#distinction

When distinction of any kind, even intellectual distinction, is somehow resented as a betrayal of the American spirit of equal opportunity for all, the result must be just this terror of individualistic impulses setting us apart, either above or below our neighbours; just this determination to obey without questioning and to subscribe with passion to the conventions and traditions. The dilemma becomes a very real one: How can this sense of democratic equality be made compatible with respect for exceptional personalities or great minds? How can democracy, as we understand it today, with its iron repression of the free spirit, its monotonous standardisation of everything, learn to cherish an intellectual aristocracy without which any nation runs the risk of becoming a civilisation of the commonplace and the second-rate? ↗

— Harold Edmund Stearns

#civilization #conventions #distinction #equality #individualism

Very notable was his distinction between coarseness and vulgarity, coarseness, revealing something; vulgarity, concealing something. ↗

— E. M. Forster

#concealing #distinction #his #notable #revealing

To be fair, my analysis failed to spell out Obama's first-term accomplishments, although I did acknowledge his 'enormous skills' and tried to focus readers on the distinction between good and great presidencies. ↗

— Ron Fournier

#acknowledge #although #analysis #between #did

There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so. ↗

— Lucian Freud

#being #between #distinction #does #element

The oak has long been an enduring and mighty tree. It is truly a part of our national heritage and it merits the formal distinction of America's National Tree. ↗

— Bob Goodlatte

#been #distinction #enduring #formal #heritage

That attitude does not exist so much today, but in those days there was a very sharp distinction between basic physics and applied physics. Columbia did not deal with applied physics. ↗

— Gordon Gould

#attitude #basic #between #columbia #days

When you read the psychedelic literature, there is a distinction between the so-called natural psychedelics and synthetic psychedelics that are artificially produced. ↗

— Stanislav Grof

#between #distinction #literature #natural #produced

I discovered early in my movie work that a movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it. There are times when this distinction may be given to the writer or director. Most often it belongs to the producer. ↗

— Ben Hecht

#belongs #better #connected #director #discovered

I probably hold the distinction of being one movie star who, by all laws of logic, should never have made it. At each stage of my career, I lacked the experience. ↗

— Audrey Hepburn

#career #distinction #each #experience #hold

There are good books and there are bad books, period, that's the distinction. ↗

— Norton Juster

#books #distinction #good #period