Generalize Quotes & Sayings

To think is to ignore the differences, to generalize, to abstract. — Jorge Luis Borges

The question 'Why poetry?' isn't asking what makes poetry unique among art forms; poetry may indeed share its origins with other forms of privileged utterance. A somewhat more interesting question would be: "What is the nature of experience, and especially the experience of using language, that calls poetic utterance into existence? What is there about experience that's unutterable?" You can't generalize very usefully about poetry; you can't reduce its nature down to a kernel that underlies all its various incarnations. I guess my internal conversation suggests that if you can't successfully answer the question of "Why poetry?," can't reduce it in the way I think you can't, then maybe that's the strongest evidence that poetry's doing its job; it's creating an essential need and then satisfying it. — Richard Ford

It's hard to generalize, because they're all different. When I started, I decided to take as much advantage as I could of the freedom offered by the SF field. — Walter Jon Williams

Since each story presents its own technical problems, obviously one can't generalize about them on a two-times-two-equals-four basis. Finding the right form for your story is simply to realize the most natural way of telling the story. The test of whether or not a writer has defined the natural shape of his story is just this: After reading it, can you imagine it differently, or does it silence your imagination and seem to you absolute and final? As an orange is final. As an orange is something nature has made just right. — Truman Capote

Life is too short so we must generalize. — Gordon Allport

I know it's bad to generalize, but when you think about billionaires, you just think this guy is going to walk into a room and just demand things to be a certain way. — Sabrina Bryan

I am not one to generalize, but cartoonists, as a group, exhibit a level of social sophistication generally associated with pie fights. In high school, when the future lawyers were campaigning for class president, the future cartoonists were painstakingly altering illustrations in their history books so that Robert E. Lee appeared to be performing an illegal act with his horse. — Dave Barry

It's so easy to say "evil Nazi monsters," but as soon as we do that, we take away the fact that it was individuals committing individual acts of murder. They had children, and what does that do? As soon as you generalize, they become monsters. It doesn't allow you to understand it in any kind of sophisticated way. — Cate Shortland

An idea is always a generalization, and generalization is a property of thinking. To generalize means to think. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

[Stephenson] believes that, as research becomes more airborne and more office-bound, we generalize more and more, and we lose the vast range of wolf experience; in fact, there are soft wolves and hard wolves, kind wolves and malicious wolves, soldiers and nurses, philosophers and bullies. — Peter Steinhart

There's this powerful phrase in the legal world, "Difficult cases make bad law." The exception is the difficult case. You can't generalize them by definition. So although they are fascinating, they don't solve any problem because they're so one of a kind. — Malcolm Gladwell

It's hard to generalize about that subject because the women I've worked with have all been so different. But if there's one consistency, it might be that you do have to handle yourself differently on a set. Women can be more emotional - at least they sometimes show it more. — Kristen Stewart

Before you generalize, formalize, and axiomatize there must be mathematical substance. — Hermann Weyl

Being a professor and working are not the same thing. The academic community is composed largely of nitwits. If I may generalize. People who don't know very much about what matters very much, who view life through literature rather than the other way around. — Robert B. Parker

I exaggerate. I oversimplify. I generalize. But there's no cynicism here. American poetry is a mess. Long live American poetry. — David Biespiel

We couldn't generalize on the people. Some of them were known to be tough guys and they didn't say much, but some of them were kind of soft-headed, but they did that. That was an East German film. — James Stockdale

I don't know anybody who walks through life all the time in the doldrums, constantly serious and morose. But that's become what we generalize as drama. — Matt Bomer

If you're going to generalize about women, you'll find yourself up to here in exceptions. — Dolores Hitchens

Early fear was felt cellularly and was indeed real. Defensive postures were necessary, but defenses generalize cellularly in adulthood and do not expire. It takes conscious work to undo them. Ironically, as long as we keep using defenses, we actually maintain the original force of the fear. — David Richo

