Eminent Indians (1947)
Context: We must respect our own dignity as rational beings and thus diminish the power of fraud. It is better to be free than be a slave, better to know than to be ignorant. It is reason that helps us to reject what is falsely taught and believed about God, that He is a detective officer or a capricious despot or a glorified schoolmaster. It is essential that we should subject religious beliefs to the scrutiny of reason.
“Who should know better than a cosmetician that human beings are less than rational creatures?”
tracking with closeups (4) “Masker Aid”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
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John Brunner 147
British author 1934–1995Related quotes
“Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.”
Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 274
Part III, Chapter 18, A Month with Gokhale II
1920s, An Autobiography (1927)
"Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are" (2005), p. 243
Context: In 1879, American economist Francis Walker tried to explain why members of his profession were in such "bad odor amongst real people". He blamed it on their inability to understand why human behavior fails to comply with economic theory. We do not always act the way economists think we should, mainly because we're both less selfish and less rational than economists think we are. Economists are being indoctrinated into a cardboard version of human nature, which they hold true to such a degree that their own behavior has begun to resemble it. Psychological tests have shown that economics majors are more egoistic than the average college student. Exposure in class after class to the capitalist self-interest model apparently kills off whatever prosocial tendencies these students have to begin with. They give up trusting others, and conversely others give up trusting them. Hence the bad odor.
“It is better to be a good human being than to be a bad one. It is just naturally better.”
My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)
Source: Emotional amoral egoism (2008), p.203
Remarks by President Obama at Memorial Service for Former Israeli President Shimon Peres on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, Israel. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/30/remarks-president-obama-memorial-service-former-israeli-president-shimon (30 September 2016)
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