Quotes & Sayings About Generalizations

Out of ignorance or expediency we give all snowflakes the same name. — Marty Rubin

What I find in Aristotle is mainly a quite dull collection of generalizations, many of which seem impossible to justify in the light of modern knowledge, — Robert M. Pirsig

The real issue in the Christian community was that it was conditional. You were loved, but if you had questions, questions about whether the Bible was true or whether America was a good country or whether last week's sermon was good, you were not so loved. You were loved in word, but there was, without question, a social commodity that was being withheld from you until you shaped up. By toeing the party line you earned social dollars; by being yourself you did not. If you wanted to be valued, you became a clone. These are broad generalizations, and they are unfair, but this is what I was thinking at the time. — Donald Miller

I hate it when people throw big sweeping generalizations at you that you can't even begin to interpret. — Karen Marie Moning

Come on, come on; you are pictures out of doors,
Bells in your parlours, wild cats in your kitchens,
Saints in your injuries, devils being offended,
Players in your housewifery, and housewives in your beds. — William Shakespeare

Men are more apt to be mistaken in their generalizations than in their particular observations. — Niccolo Machiavelli

I only have a Bachelor's Degree but I've had professors who have instilled this kind of academic rigor in me where I don't make any generalizations or closed statements. There always has to be room for interpretation. — Ayshay

I hope that in due time the chemists will justify their proceedings by some large generalisations deduced from the infinity of results which they have collected. For me I am left hopelessly behind and I will acknowledge to you that through my bad memory organic chemistry is to me a sealed book. Some of those here, Hofmann for instance, consider all this however as scaffolding, which will disappear when the structure is built. I hope the structure will be worthy of the labour. I should expect a better and a quicker result from the study of the powers of matter, but then I have a predilection that way and am probably prejudiced in judgment. — Michael Faraday

The most obvious purpose of college education is to help students acquire information and knowledge by acquainting them with facts, theories, generalizations, principles, and the like. This purpose scarcely requires justification. — Derek Bok

All generalizations are inaccurate, including this one. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

I feel like a lot of serious music lives in generalizations - 'Love is a flower,' 'The sky is so dark' - but comedy lives in specifics. — Rachel Bloom

Writing about race and crime was not new territory for me. But it can be treacherous. So here are my rules: No stereotypes. No generalizations. No explanations. No apologies. Just the facts, ma'am. — Colin Flaherty

I tried to write worse but it was no good; my generalizations came out as before, each more exquisite than the last. I grew discouraged. — Peter De Vries

Generalization is a natural human mental process, and many generalizations are true - in average. What often does promote evil behavior is the lazy, nasty habit of believing that generalizations have anything at all to do with individuals. — David Brin

Darwin based his theory on generalizations that were strictly empirical. You can go out and see that organisms do vary, that variations are inherited, and that every organism is capable of increasing its numbers in sufficiently favorable circumstances. — George C. Williams

The highest of generalizations is the synergetic integration of truth and love. — R. Buckminster Fuller

The idea of a character dichotomy between women and men has been overwhelmingly, decisively, refuted. The broad psychological similarity of men and women as groups can be regarded, on the volume of evidence supporting it, as one of the best-established generalizations in all the human sciences. — Raewyn W. Connell

Although it is a bit of a caricature, I think that there is some truth in the generalizations I'm about to make. The tendency in Roman Catholic theology is to view the kingdom of Christ as a cosmic ladder or tower, leading from the lowest strata to the hierarchy led by the pope. Anabaptists have tended to see the kingdom more as a monastery, a community of true saints called out of the world and a worldly church. Lutheran and Reformed churches tend sometimes to see the kingdom as a school, while evangelicals (at least in the United States) lean more toward seeing it as a market. — Michael S. Horton

I think people took Grenada for what it turned out to be, which was a very specific incident and from which one couldn't necessarily make a lot of generalizations. — John Negroponte

So, to sum up my room-clearing generalizations, men are in comedy to break rules. — Tina Fey