Economics is not an attempt to generalize human desires or human behavior; but to generalize the phenomena of price. — Michael Joseph Oakeshott

In a true war story, if there's a moral at all, it's like the thread that makes the cloth. You can't tease it out. You can't extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning. And in the end, really, there's nothing much to say about a true war story, except maybe "Oh." True war stories do not generalize. They do not indulge in abstraction or analysis. For — Tim O'Brien

The great threat we pose to each other is a fruit of our sublime ability to generalize. — Jos. A. Smith

And it's a little different with every guy, so it's kind of hard to generalize - but if I had to describe the feeling of a crush, I'd say this: you just finished running a mile, and you have to throw up, and you're starving, but no food seems appealing, and your brain becomes fog, and you also have to pee. It's this close to intolerable. But I like it. — Becky Albertalli

The life of a man of virtue and talent, who should die in his thirtieth year, is, with regard to his own feelings, longer than that of a miserable Priest-ridden slave, who dreams out a century of dulness. The one has perpetually cultivated his mental faculties, has rendered himself master of his thoughts, can abstract and generalize amid the lethargy of every-day business;--the other can slumber over the brightest moments of his being, and is unable to remember the happiest hour of his life. Perhaps the perishing ephemeron enjoys a longer life than the tortoise. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Yet there is a difference between scientific and artistic observation. The scientist observes to turn away and generalize; the artist observes to seize and use reality in all its individuality and peculiarity. — Edmund Blair Bolles

To think is to forget differences, generalize, make abstractions. — Angela Harris

That streetside tree is obscuring the air. Cut it down. Haul it in for questioning. There are secrets within that foliage. You might want to separate the branches in different rooms and apply some elementary game theory."
"Question a plant?"
"Trees have a will too, just like people. We have to know it's purpose. Read Schopenhauer."
"Schopenwho?"
"He was the only authentic German. You might like him. Being a police officer, you're undoubtedly familiar with the need to put an end to the lives of the perverse when sex crimes go too far. Now just generalize that necessity to every human being. — Benson Bruno

I don't like to generalize but I've had nothing but bad experiences with Mexican food in Europe. — Ezra Koenig

If I were to generalize a bit, I would say that the ultra rich in Asia live on a scale that far surpasses the wealthy in the U.S. or Europe. — Kevin Kwan

Galileo essentially started out from where Archimedes left off, proceeding in the same direction as defined by his Greek predecessor. This is true not only of Galileo but also of the other great figures of the so-called "scientific revolution," such as Leibniz, Huygens, Fermat, Descartes, and Newton. All of them were Archimedes' children. With Newton, the science of the scientific revolution reached its perfection in a perfectly Archimedean form. Based on pure, elegant first principles and applying pure geometry, Newton deduced the rules governing the universe. All of later science is a consequence of the desire to generalize Newtonian, that is, Archimedean methods. — Reviel Netz

Man is made for science; he reasons from effects to causes, and from causes to effects; but he does not always reason without error. In reasoning, therefore, from appearances which are particular, care must be taken how we generalize; we should be cautious not to attribute to nature, laws which may perhaps be only of our own invention. — James Hutton

To generalize is to be an idiot, said Blake. Perhaps he went too far. But to generalize is to be a finite mind. Generalities are the lenses with which our intellects have to manage. — C.S. Lewis

To generalize on women is dangerous. To specialize on them is infinitely worse. — Rudolph Valentino

I want to be very careful about judging and how much to generalize about the use of media being pathological. For some people, it's a temptation and a pathology; for others, it's a lifeline. — Howard Rheingold

It's a very generous culture, American culture. I know you can't generalize 300 million people, but everyone I've met here has been so lovely to me. — Jacki Weaver

All historians generalize from particulars. And often, if you look at a historian's footnotes, the number of examples of specific cases is very, very small. — Henry Louis Gates

