Comparison quotes

I have more friends in New York than Paris.

In praise there is more obtrusiveness than in blame.

In the United States, one of the main topics of academic political science is the study of attitudes and policy and their correlation. The study of attitudes is reasonably easy in the United States: heavily-polled society, pretty serious and accurate polls, and policy you can see, and you can compare them.

The brain is wider than the sky.

Man seems to be the only animal whose food soils him, making necessary much washing and shield-like bibs and napkins. Moles living in the earth and eating slimy worms are yet as clean as seals or fishes, whose lives are one perpetual wash.

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

I have found that, in the composition of the human body as compared with the bodies of animals, the organs of sense are duller and coarser. Thus, it is composed of less ingenious instruments, and of spaces less capacious for receiving the faculties of sense.

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

In George Bush you get experience, and with me you get – The Future!

Why would anyone steal a shopping cart? It’s like stealing a two-year-old.

French fries kill more people than guns and sharks, yet nobody’s afraid of French fries.

The more you observe politics, the more you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other.

Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.

Particularly Instagram, people look like they have a much better life than they really do. People basically seem like they are way better-looking than they really are, and they are way happier-seeming than they really are.

There are not a few among the disciples of charity who require, in their vocation, scarcely less excitement than the votaries of pleasure in theirs.

There’s no difference between movies and television. None at all. Except in a lot of cases, television’s much better than movies.

I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

In the past there were people who were not rich but contented with their living style, laughing and happy all day. But when the new rich people appear, people look at them and ask, ‚why don’t I have a life like that too, a beautiful house, car and garden,‘ and they abandon their values.

The innocence of childhood is like the innocence of a lot of animals.

What an ugly beast the ape, and how like us.

I have found far greater enthusiasm for science in America than here in Britain. There is more enthusiasm for everything in America.

Colleges are like old-age homes, except for the fact that more people die in colleges.

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

I hate what I look like on TV, and I want to look better, and nothing makes the mothers more jealous.

Just as I wanted to outdo everyone when I played, I had to outdo everyone when we were out on the town.

If you’ve spent a long time developing a skill and techniques, and now some 14 year-old upstart can get exactly the same result, you might feel a bit miffed I suppose, but that has happened forever.

Earth might one day soon resemble the planet Venus.

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting.

Man never thinks himself happy, but when he enjoys those things which others want or desire.

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock and roll or Christianity.

The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.

You just want something else that someone else has, but that doesn’t mean what you have isn’t beautiful, because people always want what you have, and you always want what they have – no one is ever 100 per cent like, ‚Yes, I’m the bomb dot com – from head to toe!‘

Writing music is just like writing a book.

As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied.

You’re beautiful, like a May fly.

Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.

To some extent I liken slavery to death.

We judge people in areas where we’re vulnerable to shame, especially picking folks who are doing worse than we’re doing.

We believe that according the name ‚investors‘ to institutions that trade actively is like calling someone who repeatedly engages in one-night stands a ‚romantic.‘

I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.

During most of my freelancing, I made what I would have made in charge of the cafeteria at a pretty good junior-high school.

If I had to choose a superhero to be, I would pick Superman. He’s everything that I’m not.

I never admire another’s fortune so much that I became dissatisfied with my own.

Gospel music is never pessimistic, it’s never ‚oh my god, its all going down the tubes‘, like the blues often is.

Great and good are seldom the same man.

Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild; In Wit a man; Simplicity, a child.

I’ve done a number of Super Bowl ads. And that is the best advertising of the year. That is when people realize they’re going to be compared directly against other ads.

My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.

My life is not unlike Truman’s. I can’t go anywhere.

Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man’s, I mean.

Clothes if they are not well cut, you can kill nobody. A building poorly built can kill people. It’s a much more difficult work. I would not compare myself with that.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

Some day, following the example of the United States of America, there will be a United States of Europe.

As a Western, ‚The Magnificent Seven‘ was a pretty good film. I don’t think it was as interesting or as multi-faceted as ‚Seven Samurai.‘

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.

Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.