A characteristic of older folksongs, in most cases, is that we don't know their composers or authors. Older folksongs were written often with no commercial purpose in mind. They were passed down by word of mouth, from generation to generation.
Tom Glazer

A second characteristic of our time is the prevalence of nationalism. This is still spreading, affecting new communities, more peripheral regions and so-called backward peoples.
Emily Greene Balch

Alfred Nobel's discoveries are characteristic; powerful explosives can help men perform admirable tasks. They are also a means to terrible destruction in the hands of the great criminals who lead peoples to war.
Pierre Curie

All endeavor calls for the ability to tramp the last mile, shape the last plan, endure the last hours toil. The fight to the finish spirit is the one... characteristic we must posses if we are to face the future as finishers.
Henry David Thoreau

All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.
John Kenneth Galbraith

Ancestor worship, or filial piety so characteristic of Asian cultures, for example, does not really resonate with Americans who favor children, not grandparents.
Alan Dundes

As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

At first acoustics attributed to the different sounds only a limited number of characteristic features.
Roman Jakobson

Backward is just not a natural direction for Americans to look - historical ignorance remains a national characteristic.
Larry McMurtry

Certain characteristic properties of elements can be foretold from their atomic weights.
Dmitri Mendeleev

Decisiveness is a characteristic of high-performing men and women. Almost any decision is better than no decision at all.
Brian Tracy

Diversity in the world is a basic characteristic of human society, and also the key condition for a lively and dynamic world as we see today.
Jinato Hu

Fidelity to the subject's thought and to his characteristic way of expressing himself is the sine qua non of journalistic quotation.
Janet Malcolm

For the source of any characteristic so widespread and uniform as this adaptation to environment we must go back to the very beginning of the human race.
Ellsworth Huntington

For under certain conditions the chemical atoms emit light waves of a specific length or oscillation frequency - their familiar characteristic spectra - and these can come in the form of electromagnetic waves only from accelerated electric quanta.
Johannes Stark

Frequent and loud laughter is the characteristic of folly and ill manners.
Lord Chesterfield

I am positive that flexibility is a feminine characteristic.
Emma Bonino

I marvel at the resilience of the Jewish people. Their best characteristic is their desire to remember. No other people has such an obsession with memory.
Elie Wiesel

I seem to be thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists. However, this is not entirely a matter of joy as if someone returned from physical disability to good physical health.
John Forbes Nash, Jr.

I would like to recapture that freshness of vision which is characteristic of extreme youth when all the world is new to it.
Henri Matisse