What fun it is to generalize in the privacy of a note book. It is as I imagine waltzing on ice might be. A great delicious sweep in one direction, taking you your full strength, and then with no trouble at all, an equally delicious sweep in the opposite direction. My note book does not help me think, but it eases my crabbed heart. — Florida Scott-Maxwell

What is important is to treat everyone like an individual and learning not to generalize autism. With autism, people make assumptions, but it's very broad, and everyone's so different. You have to treat each person as an individual. — Nikki Reed

Sometimes when I generalize, I am saying, 'Let's pretend I am God,' and of course the other person argues that point endlessly. But I notice that if the other person takes a stand for himself and states his thoughts as his thoughts, I pay more attention to what he is saying and look deeper in myself. — Hugh Prather

To Generalize is to be an Idiot; To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit. — William Blake

It is always dangerous to generalize, but the American people, while infinitely generous, are a hard and strong race and, but for the few cemeteries I have seen, I am inclined to think they never die. — Margot Asquith

Pity, if one can generalize, is at the bottom of woman. When men like us, it is for our better qualities, and however tender their liking, we dare not be unworthy of it, or they will quietly let us go. But unworthiness stimulates woman. It brings out her deeper nature, for good or for evil. — E. M. Forster

But it is just this characteristic of simplicity in the laws of nature hitherto discovered which it would be fallacious to generalize, for it is obvious that simplicity has been a part cause of their discovery, and can, therefore, give no ground for the supposition that other undiscovered laws are equally simple. — Bertrand Russell

It's impossible to generalize about sexuality - even one's own. The only way to keep it pure is to keep it unspoken. Keep it out of words. Words are not where sexuality lives. Without privacy, there is no ecstasy. — Erica Jong

I don't believe in typecasting. Just because all my characters may come from the other side of the tracks doesn't mean they are all the same. You don't stereotype people and generalize people, everyone's different. — Michael K. Williams

At all ages, if [fantasy and myth] is used well by the author and meets the right reader, it has the same power: to generalize while remaining concrete, to present in palpable form not concepts or even experiences but whole classes of experience, and to throw off irrelevancies. Bat at its best it can do more; it can give us experiences we have never had and thus, instead of 'commenting on life,' can add to it. — C.S. Lewis

Once you abstract from this, once you generalize and postulate Universals, you have departed from the creative reality, and entered the realm of static fixity, mechanism, materialism. — D.H. Lawrence

It's hard for me to generalize about kids and divorce. I think every family's experience is different; some kids are devastated by it, others relieved, and so forth, no matter what generation they're from. — Kate Christensen

To think is to forget a difference, to generalize, to abstract. — Guy Deutscher

I hate to generalize because there are always so many exceptions to any rule. — Gish Jen

It is difficult to generalize about Islam. To begin with, the word itself is commonly used with two related but distinct meanings, as the equivalents both of Christianity, and Christendom. In the one sense, it denotes a religion, as system of beliefs and worship; in the other, the civilization that grew up and flourished under the aegis of that religion. The word Islam thus denotes more than fourteen centuries of history, a billion and a third people, and a religious and cultural tradition of enormous diversity. — Bernard Lewis

The only reason we write - well, the only reason why I write; maybe I shouldn't generalize - is so that I can find out something about myself. Writers have this narcissistic obsession about how we got to be who we are. I have to understand my ancestors - my father, his mother and her mother - to understand who I am. It all leads back to the narcissistic pleasure of discovering yourself. — Sandra Cisneros

I wouldn't want to generalize, but we still do live in a society that's sexist and racist and addicted to class and has the ridiculous idea that if you have money you're smarter, which Donald Trump by himself should be able to disprove. — Gloria Steinem

We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and contagious. — Eric Hoffer

It came to me, as we sat there, glumly ordering lunch, that for extremely stupid people anti-Semitism was a form of intellectuality, the sole form of intellectuality of which they were capable. It represented, in a rudimentary way, the ability to make categories, to generalize. — Mary McCarthy

I do not see any essential difference between abstract and primitive art. Both are simple and sincere. Naturally, we should not generalize in these matters: It is the individual artist that counts. — Vladimir Nabokov

An observation that people who live permanently in an adoptive country tend to progressively generalize the bad and particularize the good, that is, attribute the bad traits in people they encounter to the national trait of the natives, and the good things to the individual.
This holds equally well for French people living in the U.S. as it does for Americans living in France. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Generally speaking, I try not to generalize. — Addison C. Arthur

If I sound as if I'm always predicting ominous things, it's because I'm a pragmatist. I use deductive reasoning to generalize, and I suppose this sometimes ends up sounding like unlucky prophecies. You know why? Because reality's just the accumulation of ominous prophecies come to life. You have to only open a newspaper on any given day and weigh the good news versus the bad, and you'll see what I mean. — Haruki Murakami

Every man is different. You can't generalize with men; you have to find out what your man wants. You have to listen to him when he's telling you what he wants, because a lot of times they're telling you, but you're not listening. — Karrine Steffans

I think there's a tendency for actors like myself, and I don't mean to generalize myself, but I've played 'men's men,' if you will, characters that are simmering rage and calculated. There's a trend not to play anything that is opposed to that. — Idris Elba

Our credulity is a part of the imperfection of our natures. It is inherent in us to desire to generalize, when we ought, on the contrary, to guard ourselves very carefully from this
tendency. — Napoleon Bonaparte

Part of language design is perturbing the proposed feature in various directions to see how it might generalize in the future. — Larry Wall

So when you do your family tree and Margaret Cho does hers, and ... Wanda Sykes and John Legend ... we're adding to the database that scholars can then draw from to generalize about the complexity of the American experience. And that's the contribution that family trees make to broader scholarship. — Henry Louis Gates

Avoid context and specifics; generalize and keep repeating the generalization. — Jack Schwartz

Theory of mind postulates that, even though these cannot be directly observed, we readily impute mental states to others (and also to ourselves, since the bedrock proposal is that we understand our own mental states well enough to generalize from them). And so we constantly infer someone else's intentions, thoughts, knowledge, lack of knowledge, doubts, desires, beliefs, guesses, promises, preferences, purposes, and many, many more things in order to behave as social creatures in the world. — Karen Joy Fowler

At the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre, Sanford Meisner said, 'When you go into the professional world, at a stock theatre somewhere, backstage, you will meet an older actor, someone who has been around awhile. He will tell you tales and anecdotes, about life in the theatre. He will speak to you about your performance and the performances of others, and he will generalize to you, based on his experience and his intuitions, about the laws of the stage. Ignore this man!' — David Mamet

To generalize is to be an idiot. — William Blake

How do you generalize? War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead. The truths are contradictory. — Tim O'Brien

You can go back and try to generalize, but then you end up saying things that all editors say about everything that ever gets published. Something about voice, about urgency, about actually having a story to tell. — Lorin Stein

Why, I wondered, do people who at one time or another have all been young themselves, who ought therefore to know better, generalize so suavely and so mendaciously about the golden hours of youth? That period of life when every sorrow seems permanent and every setback insuperable. — Vera Brittain

Perhaps it will be simplest to throw away the tags and generalize India with one all-comprehensive name, as the Land of Wonders. — Mark Twain

Doing as many makeovers as I do, I've learned a few things about what makes women feel better about themselves. The starting point is usually getting a new haircut. I don't want to generalize, because every case is different, but I think it's best to err on the side of styling your hair shorter the older you get. In my opinion, it's generally not a good look for women over thirty to have hair way below their shoulders. — Tim Gunn

I don't want to over generalize, but I believe that women are typically drawn to leadership styles that focus on consensus building, effective listening and working in teams. That's certainly been my leadership style, and I think it's been very successful. — Margaret Hamburg

