The decay of decency in the modern age, the rebellion against law and good faith, the treatment of human beings as things, as the ...mere instruments of power and ambition, is without a doubt the consequence of the decay of the belief in man as something more than an animal animated by highly conditioned reflexes and chemical reactions. For, unless man is something more than that, he has no rights that anyone is bound to respect, and there are no limitations upon his conduct which he is bound to obey.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If Thought is capable of being classed with Electricity, or Will with chemical affinity, as a mode of motion, it seems necessary t...o fall at once under the second law of thermodynamics as one of the energies which most easily degrades itself, and, if not carefully guarded, returns bodily to the cheaper form called Heat. Of all possible theories, this is likely to prove the most fatal to Professors of History.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In this Journal, my pen is a delicate needle point, tracing out a graph of temperament so as to show its daily fluctuations: grave... and gay, up and down, lamentation and revelry, self-love and self-disgust. You get here all my thoughts and opinions, always irresponsible and often contradictory or mutually exclusive, all my moods and vapours, all the varying reactions to environment of this jelly which is I.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Christianity was only a very strong and singularly well-timed Salvation Army movement that happened to receive help from an unusua...l and highly dramatic incident. It was a Puritan reaction in an age when, no doubt, a Puritan reaction was much wanted; but like all sudden violent reactions, it soon wanted reacting against.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Fathers can seem powerful and overwhelming to their daughters. Let her see your soft side. Express your feelings and reactions. Te...ll her where you came from and how you got there. Let her see that you have had fears, failures, anxious times, hurts, just like hers, even though you may look flawless to her.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ireland, as distinct from her people, is nothing to me; and the man who is bubbling over with love and enthusiasm for "Ireland," a...nd can yet pass unmoved through our streets and witness all the wrong and the suffering, the shame and the degradation wrought upon the people of Ireland--yea, wrought by Irishmen upon Irish men and women, without burning to end it, is, in my opinion, a fraud and a liar in his heart, no matter how he loves that combination of chemical elements he is pleased to call Ireland.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is of course, entirely possible that men (or anyone who is relatively privileged) are most defensive, most obstinate and unseei...ng when they are worried about losing privileges.... In the reactions of husbands, I detect a haunting worry about what they will lose when true gender equality arrives.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is part of the nature of consciousness, of how the mental apparatus works, that free reason is only a very occasional function ...of people's "thinking" and that much of the process is made of reactions as standardized as those of the keys on a typewriter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »