arcgis desktop - Select distinct values from a single column of an attribute table (or layer)

Is there a way to select distinct values from a column in ArcMap? I have the data in both GDB and SHP formats. I have searched for ways to select using SQL, QueryLayers, ModelBuilder and individual toolboxes and it appears as all selection options always SELECT * FROM tableName WHERE ...

In SQL I would write SELECT DISTINCT columnName FROM tableName.

Answer

Or you can run the ArcToolBox tool Frequency (Analysis Tools>>Statistics>>Frequency) which will output a table with unique values and a count of how many time they appear.

Or you could write python script that gets a SearchCursor on a field then build a list of all values of the form

if value not in myList:
    myList.append(value)