Genocide begins, however improbably, in the conviction that classes of biological distinction indisputably sanction social and pol...itical discrimination.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship--only backward. You try to start again but get i...nto blaming over and over. Finally you are both worn out, exhausted, hopeless. Then lawyers are called in to pick clean the corpses. The death has occurred much earlier.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Although there is no universal agreement as to a definition of life, its biological manifestations are generally considered to be ...organization, metabolism, growth, irritability, adaptation, and reproduction.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The purpose of ritual for men is to learn the rules of power and competition. Watching sports together, for example, they see the ...formal enactment of ritual, become loyal to a team, learn to conceal their vulnerability. The purpose of ritual for women (going to lunch together, sharing a favorite salon, etc.) is to learn how to make human connections. They are often more intimate and vulnerable with one another than they are with their men, and taking care of other women teaches them to take care of themselves. In these formal ways, men and women domesticate their emotional lives. But their strategies are different, their biological itineraries are different. His sperm needs to travel, her egg needs to settle down. It's astonishing that they survive happily at all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
During the cattle drives, Texas cowboy music came into national significance. Its practical purpose is well known--it was used pri...marily to keep the herds quiet at night, for often a ballad sung loudly and continuously enough might prevent a stampede. However, the cowboy also sang because he liked to sing.... In this music of the range and trail is "the grayness of the prairies, the mournful minor note of a Texas norther, and a rhythm that fits the gait of the cowboy's pony."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Life, in my estimation, is a biological misadventure that we terminate on the shoulders of six strange men whose only objective is... to make a hole in one with you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Moscow, breathing fire like a human volcano with its smouldering lava of passion, ambition and politics, its hurly- burly of meeti...ngs and entertainment.... Moscow seethes and bubbles and gasps for air. It's always thirsting for something new, the newest events, the latest sensation. Everyone wants to be the first to know. It's the rhythm of life today.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Because humans are not alone in exhibiting such behavior--bees stockpile royal jelly, birds feather their nests, mice shred paper-...-it's possible that a pregnant woman who scrubs her house from floor to ceiling [just before her baby is born] is responding to a biological imperative . . . . Of course there are those who believe that . . . the burst of energy that propels a pregnant woman to clean her house is a perfectly natural response to their mother's impending visit.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then t...he best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When Americans look out on the world, they see nothing but dark and menacing strangers who appear to have no sense of rhythm at al...l, nor any respect or affection for white people; and white Americans really do not know what to make of all this, except to increase the defense budget.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »