Labeling Us Quotes

“Everyone needed a reminder to simply look at things and enjoy them, without labeling them.”

— Julie Anne Long

“One of the things I love about labeling myself as an author is that I can read books and call it "researching writing styles."
Mike Mankoff”

— Mike Mankoff

“Anyone who truly cares about children must be repelled by the insistence on ranking them, rating them, and labeling them. Whatever the tests measure is not the sum and substance of any child. The tests do not measure character, spirit, heart, soul, potential. When overused and misused, when attached to high stakes, the tests stifle the very creativity and ingenuity that our society needs most. Creativity and ingenuity stubbornly resist standardization. Tests should be used sparingly to help students and teachers, not to allocate rewards and punishments and not to label children and adults by their scores.”

— Diane Ravitch

“What is the point of labeling each individual piece of fruit? Buy the fruit, EAT the ad! We've carved a chunk out of the ozone, burned up all the rainforests, soon we won't be able to BREATHE, and all because we had to label each individual piece of fruit.”

— Lucy Ellmann

“Widespread introduction of the process [of irradiating foods] has thus far been impeded, however, by a reluctance among consumers to eat things that have been exposed to radiation. According to current USDA regulations, irradiated meat must be identified with a special label and with a radura (the internationally recognized symbol of radiation). The Beef Industry Food Safety Council - whose members include the meatpacking and fast food giants - has asked the USDA to change its rules and make the labeling of irradiated meat completely voluntary. The meatpacking industry is also working hard to get rid of the word 'irradiation,; much preferring the phrase 'cold pasteurization.' ... From a purely scientific point of view, irradiation may be safe and effective. But he [a slaughterhouse engineer] is concerned about the introduction of highly complex electromagnetic and nuclear technology into slaughterhouses with a largely illiterate, non-English-speaking workforce.”

— Eric Schlosser

“Dads. It's time to show our sons how to properly treat a woman. It's time to show our daughters how a girl should expect be treated. It's time to show forgiveness and compassion. It's time to show our children empathy. It's time to break social norms and teach a healthier way of life! It's time to teach good gender roles and to ditch the unnecessary ones. Does it really matter if your son likes the color pink? Is it going to hurt anybody? Do you not see the damage it inflicts to tell a boy that there is something wrong with him because he likes a certain color? Do we not see the damage we do in labeling our girls "tom boys" or our boys "feminine" just because they have their own likes and opinions on things? Things that really don't matter?”

— Dan Pearce

“Many secular observers and spiritual practitioners alike mistake mystical chanting as a kind of anthropological curiosity or interesting musical diversion from secular mainstream entertainment, sometimes labeling it 'world' or 'folk' music. But uttering or chanting spells, mantras or prayers shouldn't be regarded as a romantic excursion to a distant past, or faraway place, or as an escape from our everyday stresses, for relaxation or entertainment. These sounds are meant to be experienced as the timeless unity of energy currents. The chanting of ancient esoteric sounds enables us to realize we are never separate from the one continuously existing omnipresent vibration of the cosmos.”

— Zeena Schreck

“Cinder hated her own mind for labeling the queen as grotesque. She had once been a victim, as Cinder had once been a victim. And how many had labeled Cinder's own metal limbs as grotesque, unnatural, disgusting? No. Levana was a monster, but it wasn't because of the face she'd kept hidden all these years. Her monstrosities were buried much deeper than that.”

— Marissa Meyer

“Feelings, emotions - they are neither right nor wrong. They cannot be assigned a value. Feelings *are*. By labeling a feeling wrong, you force yourself to ignore that feeling. And what you most need is to feel it, let it burn through you, then get on with life.”

— Karen Marie Moning

“I've always done everything at my disposal to avoid labeling what I do, or to avoid being labeled myself.”

— Boyd Rice

“When you label so much of what happens to you as 'bad,' it reinforces the feeling that you are a powerless pawn at the mercy of outside forces over which you have no control. And - this is key - labeling something a bad thing almost guarantees that you'll experience it as such.”

— Srikumar Rao

“I think people could justify labeling me if they saw a pattern in what I do, but right now that's impossible.”

