One of the great tragedies of life, it seems to me, is when a person classifies himself as someone who has no talents or gifts. When, in disgust or discouragement, we allow ourselves to reach depressive levels of despair because of our demeaning self-appraisal, it is a sad day for us and a sad day in the eyes of God. For us to conclude that we have no gifts when we judge ourselves by stature, intelligence, grade-point average, wealth, power, position, or external appearance is not only unfair but unreasonable.
- Marvin J. Ashton
topic: Eye, Self, Average, Appraisal, External Appearance
Let us take a patriot, where we can meet him; and, that we may not flatter ourselves by false appearances, distinguish those marks which are certain, from those which may deceive; for a man may have the external appearance of a patriot, without the constituent qualities; as false coins have often lustre, though they want weight.
- Samuel Johnson
source: Samuel Johnson (1810). “The works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An essay on his life and genius”, p.143
topic: Men, Quality, Coins, False Appearances, External Appearance
Our time has produced a need for contrast. This has been achieved not only in the external appearance of plastic expressions of coulor and matter, but also, and chiefly, in the tempo of life and in the techniques related to the daily, mechanical functions of life; namely standing, walking, driving, to lying and sitting - in short, every action which determines the content of architecture.
- Theo van Doesburg
source: "Painting and plastic art". De Stijl, series XIII, 73-4, pp. 17 - 18, 1926.
topic: Lying, Expression, Needs, External Appearance
Emancipation can only come from within; it cannot be dictated by someone else. A law banning the wearing of headscarves changes nothing, except perhaps external appearance. Naturally, Islamic feminism must also include the right to education, to work and the freedom to select one's own husband.
- Tariq Ramadan
source: "'They Live in a Bleak, Devastated Universe'". Spiegel Interview, www.spiegel.de. November 14, 2005. 
topic: Husband, Islamic, Law, External Appearance, Headscarves
We are inescapably the result of a long heritage of learning, adaptation, mutation and evolution, the product of a history which predates our birth as a biological species and stretches back over many thousand millennia... Going further back, we share a common ancestry with our fellow primates; and going still further back, we share a common ancestry with all other living creatures and plants down to the simplest microbe. The further back we go, the greater the difference from external appearances and behavior patterns which we observe today.
- Fred Hoyle
source: "Lifecloud: The Origin of Life in the Universe". Book by Chandra Wickramasinghe and Fred Hoyle (p. 15), 1978.
topic: Differences, Long, Heritage, External Appearance, Primates
