"No thought could be further from his mind than the feasibility of 'unmasking' Homer to discover, for example, hidden narratives of oppression. For another thing—one not unrelated to the first—his literary perspective is utterly contrary to the currently faddish idea of curricular 'representation,' that is, that one's own personal 'lived experience' has to be represented in the literature assigned in academic work, which is to say, literature by demographics and tribal identity. Melanchthon would instead have us focus on what is common in our human experience and on how literature can help to shape our minds and habits in accordance with virtuous means and ends in our common life." Eric Hutchinson   "Feelings happen when emotions bubble to the surface so that we become aware of them. When we are conscious of our emotions, we are able to express them in words and make others aware of them: they see emotions in our face, but they get the feelings from our mouth. We say we are 'happy' and people believe us, unless of course they can see for themselves that we're not." Frans de Waal   "Hume only used the word 'bundle' to describe the self once, but the word stuck and many now use the term 'bundle theories' to describe a family of positions similar to Hume's. One reason it stuck is that a 'bundle' sounds chaotic and disorganized and so it conveys a sense of the idea's implausibility that critics exploited. The same could be said of Hume's phrase 'nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions,' but 'bundle' is pithier. One of Hume's contemporaries, Thomas Reid, critically attributed to him the view that 'what we call the mind, is only a bundle of thoughts, passions and emotions, without any subject.' The key word here is 'only.' For many, it just seems incredible that we can be nothing more than a mere bundle of perceptions. But there is nothing 'mere' about it. The universe is no less incredible because it is 'only' a vast collection of atoms. Indeed, perhaps it is more so. Nor are we any less remarkable because we are made up of our thoughts, feelings, memories, desires, and sensations." Julian Baggini   "A new fad in literary criticism offers the possibility of saying something new without the need for original thought. And so we get feminist readings of Shakespeare, psychological readings, sociological readings, and so on. But even by the standards of those particular fads, Derrida's 'deconstruction' offered extraordinary new opportunities. The infinite play of meaning meant that a great classic could hint at all kinds of things that had never been seen in it before. A favorite tactic was to make a text say the opposite of what it seemed to say on the surface. By loosening critical commentary from the constraints of what the author actually said, academic critics who lacked originality could seem to achieve some semblance of it. This is surely why Derrida became at this time the most influential figure in literary studies in the English-speaking world." John Martin Ellis   "To be sure, we no longer believe here that nature has divided the human race, like horses, into three or four categories, and that one of these categories is also doomed to work much and eat little. We have been told so much about the benefits of business and trade that a nobleman is now beginning to look upon a banker and a merchant, as long as they are very rich, almost as his equals." Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat   "Postmodernists have achieved the ability to write about their thoughts in a uniquely impenetrable manner. Their neo-baroque prose style with its inner clauses, bracketed syllables, metaphors and metonyms, verbal pirouettes, curlicues and figures is not a mere epiphenomenon; rather, it is a mocking rejoinder to anyone who would try to write simple intelligible sentences in the modernist tradition." Marvin Harris   "In Britain, all over Europe, all over Asia, all over the known world, people were being governed by kings who were supposed to have been placed on the throne by God; there were nobles, aristocrats; there were the clergy with special rights, in every part of the known globe. In the United States itself there was a solid mass of people who did not believe that even in the United States all men were created equal. Yet Jefferson had the nerve to begin the famous document by saying that this was a truth that he held to be self-evident, i.e. everybody could see it. At the time there were very few people who accepted it. To this day there are vast numbers of people who don't believe it." Cyril Lionel Robert James   "It is truly astonishing to see how every sin that Hitler ascribed to 'the Jew' became part of his own policies as he himself outlined them in his second book and later implemented them: the destruction of entire nations by the elimination of their elites, their mass deportation, and in the case of the Jews, their outright genocide. And it is just as mind-boggling to note that the endless depravity attributed by Hitler to the Jews became the reality of German conduct under his rule, which deprived the Reich of every remnant of moral constraint and finally drove it into an insane storm of self-destruction. What Hitler said would be done to Germany, he did unto others; and he and his people became victims of the nemesis that he prophesied for his enemies." Omer Bartov   "What reasonable social and political order could conceivably be built and maintained where authority was questioned before it was obeyed, where social differences were considered to be incidental rather than essential to community order, and where superiority, suspect in principle, was not allowed to concentrate in the hands of a few but was scattered broadly through the populace? No one could clearly say. But some, caught up in a vision of the future in which the peculiarities of American life became the marks of a chosen people, found in the defiance of traditional order the firmest of all grounds for their hope for a freer life. The details of this new world were not as yet clearly depicted; but faith ran high that a better world than any that had ever been known could be built where authority was distrusted and held in constant scrutiny; where the status of men flowed from their achievements and from their personal qualities, not from distinctions ascribed to them at birth; and where the use of power over the lives of men was jealously guarded and severely restricted." Bernard Bailyn   "When an investment is made, whether to build a railroad or to open a new restaurant, the first money is spent hiring people to do the work. Without that, nothing happens. Even when one person decides to operate a store or hamburger stand without employees, that person must first pay somebody to deliver the goods that are going to be sold. Money goes out first to pay expenses and then comes back as profits later—if at all." Thomas Sowell   "If you meet with mental health advocates they will claim the mentally ill are no more violent than others. Criminal justice folks will tell you that's simply not true for the untreated seriously ill. If people with untreated serious mental illness really are no more violent than others then the mental health community should explain why psychiatric units are locked and liver units are not. Why psych nurses wear panic buttons and those in heart units do not. Why do mental health outreach workers go out in pairs for their own safety?" Don Jaffe   "We only perceive a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum. As primates, we heavily invest