— Skeet Ulrich

“Most difficult is the labeling by other people that models are empty-headed bodies. I think if you look for negativity, you can find it anywhere.”

— Boyd Holbrook

“It was like once again someone was labeling me and putting me in a box just as soon I expressed myself.”

— Matthew Quick

“You don't have to be worried about labeling me.”

— Danny Aiello

“Sometimes labeling is only useful, like with OCD. Once you're labeled you can be treated. On other occasions labeling leads to tyranny, like with childhood bipolar disorder in the U.S.”

— Jon Ronson

“I think, in a way, I invented the term 'fight club' and that these things have always existed, but they never really had a label. Nobody had a language to apply to them. I created that language in two words and I've been paid a great deal of money for inventing two words and labeling something that has always been around.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“We need to look at the totality of the things that we're labeling as violent and really examine whether we need to have some more proportionality in terms of the punishment fitting the crime that's done. The bright line that we have right now, between violent and nonviolent, does not account for shades of gray.”

— Cory Booker

“No day passes without a Democratic politician, a left-wing commentator, or, if I may be excused a redundancy, a left-wing academic labeling Republicans and conservatives racist.”

— Dennis Prager

“If I pick up a book with spaceships on the cover, I want spaceships. If I see one with dragons, I want there to be dragons inside the book. Proper labeling. Ethical labeling. I don't want to open up my cornflakes and find that they're full of pebbles ... You need to respect the reader enough not to call it something it isn't.”

— Margaret Atwood

“Prayer is looking out from a different set of eyes, which are not comparing, competing, judging, labeling or analyzing, but receiving the moment in its present wholeness and unwholeness. That is what is meant by contemplation.”

— Richard Rohr

“However when we talk about dependent arising or dependent origination in the Buddhist context, our understanding should not be limited to dependent arising only in terms of causes and conditions. Rather our understanding must embrace a broader and in some sense deeper understanding of dependence. Dependence need not necessarily be understood only in terms of causes and conditions; one can talk about dependence in relation to parts and the whole. The very concepts of parts and a whole are interconnected and interdependent. In some sense one emerges only in relationship to the other. Still there is a further and deeper understanding of dependent origination which is to understand dependent origination in terms of a designated basis and the designation that involves a labeling process. This view understands things and events in the form of mental constructs.”

— Dalai Lama XIV

“David Frankfurter's valuable, well-written study takes us to the far reaches of demonology. In documenting the harm done by labeling others evil, he poses a challenge to those of us who believe, however regretfully, in the necessity of the concept.”

— Robert Jay Lifton

“If the history of science shows us anything, it is that we get nowhere by labeling our ignorance "God".”

— Jerry A. Coyne

“I've known I was mostly gay ever since I can remember. I know it troubles many people for me to refer to myself as a lesbian considering I have a male partner. I think they gather that it trivializes the plight of the LGBTQIA community & although that couldn't be further from the truth at this point in my life I'm trying to steer as far from labeling as possible. Compartmentalizing myself only leads to condemnation & contradiction. I'm happier being fluid and I'm happier being honest.”

— Caitlin Stasey

“I really wish Hollywood would stop labeling movies, especially movies with predominantly black casts. Then, it makes others feel like, "Oh, well, that's not for me." At the end of the day, everybody understands love, loss, pain and heartbreak. That's not a color.”

— Taraji P. Henson

“It's funny, because I don't think of my films as "slow-burn." I don't even know if I was familiar with the phrase until people started labeling me with it.”

— Ti West

“This is a business meal. The calories do not count. I am mentally labeling these as 'business calories' so my body will know they were eaten in the line of duty and will process them differently.”

— Cathy Guisewite

“But even labeling a site as astronomical is an improvement, since it partially sidesteps the old stereotype of Indians being primitive and ignorant savages.”

— Vine Deloria, Jr.

“It matters not whether you win the race or not but that you cross the finish line with a smile and a bit of a laugh. Stress does not come from having too much on your plate. Stress comes from labeling too many of those things as very important. Discussing religion, no matter how in depth the discussion, should never be confused with actually practicing that religion.”