Yet it is unassailably true that so long as we lack omniscience and do not know all of the future, all our generalizations are fallible or only probable. And the history of human error shows that a general consensus, or widespread and unquestioned feeling of certainty, does not preclude the possibility that the future may show us to be in error. — Morris F. Cohen

Animals are locked in a perpetual present. They can learn from recent events, but they are easily distracted by what is in front of their eyes. Slowly, over a great period of time, our ancestors overcame this basic animal weakness. By looking long enough at any object and refusing to be distracted - even for a few seconds - they could momentarily detach themselves from their immediate surroundings. In this way they could notice patterns, make generalizations, and think ahead. They had the mental distance to think and reflect, even on the smallest scale.
These early humans evolved the ability to detach and think as their primary advantage in the struggle to avoid predators and find food. It connected them to a reality other animals could not access. Thinking on this level was the single greatest turning point in all of evolution - the emergence of the conscious, reasoning mind. — Robert Greene

I realize that we are often wary of making these kinds of broad generalizations about different cultural groups
and with good reason. This is the form that racial and ethnic stereotypes take. We want to believe that we are not prisoners of our ethnic histories. But the simple truth is that if you want to understand ... you have to go back to the past ... it matters where you're from, not just in terms of where you grew up or where your parents grew up, but in terms of where you great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents grew up and even where your great-great-grandparents grew up. That is a strange and powerful fact. — Malcolm Gladwell

There is an old saying, or should be, that it is a wise economist who recognizes the scope of his own generalizations. — John Kenneth Galbraith

I like gross generalizations ... I also like disgusting specifics! — Josh Stern

The rich are all alike, to revise Tolstoy's famous words, but the poor are poor in their own particular ways.

Any reasonably intelligent reader could blow that generalization apart in the time it takes to write it. But as with most generalizations, a truth lies behind it. Ultimately, what binds the rich together is that they have more money, lots more. For one reason or another, the poor don't have enough of it. But poverty doesn't bind the poor together as much as wealth and the need to protect it bind the rich. If it did, we would hear the rattle of tumbrels in the streets. One hears mutterings, but the chains have not yet been shed. — William McPherson

It is our tradition to question everything and everybody, especially the fuqaha and imams. And it is more than ever necessary for us to disinter our true tradition from the centuries of oblivion that have managed to obscure it. But we must also guard against falling into generalizations and saying that all the imams were and are misogynistic. That is not true today and was not true yesterday. — Fatema Mernissi

To fully express their feelings, women assume poetic license and use various superlatives, metaphors, and generalizations. Men mistakenly take these expressions literally. Because they misunderstand the intended meaning, they commonly react in an unsupportive manner. — John Gray

Travelers are much at the mercy of phrases ... vast generalizations formulate in their exposed brains ... — Virginia Woolf

Not to make sweeping generalizations about men, but I can pretty well guess how this conversation would go down. Jack: Everything okay? You seem down in the mouth lately. Maxime: It is fine. Jack: Okay, just checking. See ya. — Jennifer Coburn

Generally, there is a lot of truth value in stepping back, observing, then logically generalizing the extremes of what you see. — Criss Jami

It is very easy to make wild generalizations about Islam. All you have to do is read almost any issue of The New Republic and you'll see there the radical evil that's associated with Islam, the Arabs as having a depraved culture, and so forth. These are impossible generalizations to make in the United States about any other religious or ethnic group. — Edward Said

Suppose that you want to teach the 'cat' concept to a very young child. Do you explain that a cat is a relatively small, primarily carnivorous mammal with retractible claws, a distinctive sonic output, etc.? I'll bet not. You probably show the kid a lot of different cats, saying 'kitty' each time, until it gets the idea. To put it more generally, generalizations are best made by abstraction from experience. — Ralph P. Boas Jr.

Between ourselves and our real natures we interpose that wax figure of idealizations and selections which we call our character. We extend this into all our thinking. Between us and the realities of social life we build up a mass of generalizations, abstract ideas, ancient glories, and personal wishes. They simplify and soften experience. It is so much easier to talk of poverty than to think of the poor, to argue the rights of capital than to see its results. Pretty soon we come to think of the theories and abstract ideas as things in themselves. We worry about their fate and forget their original content. — Walter Lippmann

Economic science concerns itself primarily with theoretical and empirical generalizations about the behavior of individuals, institutions, markets, and national economies. Most academic research falls in this category. — Ben Bernanke

In this course I have tried to reveal the mechanism of those wonderful toys - literary masterpieces. I have tried to make of you good readers who read books not for the infantile purpose of identifying oneself with the characters, and not for the adolescent purpose of learning to live, and not for the academic purpose of indulging in generalizations. I have tried to teach you to read books for the sake of their form, their visions, their art. I have tried to teach you to feel a shiver of artistic satisfaction, to share not the emotions of the people in the book but the emotions of its author - the joys and difficulties of creation. We did not talk around books, about books; we went to the center of this or that masterpiece, to the live heart of the matter. — Vladimir Nabokov

Answers come after questions, not before. Answers answer questions in specific and pointed ways, not in sweeping generalizations. — Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

General theories are everywhere condemned; the doctrine of the Rights of Man is dismissed with the doctrine of the Fall of Man. Atheism itself is too theological for us to-day. Revolution itself is too much of a system; liberty itself is too much of a restraint. We will have no generalizations. Mr. Bernard Shaw has put the view in a perfect epigram: 'The golden rule is that there is no golden rule.' We are more and more to discuss details in art, politics, literature. A man's opinion on tramcars matters; his opinion on Botticelli matters; his opinion on all things does not matter. He may turn over and explore a million objects, but he must not find that strange object, the universe; for if he does he will have a religion, and be lost. Everything matters
except everything. — G.K. Chesterton

Conclusions which are merely verbal cannot bear fruit, only those do which are based on demonstrated fact. For affirmation and talk are deceptive and treacherous. Wherefore one must hold fast to facts in generalizations also, and occupy oneself with facts persistently, if one is to acquire that ready and infallible habit which we call the art of medicine. — Hippocrates

So often, generalizations don't apply to Catholic voters. Catholics are concerned about the war, the economy, about issues like abortion, issues pertaining to the budget and funding Medicaid and Medicare and what happens to the environment. — Bob Casey Jr.

The stumbling way in which even the ablest of the scientists in every generation have had to fight through thickets of erroneous observations, misleading generalizations, inadequate formulation, and unconscious prejudice is rarely appreciated by those who obtain their scientific knowledge from textbooks. — James Bryant Conant

Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it. — Ezra Pound

Everyone in America (according to my generalizations) is a potential millionaire waiting for his or her big break. I was astonished lately to realize that Americans are definitely believing in and planning for the future, despite the fact that they elected Ronald Reagan twice. — Roseanne Barr

But when you only speak using generalizations, you run the danger of denying the specific. In recent decades, millions of people have come to us from cultural groups within which women have absolutely no rights. They do not have a voice of their own and they are totally dependent on their fathers, brothers or husbands. That applies to North Africa and that applies to large parts of the Middle East. It isn't always linked to Islam. — Alice Schwarzer

There is nothing particularly scientific about excessive caution. Science thrives on daring generalizations. — Lancelot Hogben

I know you have not thought about it. Italians always act without thinking, it's the glory and the downfall of your civilisation. A German plans a month in advance what his bowel movements will be at Easter, and the British plan everything in retrospect, so it always looks as though everything occurred as they intended. The French plan everything whilst appearing to be having a party, and the Spanish ... well, God knows. Anyway, Pelagia is Greek, that's my point. — Louis De Bernieres

Because the vast majority of leaders are men, it is not possible to generalize from any one example. But the dearth of female leaders causes one woman to be viewed as representative of her entire gender. And because people often discount and dislike female leaders, these generalizations are often critical. This is not just unfair to the individuals but reinforces the stigma that successful women are unlikeable. — Sheryl Sandberg

