Inspirational Quotes

Rebel against our selfish genes!

2006-02-10T06:23:00.000-08:00

The point I am making now is that, even if we look on
the dark side and assume that individual man is
fundamentally selfish, our conscious foresight -- our
capacity to simulate the future in imagination --
could save us from the worst selfish excesses of the
blind replicators. We have at least the mental
equipment to foster our long-term selfish interests
rather than merely our short-term selfish interests.
We can see the long-term benefits of participating in
a `conspiracy of doves', and we can sit down together
to discuss ways of making the conspiracy work. We
have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth
and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our
indoctrination. We can even discuss ways of
deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure,
disinterested altruism -- something that has no place
in nature, something that has never existed before in
the whole history of the world. We are built as gene
machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have
the power to turn against our own creators. We, alone
on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish
replicators (Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene,
pp.200-201).

Love is the Answer

2006-02-09T00:05:00.000-08:00

"Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence."

(Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving, p.123)

All is not Dark

2004-07-24T06:17:00.000-07:00

"Homo sapiens is the most culturally adaptable species that has inhabited the earth. ... It is highly unlikely that human beings will ever create a utopia, but collectively we can create a sustainable world. Idealistic solutions have become the only realistic ones. ... Many human beings have had, and still have, a vision of a world of peace and equality - and ... substantial progress in that direction has been made. ... In the face of pervasive injustice and massive environmental need, idealism can be realism"(Paul and Anne Ehrlich, One with Nineveh, pp.333-334).

There is Hope

2004-07-17T23:01:00.000-07:00

"Yet there is hope. On a hotter planet, with lost deltas and shrunken coastlines, under a more dangerous sun, with less arable land, more people, fewer species of living things, a legacy of poisonous wastes,and much beauty irrevocably lost, there will still be the possiblility that our children's children will learn at last to live as a commmunity among commmunities. Perhaps they will learn to also to forgive this generation its blind commitment to ever greater consumption. Perhaps they will even appreciate its belated efforts to leave them a planet still capable of supporting life in community" (Daly and Cobb, For the Common Good, 406).

Stupidity is having an answer for everything

2004-07-10T11:11:00.000-07:00

'A novel poses questions. ... the stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of a novel comes from having a question for everything. '

- Milan Kundera

The Child is Father of the Man

2004-06-26T23:17:00.000-07:00

William Wordworth

The fields that we know

2004-06-22T08:31:00.000-07:00

It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

(J.R.R. Tolkien, Return of the King, 1965, p.190)