Another characteristic of mathematical thought is that it can have no success where it cannot generalize. — Charles Sanders Peirce

Be careful of people who generalize to lure large crowds for ANY reason ... — Garrett McCoy

If the United States has to accept the U.N. resolutions, we have to generalize it across the board. We can't just pick and choose where we impose and accept the U.N. resolution and don't accept them. U.N. Resolution 242 is very clear and states very clearly that Israel has to go back to the borders of the pre-war of 1967. — Al-Waleed Bin Talal

Human beings ... are far too prone to generalize from one instance. The technical word for this, interestingly enough, is superstition. — Francis Crick

There is some blogging jerk out there who feels he can generalize his way to validity. — Neil Young

If you don't generalize you don't philosophize. — Robert M. Pirsig

If all issues are personalized, we lose our capacity to entertain ideas, to generalize from our own or someone else's experiences, to think abstractly. We substitute sentimentality for thought. — Wendy Kaminer

Jorge Luis Borges understood this. In a fantasy short story published in 1942, "Funes the Memorious," he described a man, Ireneo Funes, who found after an accident that he could remember absolutely everything. He could reconstruct every day in the smallest detail, and he could even later reconstruct the reconstruction, but he was incapable of understanding. Borges wrote, "To think is to forget details, generalize, make abstractions. In the teeming world of Funes there were only details. — Stephen M. Stigler

You perceive I generalize with intrepidity from single instances. It is the tourist's custom. — Mark Twain

I realize that I'm generalizing here, but as is often the case when I generalize, I don't care. — Dave Barry

And this is what has taken place. The delusion of the day is to enrich all classes at the expense of each other; it is to generalize plunder under pretense of organizing it. — Frederic Bastiat

I would hate for people to generalize about every Haitian from something that one Haitian did, or a group of Haitians did. — Edwidge Danticat

Most people generalize whatever they did, and say that was the strategy that made it work. — Ben Silbermann

I don't like to generalize, but if you see a guy with his shirt tucked into his shorts, he's probably killed three or four children. — Dana Gould

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

I definitely don't generalize and put everybody in the same cup of water. — Cole Hauser

Women have been the most intelligent, peaceful and positive influences in my life, I don't want to generalize too much, but definitely in my experience, I've found the whole macho world of male aggression and insecurity to be a lot more difficult to exist in. — Zayn Malik

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

the availability heuristic. We draw on what is readily available as truth and generalize this information as knowledge. — Deborah L. Plummer

I hate to generalize, but in general, both men and women suffer from ageism. Men much less because men gain power as they get older. Women lose power as they get older. Men are seen as gaining experience and being distinguished. Sons look forward to replacing their fathers. — Gloria Steinem

I've changed over my writing life. If I can generalize, I would say that the more recent poems - believe it or not - are more pointedly political; although, if the earlier poems were more existential, they were still political; though, in their own way, had a complicated presence. — Gerald Stern

We prefer to imagine brutal wars and atrocities as events that "just happen" every now and then, much like tornadoes or lightning strikes; this metaphor suggests that we can't generalize from them, since they are radically discontinuous with ordinary life. But wars and atrocities do not "just happen": societies and individuals slide into them, little by little, one tiny decision or omission at a time. (p214) — Rosa Brooks

The theme of the diary is always the personal, but it does not mean only a personal story: it means a personal relationship to all things and people. The personal, if it is deep enough, becomes universal, mythical, symbolic; I never generalize, intellectualise. I see, I hear, I feel. These are my primitive elements of discovery.
Music, dance, poetry and painting are the channels for emotion. It is through them that experience penetrates our bloodstream. — Anais Nin

My art tends toward the literary. My pictures tend toward the outskirts of painting: But why generalize? It is possible to realize one thing or another, according to the impressions gained from one point of view or another. But it is too difficult to make a general rule. — James Ensor