That's to British," I countered.
"What is?"
"Making sweeping generalizations about Americans because that makes you feel better about having a national inferiority complex the size of the Atlantic Ocean. I was just trying to be helpful, but if folding your pizza threatens you sense of patriotism, you probably shouldn't do it. — Jessica Martinez

Sought a world philosophy-or an integral philosophy-that would believably weave together the many pluralistic contexts of science, morals, aesthetics, Eastern as well as Western philosophy, and the world's great wisdom traditions. Not on the level of details-that is finitely impossible; but on the level of orienting generalizations: a way to suggest that the world really is one, undivided, whole, and related to itself in every way: a holistic philosophy for a holistic Kosmos, a plausible Theory of Everything. — Ken Wilber

As soon as they leave, Leon says to me: I disagree, sir. There are people who aren't insane, and I'm one of them. People who generalize are mentally ill. — Milton Rokeach

People who always arrive early aren't worth waiting for. — Crystal Woods

There is a constant rush to judgment in Foucault. He is filled with specious generalizations, false categories, distortions, fudging, pretenses to knowledge in areas where he was ignorant. He had no ability whatsoever to distinguish among historical sources, where he makes terrible blunders. — Camille Paglia

The thing about stereotyping is it's usually just throwing rocks into a crowd hoping to hit somebody who deserves it. — Criss Jami

It is one of the more striking generalizations of biochemistry - which surprisingly is hardly ever mentioned in the biochemical textbooks - that the twenty amino acids and the four bases, are, with minor reservations, the same throughout Nature. — Francis Crick

The propensity to excessive simplification is indeed natural to the mind of man, since it is only by abstraction and generalisation, which necessarily imply the neglect of a multitude of particulars, that he can stretch his puny faculties so as to embrace a minute portion of the illimitable vastness of the universe. But if the propensity is natural and even inevitable, it is nevertheless fraught with peril, since it is apt to narrow and falsify our conception of any subject under investigation. To correct it partially - for to correct it wholly would require an infinite intelligence - we must endeavour to broaden our views by taking account of a wide range of facts and possibilities; and when we have done so to the utmost of our power, we must still remember that from the very nature of things our ideas fall immeasurably short of the reality. — James George Frazer

Can we imagine a togetherness that isn't founded on gross generalizations, conceptualizing ourselves as unique individuals who still stand to gain from looking out for one another? Can we identify with each other rather than with categories or masters? — CrimethInc.

Mental models are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures of images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action. — Peter Senge

I only know from my own personal experience, and I personally feel that there's a cyclical nature to things, so you don't want to start making generalizations about how bad things have become in comparison to the old days. — Jeffrey Jones

It is reckless to make broad generalizations about any group of people. — Roger Ebert

I think generalizations of any sort are dangerous. I'll say, if that is the case - right now it's an American issue. — Kerry Washington

In your 20s - and these are generalizations of course - I feel like I didn't care about as many things or as many people, or even myself, as much. There's more recklessness and more ruthlessness; you're not as considerate of how things land with other people I think. — Naomi Watts

Experiment is the sole judge of scientific "truth." But what is the source of knowledge? Where do the laws that are to be tested come from? Experiment, itself, helps to produce these laws, in the sense that it gives us hints. But also needed is imagination to create from these hints the great generalizations - to guess at the wonderful, simple, but very strange patterns beneath them all, and then to experiment to check again whether we have made the right guess. This imagining process is so difficult that there is a division of labor in physics: there are theoretical physicists who imagine, deduce, and guess at new laws, but do not experiment; and then there are experimental physicists who experiment, imagine, deduce, and guess. — Richard Feynman

The problem with labels is that they lead to stereotypes and stereotypes lead to generalizations and generalizations lead to assumptions and assumptions lead back to stereotypes. It's a vicious cycle, and after you go around and around a bunch of times you end up believing that all vegans only eat cabbage and all gay people love musicals. — Ellen DeGeneres

The eternal is omniembracing and permeative; and the temporal is linear. This opens up a very high order of generalizations of generalizations. The truth could not be more omni-important, although it is often manifestly operative only as a linear identification of a special-case experience on a specialized subject. — R. Buckminster Fuller

All generalizations are questionable. — Sandor Schuman

There are always exceptions to every generalization.
[A Christian Epilogue] — John B. Cobb Jr.

