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Generality is, indeed, an indispensable ingredient of reality; for mere individual existence or actuality without any regularity whatever is a nullity. Chaos is pure nothing. -- Charles Sanders Peirce
For parlor use, the vague generality is a life saver. -- George Ade
As soon as there is language, generality has entered the scene. -- Jacques Derrida
The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality. -- David Hilbert
The generality of virtuous women are like hidden treasures, they are safe only because nobody has sought after them. -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Look, some people talk about their personal lives a lot; I try not to, unless it's more of a generality. -- Kate Bosworth
I am only conscious of any satisfaction in Scientific Reading or thinking when it rounds off into a poetical generality and vagueness. -- Wilfred Owen
Because all of biology is connected, one can often make a breakthrough with an organism that exaggerates a particular phenomenon, and later explore the generality. -- Thomas Cech
The generality have considered that disease is but a confused and disordered effort in Nature, thrown down from her proper state, and defending herself in vain. -- Thomas Sydenham
Since the generality of persons act from impulse, much more than from principle, men are neither so good nor so bad as we are apt to think them. -- Augustus Hare
Mathematics as an expression of the human mind reflects the active will, the contemplative reason, and the desire for aesthetic perfection. Its basic elements are logic and intuition, analysis and construction, generality and individuality. -- Richard Courant
The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness. -- Aristotle
Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle. -- Edward Witten
So the proposition that the ideal parents for any child are its biological parents is a statement with which we can all agree in the generality, but which does not apply, for one reason or another, in many particular circumstances. -- Malcolm Turnbull
Guided only by their feeling for symmetry, simplicity, and generality, and an indefinable sense of the fitness of things, creative mathematicians now, as in the past, are inspired by the art of mathematics rather than by any prospect of ultimate usefulness. -- E. T. Bell
Sometimes it occurs to me that the job of a serious cultural critic mostly consists in telling the generality of people that their opinions - on films, on books, on all manner of widgets, gadgets and even the latest electronic fidgets - simply aren't up to scratch. -- Will Self
Don't become a wandering generality. Be a meaningful specific. -- Zig Ziglar
War is a generality, so are the inevitabilities of war, including death. -- Marguerite Duras
Ambiguity lurks in generality and may thus become an instrument of severity. -- Felix Frankfurter
This idea that there is generality in the specific is of far-reaching importance. -- Douglas Hofstadter
Everything that is hard to attain is easily assailed by the generality of men. -- Ptolemy
The generality of men have, like plants, latent properties, which chance brings to light. -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
The intellect of the generality of women serves more to fortify their folly than their reason. -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Philosophy is explicitness, generality, orientation and assessment. That which one would insinuate, thereof one must speak. -- Ernest Gellner
We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation. -- Edmund Burke
I think there is a blossom about me of something more distinguished than the generality of mankind. -- James Boswell
Mathematicians themselves set up standards of generality and elegance in their exposition which are a bar to understand. -- Kenneth E. Boulding
The art of doing mathematics consists in finding that special case which contains all the germs of generality -- David Hilbert
The generality of men expend the early part of their lives in contributing to render the latter part miserable. -- Jean de la Bruyere
It is certain that the easy and obvious philosophy will always, with the generality of mankind, have preference above the accurate. -- David Hume
Euclid avoids it [the treatment of the infinite]; in modern mathematics it is systematically introduced, for only then is generality obtained. -- Arthur Cayley
To the generality of men you cannot give a stronger hint for them to impose upon you than by imposing upon yourself. -- Henry Fielding
God is basic Fact. He must not be thought of as a featureless generality. He is the most concrete thing there is. -- C. S. Lewis
It is a novel constructed like a poem, where each character is only exceptional because if the hyperbolic manner in which he represents generality. -- Victor Hugo
The generality of friends puts us out of conceit with friendship; just as the generality of religious people puts us out of conceit with religion. -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
That plenty should produce either covetousness or prodigality is a perversion of providence; and yet the generality of men are the worse for their riches. -- William Penn
Because all of biology is connected, one can often make a breakthrough with an organism that exaggerates a particular phenomenon, and later explore the generality. -- Thomas Cech
We should work toward a universal linked information system, in which generality and portability are more important than fancy graphics techniques and complex extra facilities. -- Tim Berners-Lee
Americans, [John Adams] wrote in 1780, believed that their "revolution is as much for the benefit of the generality of Mankind in Europe, as for their own." -- Gordon S. Wood
All that is alive tends toward color, individuality, specificity, effectiveness and opacity. All that is done with life inclines toward knowledge, abstraction, generality transfiguration and transparency. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
beware how you contradict prejudices, even knowing them to be such, for the generality of people are much more tenacious of their prejudices than of anything belonging to them ... -- Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
The person who did most to give to analysis the generality and symmetry which are now its pride, was also the person who made mechanics analytical; I mean Euler. -- William Whewell
I have the vagary of taking a lively interest in mathematical subjects only where I may anticipate ingenious association of ideas and results recommending themselves by elegance or generality. -- Carl Friedrich Gauss
As for methods I have sought to give them all the rigour that one requires in geometry, so as never to have recourse to the reasons drawn from the generality of algebra. -- Augustin-Louis Cauchy
It is good sense applied with diligence to what was at first a mere accident, and which by great application grew to be called, by the generality of mankind, a particular genius. -- Samuel Johnson
As for methods I have sought to give them all the rigour that one requires in geometry, so as never to have recourse to the reasons drawn from the generality of algebra." -- Augustin Louis Cauchy
Extra features were once considered desirable. We now recognize that 'free' features are rarely free. Any increase in generality that does not contribute to reliability, modularity, maintainability, and robustness should be suspected. -- Boris Beizer
The generality of men are so accustomed to judge of things by their senses that, because the air is indivisible, they ascribe but little to it, and think it but one remove from nothing. -- Robert Boyle
Heroism, or military glory, is much admired by the generality of mankind. They consider it as the most sublime kind of merit. Menof cool reflection are not so sanguine in their praises of it. -- David Hume
The opinion I have of the generality of women--who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a sugar plum than my time, forms a barrier against matrimony which I rejoice in. -- John Keats
For I am verily persuaded the generality of preachers talk of an unknown and unfelt Christ; and the reason why congregations have been so dead is, because they have had dead men preaching to them. -- Gilbert Tennent

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