In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations!”(Letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886)

The propensity to excessive simplification is indeed natural to the mind of man, since it is only by abstraction and generalisation, which necessarily imply the neglect of a multitude of particulars, that he can stretch...

Ideas, of course, have a place in fiction, and any writer of fiction needs a mind. But ideas are not the best subject matter for fiction. They do not dramatize well. They are, rather, a...

I often wonder why the whole world is so prone to generalise. Generalisations are seldom if ever true and are usually utterly inaccurate.

There are always exceptions to every generalization.[A Christian Epilogue]

Chesterton had an incorrigible and persistent tendency to throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater.

What has she done to deserve such scorn?’ I said. He had the grace to look uncomfortable as he answered. ‘Not her in particular, miss,’ he said, ‘Just her sort. People like her in general,...

Causing any damage or harm to one party in order to help another party is not justice, and likewise, attacking all feminine conduct [in order to warn men away from individual women who are deceitful]...

Generalization is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularly is indispensable to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more they look less at individuals and more at...

Generalization is a natural human mental process, and many generalizations are true—in average. What often does promote evil behavior is the lazy, nasty habit of believing that generalizations have anything at all to do with...

Out of ignorance or expediency we give all snowflakes the same name.

It is one of the striking generalizations of biochemistry—which surprisingly is hardly ever mentioned in the biochemical text-books—that the twenty amino acids and the four bases, are, with minor reservations, the same throughout Nature. As...

In essence I find that the foundation of modern conservatism is driven by a clinging to God in fear of the world, whereas the foundation of modern liberalism is a clinging to the world in...

I like gross generalizations…I also like disgusting specifics!

In a general sense, I admit to valuing the worldviews of men under the age of 40 and women over the age of 30.

There is an old saying, or should be, that it is a wise economist who recognizes the scope of his own generalizations.

The thing about stereotyping is it’s usually just throwing rocks into a crowd hoping to hit somebody who deserves it.

As soon as they leave, Leon says to me: “I disagree, sir. There are people who aren’t insane, and I’m one of them. People who generalize are mentally ill.

Generally, there is a lot of truth value in stepping back, observing, then logically generalizing the extremes of what you see.

As economists like to say, the plural of “anecdote” is not “data.

People who always arrive early aren’t worth waiting for.

A specialist’s mind is a slave to his specialization.

I hope that in due time the chemists will justify their proceedings by some large generalisations deduced from the infinity of results which they have collected. For me I am left hopelessly behind and I...

[T]he choice of human groupings for cultural comparisons is not a natural or scientific choice, but a political one.

En un mot, pour tirer la loi de l’expérience, if faut généraliser; c’est une nécessité qui s’impose à l’observateur le plus circonspect.In one word, to draw the rule from experience, one must generalize; this is...

Not all ‘whites’ are racists. Not all racists are ‘white.