Quotes with leveling

I grew up in libraries, and I hope I've learned never to take them for granted. A thriving library is the heart of its community, providing access to information and educational opportunities, bringing people together, leveling the playing field, and archiving our history.

All space is relative. There is no such thing as size. The telescope and the microscope have produced a deadly leveling of great and small, far and near. The only little thing is sin, the only great thing is fear!("The Jelly-Fish")

Graceful aging starts by leveling the playing field between emotional landmines and physical grievances.

It isn't fair how I doubt him, and I wonder if he'll ever gather that my loss of faith extends further than I'd ever known it would, severing lines of trust and leveling my confidence like a city-flattening tornado.

But dying is no easy trick. And suicide can't be put on a list of Things To Do in between cleaning the grill pan and leveling the sofa leg with a brick. It is the decision not to do, to un-do; a kiss blown at oblivion. No matter what anyone says, suicide takes guts. It is for heroes and martyrs, truly vainglorious men.

The differences between religions are reflected very clearly in the different forms of sacred art: compared with Gothic art, above all in its “flamboyant” style, Islamic art is contemplative rather than volitive: it is “intellectual” and not “dramatic”, and it opposes the cold beauty of geometrical design to the mystical heroism of cathedrals. Islam is the perspective of “omnipresence” (“God is everywhere”), which coincides with that of “simultaneity” (“Truth has always been”); it aims at avoiding any “particularization” or “condensation”, any “unique fact” in time and space, although as a religion it necessarily includes an aspect of “unique fact”, without which it would be ineffective or even absurd. In other words Islam aims at what is “everywhere center”, and this is why, symbolically speaking, it replaces the cross with the cube or the woven fabric: it “decentralizes” and “universalizes” to the greatest possible extent, in the realm of art as in that of doctrine; it is opposed to any individualist mode and hence to any “personalist” mysticism. To express ourselves in geometrical terms, we could say that a point which seeks to be unique, and which thus becomes an absolute center, appears to Islam—in art as in theology—as a usurpation of the divine absoluteness and therefore as an “association” (shirk); there is only one single center, God, whence the prohibition against “centralizing” images, especially statues; even the Prophet, the human center of the tradition, has no right to a “Christic uniqueness” and is “decentralized” by the series of other Prophets; the same is true of Islam—or the Koran—which is similarly integrated in a universal “fabric” and a cosmic “rhythm”, having been preceded by other religions—or other “Books”—which it merely restores. The Kaaba, center of the Muslim world, becomes space as soon as one is inside the building: the ritual direction of prayer is then projected toward the four cardinal points.If Christianity is like a central fire, Islam on the contrary resembles a blanket of snow, at once unifying and leveling and having its center everywhere.

Stalin was the most audible and powerful spokesman in the campaign against what he contemptuously called uravnilovka (leveling). His hostility - voiced in sarcastic and dismissive terms - was so deep and so clearly enunciated that it rapidly became state policy and social doctrine. He believed in productive results, not through spontaneity or persuasion, but through force, hierarchy, reward, punishment, and above all differential wages. He applied this view to the whole of society. Stalin's anti-egalitarianism was not born of the five-year plan era. He was offended by the very notion and used contemptuous terms such as "fashionable leftists", "blockheads", "petty bourgeois nonsense" and "silly chatter," thus reducing the discussion to a sweeping dismissal of childish, unrealistic, and unserious promoters of equality. The toughness of the delivery evoked laughter of approval from his audience.

She was prepared for him to shut her down, when Behr shrugged a shoulder and said, “Yeah, sounds good. I think it’s a good idea for you to get out of the house. But,” he said, stepping back into the kitchen and leveling her with a hard look, “only if I tag along.” “What? Why?” Cheyenne questioned, not understanding the need for chaperones. “Because it’s safer that way,” he reasoned. “I have a couple things to take care of first, so it will probably be a day or two. I expect you to wait for me, though, Cheyenne,” he said, his brilliant blue eyes holding her in place. “It’s safer that way.”She was preparing to argue when she realized that she wasn’t altogether sure she wanted to venture out on her own yet anyway. It might be a shock to her system after locking herself away for so long. For laughs, she decided to give him a hard time anyway. “But…” she started. He cut her off with an upraised hand. “No buts,” he said sternly. “It’s not safe and you know it, and besides, that’s what you have two strapping young men like us for.” He clapped a grinning Dehstroy on the back. Cheyenne threw her head back and laughed. “You, young? Ha!”“What?” Behr said, acting offended. “I’m young.”“Prove it,” Cheyenne challenged. “Show me your birth certificate.” When he pursed his lips, she laughed some more. “What’s wrong? Didn’t they make birth certificates yet when you were born? No?” She looked between the men, taking in their sheepish expressions. “Well, then. I’ll leave you two to work on clearing that schedule.” Waving, Cheyenne left the kitchen and headed upstairs to her room to lie down.