"People are pretty much alike. It's only that our differences are more susceptible to definition than our similarities"
About this Quote
Ellerbee’s line lands with the calm authority of a newsroom veteran who’s spent years watching the same human dramas cycle through different backdrops. The first sentence is almost disarming in its plainness: “pretty much alike” refuses the dopamine hit of hot takes. Then she pivots to the real target: the way culture trains us to notice what can be labeled.
“Differences are more susceptible to definition” is the needle. Definitions are tools, but they’re also weapons and shortcuts: race, class, region, party, identity, accent, taste. The stuff that can be named can be sorted, monetized, argued over, turned into a segment, a headline, a wedge. Similarities are messier. How do you define wanting to be safe, respected, not embarrassed, not alone? Those shared motives are harder to package, which is why they tend to vanish from public conversation even when they’re doing most of the driving.
As a journalist, Ellerbee is also critiquing her own industry’s incentives. News thrives on contrast and conflict because contrast is legible. Similarity is slow; it doesn’t “break.” The subtext is a warning about over-reading difference into every disagreement and under-reading the basic human continuity underneath it.
The quote works because it doesn’t romanticize unity; it indicts classification. It suggests our problem isn’t that we’re radically alien to each other, but that our culture is better at describing what separates us than what binds us, and it rewards that habit until it feels like truth.
“Differences are more susceptible to definition” is the needle. Definitions are tools, but they’re also weapons and shortcuts: race, class, region, party, identity, accent, taste. The stuff that can be named can be sorted, monetized, argued over, turned into a segment, a headline, a wedge. Similarities are messier. How do you define wanting to be safe, respected, not embarrassed, not alone? Those shared motives are harder to package, which is why they tend to vanish from public conversation even when they’re doing most of the driving.
As a journalist, Ellerbee is also critiquing her own industry’s incentives. News thrives on contrast and conflict because contrast is legible. Similarity is slow; it doesn’t “break.” The subtext is a warning about over-reading difference into every disagreement and under-reading the basic human continuity underneath it.
The quote works because it doesn’t romanticize unity; it indicts classification. It suggests our problem isn’t that we’re radically alien to each other, but that our culture is better at describing what separates us than what binds us, and it rewards that habit until it feels like truth.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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