic principles with a hefty dose of skepticism. — Gayle Rubin

Crude classifications and false generalizations are the curse of the organized life. — H.G.Wells

In breaking down the developmental journey through successive states of psychic organization, Mahler enabled clinicians to understand more deeply and treat more effectively children and adults who came to be officially diagnosed as borderline patients, whose severe pathology fell between the classifications of neurosis and psychosis. — Stephen A. Mitchell

One day stores will no longer have gender classifications. Instead the consumer decides how and what they want, rather than the social engineering of corporations. The concept of gender will be extinct. — Lorin Morgan-Richards

Language is legislation, speech is its code. We do not see the power which is in speech because we forget that all speech is a classification, and that all classifications are oppressive. — Roland Barthes

It is clear, from these considerations, that the three methods of classifying mankind-that according to physical characters, according to language, and according to culture-all reflect the historical development of races from different standpoints; and that the results of the three classifications are not comparable, because the historical facts do not affect the three classes of phenomena equally. A consideration of all these classes of facts is needed when we endeavour to reconstruct the early history of the races of mankind. — Franz Boas

As this book will show, objectively defined races simply do not exist. Even Arthur Mourant realized that fact nearly fifty years ago, when he wrote: 'Rather does a study of blood groups show a heterogeneity in the proudest nation and support the view that the races of the present day are but temporary integrations in the constant process of ... mixing that marks the history of every living species.' The temptation to classify the human species into categories which have no objective basis is an inevitable but regrettable consequence of the gene frequency system when it is taken too far. For several years the study of human genetics got firmly bogged down in the intellectually pointless (and morally dangerous) morass of constructing ever more detailed classifications of human population groups. — Bryan Sykes

Life is not dependent upon our classifications and our categories, our science. But we are. We find it interesting and helpful. — Frederick Lenz

The history of prescriptions about English ... is in part a history of bogus rules, superstitions, half-baked logic, groaningly unhelpful lists, baffling abstract statements, false classifications, contemptuous insiderism and educational malfeasance. But it is also a history of attempts to make sense of the world and its bazaar of competing ideas and interests. — Henry Hitchings

No. I'm saying that there is no such thing as the individual magics. There should be no differentiation between earth, air, fire and water. And why stop at those four classifications? Why isn't there wood magic or silk magic, or fish magic? — Michael Scott

And then God, in his benevolence, tasked Adam with the nasty business of nomenclature, calling beasts of land and water and air for what he saw fit, giving them names, calling them names, pegging down their potentials to classifications, to genus, to species. — Carlos Malvar

Clearly, there were far more northern Idaho sex gods than I'd given the region credit for. Further classifications were going to be required. If Vaughan topped the super-cool category, then maybe this new guy should win on the lumbersexual front. Given my abrupt return to singledom, I'd have to give this important man-classification system more thought.
Disclaimer: Objectifying people is wrong and stuff. — Kylie Scott

Crime and punishment can be summed up in two classifications: there are bad people and there are people who get into bad situations. The lines for liberation and rehabilitation should first begin with the people who get into bad situations. — Johnnie Dent Jr.

You have to get rid of borders, limits, and classifications; then light comes. We see everything on the screen of our ideas. We must get rid of that screen to be able to see what is behind. X's ideas are limited, that is why he remains on the surface. Y got rid of the limits, so she always goes to the depths. We should always meet people and new subjects with no set frame of mind. We have to live like that even after long acquaintance. We must get rid of every set idea to approach everything and everyone with love. — B.K.S. Iyengar

Such competence is not necessarily acquired by means of the 'scholastic' labours in which some 'cinephiles' or 'jazz-freaks' indulge. Most often it results from the unintentional learning made possible by a disposition acquired through domestic or scholastic inculcation of legitimate culture. This transposable disposition, armed with a set of perceptual and evaluative schemes that are available for general application, inclines its owner towards other cultural experiences and enables him to perceive, classify and memorize them differently. . . . In identifying what is worthy of being seen and the right way to see it, they are aided by their whole social group and by the whole corporation of critics mandated by the group to produce legitimate classifications and the discourse necessarily accompanying any artistic enjoyment worthy of the name. — Pierre Bourdieu

Today, there are no prescribed rules for mourning because it takes place outside the rest of American life, and awkward encounters like the one Mary Wilde had at the florist ' s are a natural result of that. And maybe special classifications like "complicated grief" can have the effect of safely categorizing away people to whom horrific things happen, reassuring everyone else that catastrophe is not part of the regular course of human life. Not here, in twenty-first - century America. — Kate Sweeney

Our weapons actually fall into two classifications. The first is resistance weapons, which are the ones that tear down the strongholds. The second classification is overcoming weapons, which are used to defeat the enemy or his demonic agents living in those strongholds. Both sets of weapons are necessary to defeat the enemy. However, they must be used in the right order; you can't overcome until you have resisted and torn down the strongholds the demonic are hiding behind. — Pastor George McVey

The classifications made by philosophers and psychologists are like trying to classify clouds by their shape. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories: those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost. The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately to defeat him, and the three major classifications are based on the method each object uses to achieve its purpose. As a general rule, any object capable of breaking down at the moment when it is most needed will do so. — Russell Baker

Classifications and distinctions based on race or color have no moral or legal validity in our society. They are contrary to our constitution and laws. — Thurgood Marshall

[In science any model depends on a pre-chosen taxonomy] a set of classifications into which we divide the enormous complexity of the real world ... Land, labor, and capital are extremely heterogeneous aggregates, not much better than earth, air, fire, and water. — Kenneth E. Boulding

I would like to feel that I have a range and that it's not just a matter of being a comic actor or a serious actor, because those are really artificial classifications, I think. — Jeffrey Jones

Reality is a thing of infinite diversity, and defies the most ingenious deductions and definitions of abstract thought, nay, abhors the clear and precise classifications in which we so delight. Reality tends to infinite subdivision of things, and truth is a matter of infinite shadings and differentiations. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

Of course, like all over-simple classifications of this type, the dichotomy becomes, if pressed, artificial, scholastic and ultimately absurd. But if it is not an aid to serious criticism, neither should it be rejected as being merely superficial or frivolous: like all distinctions which embody any degree of truth, it offers a point of view from which to look and compare, a starting-point for genuine investigation. — Isaiah Berlin

Because it's important. Laws can be reversed, Supreme Court decisions can be overturned, gender classifications can continue. — Carolyn Maloney

It seemed to me that one should make an effort to banish artificial classifications from chemistry and begin to assign to each element the place it must occupy in the natural order by comparing it in succession to others ... — Andre-Marie Ampere