At its best, SF cinema is an allegorical site that invites the audience to safely examine and reflect on long-standing social issues in an unfamiliar setting, providing the possibility of viewing them in a new light. At its worst, the process of allegorical displacement invites audiences to affirm racist ideas, confirm racial fears, and reinforce dubious generalizations about race and the place of African Americans in U.S. society without employing overt racial language or explicit imagery. — Adilifu Nama

...obscurantist feature in social scientists trying to combine pluralism with environmentalism. They are so preoccupied with the role of prejudice in creating hostile environments that they perpetually deny the obvious, that stereotypes are rough generalizations about groups derived from long-term observation. Such generalizations are usually correct in describing group tendencies and in predicting certain collective actions, even if they do not adequately account for differences among individuals. Nonetheless, as Goldberg explains, the self-described pluralist and prominent psychologist Gordon Allport went out of his way in The Nature of Prejudice (1954) to reject stereotypes as factually inaccurate as well as socially harmful. For Allport and a great many other social Scientists, nothing is intuitively correct unless it is politically so. — Paul Edward Gottfried

At the risk of descending to unscientific generalizations, 90 percent of Texans give the other 10 percent a bad name." - Attributed to John H. "Doc" Holliday — Mary Doria Russell

In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations! Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions. Nor is it necessary to portray many main characters. Let two people be the center of gravity in your story: he and she. — Anton Chekhov

Sweeping generalizations are easy, but we are more alike than we are different. Our focus and interests may vary, or not, but to dismiss something as less relevant is a missed opportunity. — Deborah Stanish

Let us suppose that an ichthyologist is exploring the life of the ocean. He casts a net into the water and brings up a fishy assortment. Surveying his catch, he proceeds in the usual manner of a scientist to systematize what it reveals. He arrives at two generalizations:
(1) No sea-creature is less than two inches long.
(2) All sea-creatures have gills.
These are both true of his catch, and he assumes tentatively that they will remain true however often he repeats it. — Arthur Eddington

Beware of generalizations about any faith because they sometimes amount to the religious equivalent of racial profiling. Hinduism contained both Gandhi and the fanatic who assassinated him. — Nicholas Kristof

Generalization, especially risky generalization, is one of the chief methods by which knowledge proceeds ... Safe generalizations are usually rather boring. Delete that "usually rather." Safe generalizations are quite boring. — Joseph Epstein

What has she done to deserve such scorn?' I said.
He had the grace to look uncomfortable as he answered. 'Not her in particular, miss,' he said, 'Just her sort. People like her in general, I mean.'
'Oh Harry,' I said, 'there is no such thing as people in general. Everyone is someone very particular. — Catriona McPherson

Ideas, of course, have a place in fiction, and any writer of fiction needs a mind. But ideas are not the best subject matter for fiction. They do not dramatize well. They are, rather, a by-product, something the reader himself is led to formulate after watching the story unfold. The ideas, the generalizations, ought to be implicit in the selection and arrangement of the people and places and actions. They ought to haunt a piece of fiction as a ghost flits past an attic window after dark. — Wallace Stegner

Not all 'whites' are racists. Not all racists are 'white. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The museum spreads its surfaces everywhere, and becomes an untitled collection of generalizations that mobilize the eye. — Robert Smithson

As a piece of writing, The Elementary Particles feels like a bad, self-conscious pastiche of Camus, Foucault and Bret Easton Ellis. And as a philosophical tract, it evinces a fiercely nihilistic, anti-humanistic vision built upon gross generalizations and ridiculously phony logic. It is a deeply repugnant read. — Michiko Kakutani

MODERN PARENTS OF TWENTY FIRST CENTURY NEEDS SPIRITUAL BRAIN WASH WITH GREAT CLASSIC LITERATURE ACROSS THE GLOBE FIRST. NATURALLY,RESULTING OUR FUTURE GLOBAL DIRECORS(INDIVIDUAL CHILDREN) WILL RE-DESGN AND RE-DRAFT LIFE DIRECTION SOFT-WARE TO UP GRADE THEIR SOULS GOD SPIRITUALITY NEXT. — Various

