Quotes from book

On Human Nature

“Although the capacity to become schizophrenic may well be within all of us, there is no question that certain persons have distinctive genes predisposing them to the condition.”

“The fraction of Americans working in occupations concerned primarily with information has increased from 20 to nearly 50 percent of the work force.”

“I interpret contemporary human social behavior to comprise hypertrophic outgrowths of the simpler features of human nature joined together into an irregular mosaic.”

“We seem to be able to be fully comfortable only when the remainder of humanity can be labeled as members versus nonmembers.”

“The mosquito is an automaton. It can afford to be nothing else.”

“The most peaceable tribes of today were often ravagers of yesteryear and will probably again produce soldiers and murderers in the future.”

“Because of mathematical indeterminancy and the uncertainty principle, it may be a law of nature that no nervous system is capable of acquiring enough knowledge to significantly predict the future of any other intelligent system in detail. Nor can intelligent minds gain enough self-knowledge to know their own future, capture fate, and in this sense eliminate free will.”

“The central idea of the philosophy of behaviorism, that behavior and the mind have an entirely materialist basis subject to experimental analysis, is fundamentally sound.”

“We can search among the unconscious, emotion-laden learning rules for the kind of behavior most directly influenced by genetic evolution.”

“Nationalism and racism, to take two examples, are the culturally nurtured outgrowths of simple tribalism.”

“The evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have.”

“The borderline between normal and schizophrenic people is broad and nearly imperceptible.”

“Most kinds of aggressive behavior among members of the same species are responsive to crowding in the environment.”

“Cultural evolution is Lamarckian and very fast, whereas biological evolution is Darwinian and usually very slow.”

“Genetic determinism… On its interpretation depends the entire relation between biology and the social sciences.”

“The genius of human society is in fact the ease with which alliances are formed, broken, and reconstituted, always with strong emotional appeals to rules believed to be absolute.”

“Animals use aggression as a technique for gaining control over necessities… that are scarce or are likely to become so… They intensify their threats and attack with increasing frequency as the population around them grow. As a result the behavior itself induces members of the population to spread out in space, raises the death rate, and lowers the birth rate. In such cases aggression is said to be a "density-dependent factor" in controlling population growth.”

“The increase in brain size and refinement of stone artifacts point to an unbroken advance in mental ability over the last two or three million years. …No organ in the history of life has grown faster.”

“The emergence of civilization has everywhere followed a definable sequence.”