Relative Quotes

Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage. (Ray Bradbury)
To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt. View quote
Mikhail Bakunin
We never really perceive what color really is, as it physically is. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art. View quote
Josef Albers
Of course, relative citation frequencies are no measure of relative importance. Who has not aspired to write a paper so fundamental that very soon it is known to everyone and cited by no one? View quote
Abraham Pais
To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure. View quote
Honoré de Balzac
Freedom, like everything else, is relative. View quote
Margaret Atwood
Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative. View quote
William S. Burroughs
I have presented the periodic table as a kind of travel guide to an imaginary country, of which the elements are the various regions. This kingdom has a geography: the elements lie in particular juxtaposition to one another, and they are used to produce goods, much as a prairie produces wheat and a lake produces fish. It also has a history. Indeed, it has three kinds of history: the elements were discovered much as the lands of the world were discovered; the kingdom was mapped, just as the world was mapped, and the relative positions of the elements came to take on a great significance; and the elements have their own cosmic history, which can be traced back to the stars. View quote
Peter Atkins
Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself. View quote
T. S. Eliot
Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger. View quote
Franklin P. Jones
Beauty is composed of an eternal, invariable element whose quantity is extremely difficult to determine, and a relative element which might be, either by turns or all at once, period, fashion, moral, passion. (Jean-Luc Godard)
It is a well-documented fact that guys will not ask for directions. This is a biological thing. This is why it takes several million sperm cells... to locate a female egg, despite the fact that the egg is, relative to them, the size of Wisconsin. View quote
Dave Barry
Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it. View quote
Aristotle
Personally, I don't like the term 'success.' It's too arbitrary and too relative a thing. It's usually someone else's definition, not yours. View quote
Ichiro Suzuki
When you look at where the Democratic field is going relative to foreign policy, they are increasingly moving away from a policy of pre-emptive self-defense that the president has adopted since September 11. View quote
Ed Gillespie
In this play we're dealing with relative truths - who's lying, who's telling the truth. But underneath that, Ed and I have hit this deeper level of intimacy between old friends that comes out in the play. View quote
Fred Ward
We who are interested in relative truth have to keep digging for it and not let ourselves be sucked under. View quote
Holly Near
Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves. View quote
Russell Banks
Why could not advantage be taken of a time of relative calm and quiet to investigate and try to solve a question of such immense and worldwide importance, both from the humane and Christian stand-point? View quote
Henry Dunant
Attempts have been made from a study of the changes produced by mutation to obtain the relative order of the bases within various triplets, but my own view is that these are premature until there is more extensive and more reliable data on the composition of the triplets. View quote
Francis Crick
It appears, from all that precedes, reasonably certain that if there be any relative motion between the earth and the luminiferous ether, it must be small; quite small enough entirely to refute Fresnel's explanation of aberration. (Albert Abraham Michelson)
In my world, everything is possible and everything is relative. View quote
Paulo Coelho
It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes. View quote
Henry David Thoreau
Human thought by its nature is capable of giving, and does give, absolute truth, which is compounded of a sum-total of relative truths. View quote
Vladimir Lenin
Our vulnerability [ to ressentiment], is unavoidable (and probably incurable) in a kind of society in which relative equality of political and other rights and formally acknowledged social equality go hand in hand with enormous differences in genuine power, possessions and education; a society in which everyone "has the right” to consider himself equal to everybody else, while in fact being unequal to them. View quote
Zygmunt Bauman