It is one of the striking generalizations of biochemistry - which surprisingly is hardly ever mentioned in the biochemical text-books - that the twenty amino acids and the four bases, are, with minor reservations, the same throughout Nature. As far as I am aware the presently accepted set of twenty amino acids was first drawn up by Watson and myself in the summer of 1953 in response to a letter of Gamow's. — Francis Crick

Any of us who've been newspapermen for a long time hate generalizations. — Pete Hamill

There are special sciences not because of the nature of our epistemic relation to the world, but because of the way the world is put together: not all natural kinds (not all the classes of things and events about which there are important, counterfactual supporting generalizations to make) are, or correspond to, physical natural kinds. — Jerry Fodor

So far, we have been able to study only one evolving system and we cannot wait for interstellar flight to provide us with a second. If we want to discover generalizations about evolving systems, we will have to look at artificial ones. — John Maynard Smith

The thing that distinguishes social systems from physical or even biological systems is their incomparable (and embarrassing) richness in special cases. Generalizations in the social sciences are mere pathways which lead through a riotous forest of individual trees, each a species unto itself. The social scientist who loses this sense of the essential individuality and uniqueness of each case is all too likely to make a solemn scientific ass of himself, especially if he thinks that his faceless generalizations are the equivalents of the rich vareity of the world. — Kenneth E. Boulding

It is certain that the study of human psychology, if it were undertaken exclusively in prisons, would also lead to misrepresentation and absurd generalizations. — Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Good teaching is creating really interesting generalizations out of war stories. — Derek Bok

At each stage ... entirely new laws, concepts and generalizations are necessary, requiring inspiration and creativity to just as great a degree as in the previous one. — Poul Anderson

The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: The test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific "truth." But what is the source of knowledge? Where do the laws that are to be tested come from? Experiment, itself, helps to produce these laws, in the sense that it gives us hints. But also needed is imagination to create from these hints the great generalizations
to guess at the wonderful, simple, but very strange patterns beneath them all, and then to experiment to check again whether we have made the right guess. — Richard P. Feynman

Most historians don't much like generalizations. Indeed, they make a trade of showing that this or that generalization about the past will not work here or there or then. — Edmund Morgan

Identity politics divides us; fiction connects. One is interested in sweeping generalizations, the other in nuances. One draws boundaries, the other recognizes no frontiers. Identity politics is made of solid bricks; fiction is flowing water. — Elif Shafak

The curious thing about individuals is that their singularity always goes beyond any category or generalization in the book. — Haruki Murakami

Given a thimbleful of [dramatic] facts we rush to make generalizations as large as a tub. — Gordon W. Allport

Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Most people traffic in abstractions and generalizations because they are grossly incompetent at culturing their intuition or powers of evidency, refining it to grasp the Thisness (Haecceitas) of what is before them. Thinking is like a Stradivarius that has more potential variations in how it is played than any human can finitely perform or capture. — Kenny Smith

( ... philosophy is more often the systematization of the prejudices of philosophers than the systematization of nature.) Distrust all generalizations: stick to the concrete. — Epifanio De Los Santos

There are great people everywhere, and there are all kinds of exceptions to any generalizations, and it was a huge privilege for me to get to learn that. — Jenny Hoyston

As economists like to say, the plural of "anecdote" is not "data. — Robert Lane Greene

As a human being, you have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought and scrupulously logical deliberation - or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions, false generalizations, undefined contradictions, undigested slogans, unidentified wishes, doubts and fears, thrown together by chance, but integrated by your subconscious into a kind of mongrel philosophy and fused into a single, solid weight: self-doubt,
Like a ball and chain in the place where your mind's wings should have grown. — Ayn Rand

I think one of the things you have to learn if you're going to create believable characters is never to make generalizations about groups of people. — Mark Haddon