The great offices, whether permanent or parliamentary, which require mind now give social prestige, and almost only those. An Under-Secretary of State with »2,000 a year is a much greater man than the director of a finance company with »5,000, and the country saves the difference.

-Bagehot,Walter
  The English Constitution, ch.4,'The House of Lords'.

Information is any difference that makes a difference.

-Bateson, Gregory
  Quoted in Scientific  American, no.41, Sep.

As a matter of fact, we both are, and the only difference between us is that I am trying to be, and you can't help it.

-Birkenhead, F(rederick) E(dwin) Smith, 1st Earl of
In response to a judge's observation that Smith was being 'extremely offensive'. Quoted in 2nd Earl of Birkenhead Frederick Edwin Earl of Birkenhead (1933), vol.1, ch.9.

La seule diffe¤  rence incontestable n'est pas celle des sexes ou des a"  ges ou des forces, mais celle des vifs et des morts. The only incontestable difference isnot that of sexorage or strength, but that of the living and the dead.

-Cixous, He¤  le'  ne
  Dedans.

There is more difference within the sexes than between them.

-Compton-Burnett, Dame Ivy
  Mother and Son, ch.10.

Dost thou not know that love respects no blood, Cares not for difference of birth or state?

-Dekker,Thomas
  The Shoemaker's Holiday, act 5, sc.5.

The biggest difference between Lillian as a grown-up and Lillian as a child was that she was taller.

-Feibleman, Peter
  On Lillian Hellman. Lily.

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and Iö I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

-Frost, Robert Lee
  'The Road Not Taken'.

The believer will fight another believer over a shade of difference: the doubter fights only with himself.

-Greene, (Henry) Graham
  Monsignor Quixote, pt.1, ch.4.

To rescue our children we will have to let them save us from the power we embody: we will have to trust the very difference that they forever personify.

-Jordan,June
  Keynote address for Child Welfare League of  America. Collected as'Old Stories: New Lives' in Moving Towards Home (1989).

Countless works in the social sciences reveal the inability of their authors to bear in mind the crucial difference between what may properly be called the logic of discovery and the logic of demonstration. The second isproperlysubjectto rules and prescriptions; the first isn't.

-Nisbet, Robert
  Sociology as an  Art Form, introduction.

Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the difference between one young woman and another.

-Shaw, George Bernard
  Undershaft about Adolphus Cusins. Major Barbara, act 3.

That's the difference between us.You talk of art Mr Goldwyn, I think of money.

-Shaw, George Bernard
To Samuel Goldwyn. Quoted in David Niven Bring on the Empty Horses (1975).

What is the difference between burning and gassing people in ovens and doing it to a whole nation out in the open?

-Sihanouk, Prince Norodom
  Of the US bombing of Cambodia. MyWar with the CIA (with W Burchett).

The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom and education

-Smith, Adam
  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations, bk.1, ch.2.

  What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public.

-Stefansson,Vilhjalmur
Discovery (published1964).

Most people are relieved to find a superior on whose judgment they can rest. That, indeed, is the difference between most people and Generals.

-Tuchman, BarbaraW(ertheim)
  Address at US ArmyWar College, Apr. Collected in Practising History (1981).

It don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway.If I had a yaller dog that didn't know nomorethana person's conscience does Iwould poison him. It takes up more room than all the rest of a person's insides, and yet ain't no good, nohow. Tom Sawyer he says the same.

-Twain, Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens
  TheAdventures of Huckleberry Finn, ch.33.

  But that's always the way; it don't make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person's conscience ain't got no sense, and just goes for him anyway.

-Twain, Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens
  Huck.TheAdventures of Huckleberry Finn, ch.33.

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. Twain The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The law's delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take, In the dead waste and middle of the night, when Churchyards yawn In customary suits of solemn black, But that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns, Breathes forth contagion on the world, And thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat i' the adage, Is sicklied o'er with care, And all the clouds that lowered o'er our housetops, With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. 'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws, But get thee to a nunneryögo! See Shakespeare 753:74.

-Twain, Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens
  Pudd'nheadWilson, ch.16. 1884  The Duke's version of Hamlet's soliloquy, combining elements of other speeches by Hamlet and pieces of Macbeth. TheAdventures of Huckleberry Finn, ch.21.