disadvantages Quotes

“Prince Jones had made it through and still they had taken him.”

“We have a definition in our heads of what an advantage is - and the definition isn’t right. [...] It means that we misread battles between underdogs and giants. It means that we underestimate how much freedom there can be in what looks like a disadvantage. It’s the Little Pond that maximizes your chances to do whatever you want.”

“Underdogs win all the time. Why, then, are we shocked every time a David beats a Goliath? Why do we automatically assume that someone who is smaller or poorer or less skilled is necessarily at a disadvantage?”

“The lesson of the Impressionists is that there are times and places where it is better to be a Big Fish in a Little Pond that a Little Fish in a Big Pond, where the apparent disadvantage of being an outsider in a marginal world turns out not to be a disadvantage at all.”

“There is a set of advantages that have to do with material resources, and there is a set that have to do with the absence of material resources - and the reason underdogs win as often as they do is that the latter is sometimes every bit the equal of the former.”

“Being on the outside, in a less elite and less privileged environment, can give you more freedom to pursue your own ideas and academic interests.”

“So many black families spend all of their time trying to fix the problems of the past. That is the curse of being black and poor, and it is a curse that follows you from generation to generation. My mother calls it ‘the black tax.’ Because the generations who came before you have been pillaged, rather than being free to use your skills and education to move forward, you lose everything just trying to bring everyone behind you back up to zero.”

“The danger of embracing the notion of paradoxical resiliency too readily is that it overlooks the suffering of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged.”

“All that extra information isn’t actually an advantage at all; that, in fact, you need to know very little to find the underlying signature of a complex phenomenon.”

“Nonsense! Laura, I’ve told you never, never to use that word. Why, you’re not crippled, you just have a little defect - hardly noticeable, even! When people have some slight disadvantage like that, they cultivate other things to make up for it - develop charm - and vivacity and - charm! That’s all you have to do!”

“‘Sometimes it’s an advantage to be disadvantaged,’ said Harry.”

“Keepin’ you at a disadvantage, is a advantage I intend to keep.”

“It’s like I’m trying to climb a mountain, but I’ve got one fool trying to shove me down so I won’t be on his level, and another fool tugging at my leg, trying to pull me to the ground he refuses to leave.”

“There are no secret economies that nourish the poor; on the contrary, there are a host of special costs.”

″‘But you begin to realize now,’ said the Invisible Man, ‘the full disadvantage of my condition. I had no shelter, no covering. To get clothing was to forgo all my advantage, to make of myself a strange and terrible thing. I was fasting; for to eat, to fill myself with unassimilated matter, would be to become grotesquely visible again.‘”