in our vision and sense of touch, a little less in our hearing, and not much in our sense of smell. Even the information from the outside world that reaches us through our eyes and hands is limited and fragmentary, however so much so that our brain actively filters, organizes, and analyzes it internally. The resulting interpretation is also partial and fallacious because it is in turn conditioned by past experience as well as by evolution in ecological niches that no longer exist. The result is endless numbers of optical illusions and errors in perception. We have materially limited sensations. So it is inevitable that we have unconscious and often misleading prejudices. We see the world through our own little slit window, just as all animals see it in their own way." Telmo Pievani   "Adam Smith thought imitation reflected your understanding of another person's experience—your body shows what you think another person feels. In fact, the reverse is also true: you feel what your body shows. When you see a pained expression on a friend's face, your face may also contort into a pained expression, thereby making you feel a touch of pain yourself. Sit up straight and you'll feel more proud of your accomplishments. Smile and you will feel happier. Even furrowing your brow, as if you are thinking harder, can lead you to actually think harder. This link from imitating another person's actions to experiencing the other person's emotions is a critical link for understanding the minds of others. If a researcher disables your ability to imitate another's facial expression, such as by asking you to hold a pen pursed between your lips or by injecting your face with Botox, your ability to understand what another person is feeling drops significantly. Botox dulls your social senses right along with your wrinkles." Nicholas Epley   "On Independence Day, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave an angry, eloquent address that asked, 'What to the slave is the Fourth of July?' Every account quotes the fugitive-turned-abolitionist speaking truth to white power: 'Your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery.' But fewer commentators note that when, at the end of his speech, Douglass predicted slavery's demise, he drew his 'encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions,' as well as from a spirit of enlightenment that he believed was growing on both sides of the Atlantic. After emancipation, Douglass never stopped condemning the hypocrisy of white Americans—or continuing to base his hopes for equality on traditions he and they held in common." Michael Kazin   "In March 1844, an English traveler in Morocco presented himself to the governor of Magador. James Richardson announced that he was the agent of a 'Society' for promoting 'the Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade in Every Part of the World.' His mission was to petition the Emperor of Morocco to join all men in all parts of the world in abolishing a traffic 'contrary to the rights of Men and the Laws of God.' The governor replied that Richardson’s mission was 'against our religion; I cannot entertain it, think of it or interfere with it in any way whatever.' The purchase and sale of slaves was authorized by the Prophet himself. If the governor were even to accept the petition, he told Richardson, the Sultan, he claimed, would order the governor's 'toungue to be cut from my mouth.' Moreover, recorded the Englishman, were the Moroccan Emperor to agree with the Society and abolish the traffic in slavery throughout his dominions, all the people would rise in revolt against him and the Emperor would be the first to have his head cut off. The governor, he concluded, 'politely declined to receive the petition.'" Seymour Drescher   "Man, being the strongest of all animals, differs from the rest; he was obliged to be his own domesticator; he had to tame himself. And the way in which it happened was that the most obedient, the tamest tribes are, at the first stage in the real struggle of life, the strongest and the conquerors. All are very wild then; the animal vigour, the savage virtue of the race has died out in none, and all have enough of it. But what makes one tribe—one incipient tribe, one bit of a tribe—to differ from another is their relative faculty of coherence. The slightest symptom of legal development, the least indication of a military bond, is then enough to turn the scale. The compact tribes win, and the compact tribes are the tamest. Civilization begins, because the beginning of civilization is a military advantage." Walter Bagehot   "Adaptation is, in part, just a property of neurons: Nerve cells respond vigorously to new stimuli, but gradually they 'habituate,' firing less to stimuli that they have become used to. It is change that contains vital information, not steady states. Human beings, however, take adaptation to cognitive extremes. We don't just habituate, we recalibrate. We create for ourselves a world of targets, and each time we hit one we replace it with another. After a string of successes we aim higher; after a massive setback, such as a broken neck, we aim lower. Instead of following Buddhist and Stoic advice to surrender attachments and let events happen, we surround ourselves with goals, hopes, and expectations, and then feel pleasure and pain in relation to our progress." Jonathan Haidt   "A neuron is simply a specialized cell, just like other cells in your body, but with some specializations that allow it to grow processes and propagate electrical signals. Like an ant, an individual brain cell just runs its local program its whole life, carrying electrical signals along its membrane, spitting out neurotransmitters when the time comes for it, and being spat upon by the neurotransmission of other cells. That's it. It lives in darkness. Each neuron spends its life embedded in a network of other cells, simply responding to signals. It doesn't know if it's involved in moving your eyes to read Shakespeare, or moving your hands to play Beethoven. It doesn't know about you. Although your goals, intentions, and abilities are completely dependent on the existence of these little neurons, they live on a smaller scale, with no awareness of the thing they have come together to build." David Eagleman   "I sat at the foot of an old oak, among whose branches the nightingale had just begun its vespers. 'Poor fool,' I said to myself, 'is it to guide the bullet to your breast or the child to your brood that you sing so loud and clear? Silence that untimely tune, perch yourself on your nest; tomorrow, perhaps, it will be empty.' But why address myself to you alone? All creation is equally mad. Behold those flies playing above the brook; the swallows and fish diminish their number every minute. These will become, in their turn, the prey of some tyrant of the air or water; and man for his amusement or his needs will kill their murderers. Nature is an inexplicable problem; it exists on a principle of destruction. Every being must be the tireless instrument of death to others, or itself must cease to live, yet nonetheless we celebrate the day of our birth, and we praise God for having entered such a world." Emily Brontë   "The greater part of mankind are naturally apt to be affirmative and dogmatical in their opinions; and while they see objects only on one side, and have no idea of any counterpoising argument, they throw themselves precipitately into the principles to which they are inclined; nor have they any indulgence for those who entertain opposite sentiments." David Hume