Left-wing movements have tended to be unisex, and asexual in their imagery. Right-wing movements, however puritanical and repressi...ve the realities they usher in, have an erotic surface. Certainly Nazism is "sexier" than communism.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Since [Rousseau's] time, and largely thanks to him, the Ego has steadily tended to efface itself, and, for purposes of model, to b...ecome a manikin on which the toilet of education is to be draped in order to show the fit or misfit of the clothes. The object of study is the garment, not the figure.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is curious to speculate why pornography is considered especially likely to stimulate its readers into performing the activities... described. The literature of murder is a vast one, particularly in the English language; enormous ingenuity is expended by writers in devising techniques for killing people, and these techniques are described with the greatest possible realism. The motives which would make murder desirable or profitable are so elaborated that they could easily persuade a reader into whose hands these books would be likely to fall that their case was parallel with that described in the book so that their problems could be solved in the same way. But I have never seen it seriously suggested that the literature of murder--detective stories or crime stories--tended to deprave and corrupt, or would incite weak-minded or immature readers into carrying out in reality the activities described in the fantasies. On the contrary, the literature of murder is considered particularly "healthy" and desirable; and in England representatives of all the most respected professions have stated that detective stories are among their favorite reading. Musing about murder is apparently "healthy"; musing about sexual enjoyment is not.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
America has a history of political isolation and economic self-sufficiency; its citizens have tended to regard the rest of the wor...ld as a disaster area from which lucky or pushy people emigrate to the Promised Land. Alternatively, they think of other nations as mere showplaces for picturesque scenery, odd flora and fauna and quaint artifacts. The American tourist abroad therefore wears clothes suitable for a trip to a disaster area, or for a visit to a museum or zoo: comfortable, casual, brightly colored, relatively cheap: not calculated to arouse envy or pick up dirt. Britain, on the other hand, remains in imagination a world empire. Its citizens go abroad as representatives of the Top Nation, concerned to uphold its reputation and present a good example to lesser races. Britons therefore dress up rather than down for travel, whatever the local conditions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We have seen over and over that white male historians in general have tended to dismiss any history they didn't themselves write, ...on the grounds that it is unserious, unscholarly, a fad, too "political," "merely" oral and thus unreliable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Though Veblen repeatedly criticized Marx's Hegelian metaphysics and dismissed as scientifically irrelevant not only his propaganda... but also his philosophical and speculative writings, he greatly admired Marx. He attributed hardly less hegemony than Marx had done to the way men get (and spend) a living; like Marx, he tended to regard politics, art, and religion as "superstructural" aspects of society. To be sure, where Marx is indignant, Veblen is ironic; where Marx speaks of the bourgeoisie, emphasizing their productive creative, but eventually exploitative role, Veblen speaks of the "kept classes," emphasizing their passivity and lack of contribution to industrial advance; and where Marx speaks of surplus value--a "natural rights" concept Veblen couldn't deride often enough--Veblen speaks of waste, a hardly less metaphysical category.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Men seem more bound to the wheel of success than women do. That women are trained to get satisfaction from affiliation rather than... achievement has tended to keep them from great achievement. But it has also freed them from unreasonable expectations about the satisfactions that professional achievement brings.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The resemblance between the two movements covers far more than the speed and extent of their conquests. It can be argued that in s...ome measure both are great Christian heresies. And like Communism, the Moslem faith in its relations with Europe has tended to follow the pattern of relentless pressure on all weak points and undefended frontiers and to advance its banners wherever there were found to be no defenders at the gate.... Islam derived its power to attract educated and intellectual groups from the use it made of ideas deeply congenial to the Oriental mind. Its rejection of the Greek and Christian heritage of humanism and incarnation in favor of a purely transcendent deity accorded well with the other-worldly tradition of Oriental religious thought. At the same time, the Moslem appeal to the people at large lay in the social evils which it promised to redress. Mohammedanism was in part a harking back to traditional intellectual and religious ideas, in part an outburst of social protest against an unjust and unstable social order. Modern Communism has something of the same character.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The awakening of the people of China to the possibilities under free government is the most significant, if not the most momentous..., event of our generation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »