Divergences Quotes & Sayings

Research has shown that constant relocation in childhood is often associated with creativity. It seems that the creative impulse is sparked by the need to reconcile contrasting views of the world. If you move home, you start living a slightly different life, so you compare it with your previous life, note the divergences and the similarities, see what you like better and what you miss, and as you do so, your mind becomes more flexible and capable of combining thoughts and ideas in new and fresh ways. — John Cleese

For the movement was without scruples; she rolled towards her goal unconcernedly and deposed the corpses of the drowned in the windings of her course. Her course had many twists and windings; such was the law of her being. And whosoever could not follow her crooked course was washed on to the bank, for such was her law. The motives of the individual did not matter to her. His conscience did not matter to her, neither did she care what went on in his head and his heart. The Party knew only one crime: to swerve from the course laid out; and only one punishment: death. Death was no mystery in the movement; there was nothing exalted about it: it was the logical solution to political divergences — Arthur Koestler

I liked to discover connections like that, especially if they concerned Lila. I traced lines between moments and events distant from one another, I established convergences and divergences. In that period it became a daily exercise: the better off I had been in Ischia, the worse off Lila had been in the desolation of the neighborhood; the more I had suffered upon leaving the island, the happier she had become. It was as if, because of an evil spell, the joy or sorrow of one required the sorrow or joy of the other; even our physical aspect, it seemed to me, shared in that swing. — Elena Ferrante

No wonder, then, that in the early stages of the development of any science different men confronting the same range of phenomena, but not usually all the same range of phenomena, describe and interpret them in different ways. What is surprising, and perhaps also unique in its degree to the fields we call science, is that such initial divergences should ever largely disappear. For they do disappear to a very considerable extent and then apparently once and for all. Furthermore, their disappearance is usually caused by the triumph of one of the pre-paradigm schools, which, because of its own characteristic beliefs and preconceptions, emphasized only some special part of the two sizable and inchoate pool of information, — Thomas S. Kuhn

Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes. The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story ... to make him/her forget, whenever possible, that he/she is reading a story at all. — Stephen King

One exploiting sect, one people of leeches, one single devouring parasite closely and intimately bound together not only across national boundaries, but also across all divergences of political opinion ... [Jews have] that mercantile passion which constitutes one of the principle traits of their national character — Mikhail Bakunin

I regard one's hair as I regard husbands: as long as one is seen together in public one's private divergences don't matter. — Saki

The shades of difference between other people and me serve to make variety and prevent monotony, but that is all; broadly speaking, we are all alike; and so by studying myself carefully and comparing myself with other people, and noting the divergences, I have been enabled to acquire a knowledge of the human race which I perceive is more accurate and more comprehensive than that which has been acquired and revealed by any other member of our species. As a result, my private and concealed opinion of myself is not of a complimentary sort. It follows that my estimate of the human race is the duplicate of my estimate of myself. — Mark Twain

Unlike the novel, a short story may be, for all purposes, essential. — Jorge Luis Borges

The profound divergences of opinion on war and peace had been shown to know no sex. — Sylvia Pankhurst

My choices matter - and there are paths towards making wiser ones - but I cannot choose what I choose. And if it ever appears that I do - for instance, after going back between two options - I do not choose to choose what I choose. There is a regress here that always ends in darkness. — Sam Harris

Strangers are just friends I haven't met yet. — Will Rogers

The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He knows much more of the fierce variety and uncompromising divergences of men ... In a large community, we can choose our companions. In a small community, our companions are chosen for us. Thus in all extensive and highly civilized society groups come into existence founded upon sympathy, and shut out the real world more sharply than the gates of a monastery. There is nothing really narrow about the clan; the thing which is really narrow is the clique. — G.K. Chesterton

expositional listening protects the gospel and our lives from corruption. — Thabiti M. Anyabwile

One's first response is that these Beirutis must be savagely insane to murder each other for such trivial divergences. Don't judge us too harshly. At the heart of most antagonisms are irreconcilable similarities. Hundred-year wars were fought over whether Jesus was human in divine form or divine in human form. Belief is murderous. — Rabih Alameddine

Complexity theory shows that great changes can emerge
from small actions. Change involves a belief in the possible, even the "impossible."
Moreover, social innovators don't follow a
linear pathway of change; there are ups and
downs, roller-coaster rides along cascades
of dynamic interactions, unexpected and
unanticipated divergences, tipping points
and critical mass momentum shifts. Indeed,
things often get worse before they get better
as systems change creates resistance to and
pushback against the new.
Traditional evaluation approaches — Michael Quinn Patton

It's much more difficult to make an unbound book than a bound book, because the factories aren't set up to make an unbound book. — Stefan Sagmeister

Whatever class and race divergences exist, top cats are tom cats. — Elizabeth Janeway

Whenever I'd get howlin' over something, he'd grab my ass up from wherever I was and head straight for the john. Momma said my head would get banged up along the way, but she said it
was probably bein' dunked under water that made me stupid. — Cole Alpaugh

When I graduated, I was director of my school's sketch comedy group, and I knew that I wanted to be writing and performing my own sketch comedy. It kind of made me want to do my own one-person sketch group. — Rachel Bloom

I think every professor and writer is in some way an exhibitionist because his or her normal activity is a theatrical one. When you give a lesson the situation is the same as writing a book. You have to capture the attention, the complicity of your audience. — Umberto Eco

My son is getting close to the age that I remember watching Scrooge, and as he loves to be scared, I can't wait to start my favorite holiday tradition all over again with him. — Molly O'Keefe

I don't think there are huge divergences between my personality and what they see on TV. And I think that's why I have been gainfully employed doing this. I'll always deliver what an employer wants. — Keith Olbermann

Don't
tempt the scorpion if you don't want to
get stung. — Colleen Hoover

There is hardly a case in which the dispute was not caused by a woman. — Juvenal

I basically believe the medical insurance industry should be nonprofit, not profit-making. There is no way a health reform plan will work when it is implemented by an industry that seeks to return money to shareholders instead of using that money to provide health care. — Dianne Feinstein

Cities have distinct personalities. It's a matter of knowing it. — Anne Rice

The social system tends to be dominated by images ... especially of the future, which act cybernetically , constantly guided by perceived divergences between the real and the ideal — Kenneth E. Boulding