— Pat McBride

“The labeling of nociceptors as pain fibers was not an admirable simplification, but an unfortunate trivialization under the guise of simplification.”

— Patrick David Wall

“The entire EU has labeling for GMOs, and is simply saying let's let consumers know what they're buying, let's let them choose. I think it's a huge mistake by the food manufacturers of America not to be saying let's let consumers know. Let's let them know, let them decide.”

— Peter Shumlin

“Labeling and diagnosis is a catastrophic way to communicate. Telling other people what's wrong with them greatly reduces, almost to zero, the probability that we're going to get what we're after.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

“Punishment also includes judgmental labeling and the withholding of privileges.”

— Marshall B. Rosenberg

“Physicians think they are doing something for you by labeling what you have as a disease”

— Immanuel Kant

“Even labeling the tea party and left and right its dangerous, because it's - it's another ego separation tool.”

— Doreen Virtue

“Labeling a child's mind as diseased-whether with autism, intellectual disabilities, or transgenderism-may reflect the discomfort that mind gives parents more than any discomfort it causes their child. Much gets corrected that might better have been left alone.”

— Andrew Solomon

“Many people are so imprisoned in their minds that the beauty of nature does not really exist for them. They might say, 'What a pretty flower,' but that's just a mechanical mental labeling. Because they are not still, not present, they don't truly see the flower, don't feel it's essence, it's holiness-just as they don't know themselves, don't feel their own essence, their own holiness.”

— Eckhart Tolle

“What I like way better than LGBT in terms of labeling sexuality actually is a scheme that comes to me from my friend Animal Prufrock wherein one is identified not by what they supposedly "are" but rather by what they are into. Which brings us to the terms hemosexual, shemosexual, and mosexual.”

— Ani DiFranco

“Language surely does affect our thoughts, rather than just labeling them for the sake of labeling them. Most obviously, language is the conduit through which people share their thoughts and intentions and thereby acquire the knowledge, customs, and values of those around them.”

— Steven Pinker

“Make no mistake about it: the labeling of someone's language as 'sexist' involves a political judgment and implies the desirability of a particular sociological doctrine. One may be in favor of that doctrine (as I believe I am) but it is quite another matter to force writers by edicts and censorship into accepting it.”

— Neil Postman

“Approximately 82% of the American people believe labeling should take place with regard to genetically engineered ingredients. All over this country people are increasingly concerned about the quality of the food they are ingesting and the food they are giving to their kids. People want to know what is in their food, and I believe that is a very reasonable request.”

— Bernie Sanders

“Stop labeling people just because they're not like you.”

— Joyce Meyer

“I don't have to accept their tenants. I was trying to convince those college students to accept my tenants. And I reject any labeling me because I happened to go to the university.”

— George W. Bush

“It's about labeling. For me feminism is bra-burning lesbianism. It's very unglamorous. I'd like to see it rebranded. We need to see a celebration of our femininity and softness.”

— Geri Halliwell

“Comedy doesn't come easy for me. I've only done 2 movies that are really comedy-style films and I have to work at them. And they're just as scary in a way. I hate labeling all these things; comedy, love stories, dark drama, whatever.”

— Channing Tatum

“Think about the stigma that is attached to the idea that alcoholism is a disease, an incurable illness, and you have it. That's a terrible thing to inflict on someone. Labeling alcoholism as a disease, a cause unto itself, simply no longer fits with what we know today about its causes.”

— Chris Prentiss

“What I think is coming instead are much more organic ways of organizing information than our current categorization schemes allow, based on two units - the link, which can point to anything, and the tag, which is a way of attaching labels to links. The strategy of tagging - free-form labeling, without regard to categorical constraints - seems like a recipe for disaster, but as the Web has shown us, you can extract a surprising amount of value from big messy data sets.”

— Clay Shirky

“The Grocery Manufacturers Association is behind the bills which have been trying to pre-empt states' labeling laws in the Senate. And they have a lot of money and power in Washington. So it's a classic David versus Goliath story, where corporate lobbying outweighs consumers' rights.”

— Zoe Lister-Jones