Quotes
Some scholars, including most economists, many psychologists, and many social scientists influenced by evolutionary biology, place little emphasis on culture as a cause of human behavior. Others, especially anthropologists, sociologists, and historians, stress the importance of culture and institutions in shaping human affairs, but usually fail to consider their connection to biology. The success of all these disciplines suggests that many questions can be answered by ignoring culture or its connection to biology. However, the most fundamental questions of how human came to be the kind of animal we are can only be answered by a theory in which culture has its proper role and in which it is intimately intertwined with other aspects of human biology.
Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd, Not by genes alone: how culture transformed human evolution, Chicago, Ill., 2005, p. 4
He declarado nuestro anverso de luz y nuestro reverso de sombra; que otros descubran la secreta raíz de este antagónico proceso y nos digan si la fecha que celebramos merece la tristeza o el júbilo.
Jorge Luis Borges, El hacedor, Madrid, 1960
Entre las cosas maravillosas que se manifiestan en la posesión algunas duran toda la vida, otras un instante. […] Fugaces: luego de una larga ausencia, en el primer despertar en el campo, la luz del día en las hendijas de la ventana; en medio de la noche, despertar cuando el tren para en una estación y oír desde la cama del compartimiento la voz de gente que habla en el andén; al cabo de días de navegación tormentosa, despertar una mañana en el barco inmóvil, acercarse al ojo de buey y ver el puerto de una ciudad desconocida[.]
Adolfo Bioy Casares, De las cosas maravillosas, Buenos Aires, 1999, pp. 17-18
You ask particularly after my health. I suppose that I have not many months to live; but, of course, I know nothing about it. I may add that I am enjoying existence as much as ever, and regret nothing.
Henry David Thoreau and Damion Searls, The journal, 1837-1861, New York, 2009
OH! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!—Oh! times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!
When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,
When most intent on making of herself
A prime Enchantress—to assist the work,
Which then was going forward in her name!
Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth,
The beauty wore of promise, that which sets
(As at some moment might not be unfelt
Among the bowers of paradise itself)
The budding rose above the rose full blown.
What temper at the prospect did not wake
To happiness unthought of? The inert
Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!
They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,
The playfellows of fancy, who had made
All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength
Their ministers,—who in lordly wise had stirred
Among the grandest objects of the sense,
And dealt with whatsoever they found there
As if they had within some lurking right
To wield it;—they, too, who, of gentle mood,
Had watched all gentle motions, and to these
Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more mild,
And in the region of their peaceful selves;—
Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty
Did both find, helpers to their heart’s desire,
And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish;
Were called upon to exercise their skill,
Not in Utopia, subterranean fields,
Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us,—the place where in the end
We find our happiness, or not at all!
William Wordsworth, French Revolution, 1805
El hombre no era joven, pero a mi edad (quizá también la suya) se hace difícil traducir a números la imagen oscilante de caracteres físicos de una persona que ronda la salida de los treinta. Hay un día, no marcado en el almanaque, cuando uno deja atrás la confiada aritmética de los años y con azoramiento e indefinible melancolía empieza a preguntarse si ese otro fantasma nacido entre la juventud y la vejez es mayor o menor. Que uno, por supuesto.
Vlady Kociancich, Todos los caminos, Buenos Aires, 1991
Mi pensamiento es pesimista; mi sentido vital es optimista. A mí me encanta la vida, yo me divierto con vivir. Si oigo una frase que me hace gracia, estoy contentísimo; si he soñado un sueño que me parece divertido, de algún modo estoy encantado; si se me ocurre una idea, lo mismo… Me gusta leer, me gusta ir al cine… Yo tengo la impresión de que, cuando hago el balance de mis días, en general puedo decir que me he divertido y que, en los días estériles, tampoco lo pasé tan mal. En cambio, si yo reflexiono sobre la vida, pienso que nada tiene demasiada importancia porque seremos olvidados y desapareceremos definitivamente. Eso es lo que yo pienso. Yo creo que nuestra inmortalidad literaria es a corto plazo, porque un día habrá tanta gete, que no se podrán acordar de todos los escritores que hubo en un momento. O se acordarán muy imperfectamente. Ya no seremos materia de placer para nadie: seremos materia de estudio para ciertos especialistas, que quieran estudiar tal y tal tendencia de la literatura argentina de tal año. Y, después de todo eso, un día la Tierra chocará con algo, ya que la Tierra, como todas las cosas de este mundo, es finita. Un día desaparecerá la Tierra, y entonces no quedará el recuerdo de Shakespeare, y menos aún el de nosotros. Así que pienso que, teniendo en cuenta todas estas cosas, nada de la vida es muy importante. Entonces, yo casi podría reducir la importancia de la vida a una idea: la idea de que son importantes las cosas que, por lo menos, nos hacen estar complacidos. Vale decir: a mí, por ejemplo, me duele algo que es cruel o es deshonesto. O inclusive algo que sea desconsiderado con otra persona: eso me duele. Entonces, salvo hacer esas cosas y salvo hacer las que dan placer y dan alegría, nada tendría importancia.
Fernando Sorrentino, Siete conversaciones con Adolfo Bioy Casares, Buenos Aires, 1992, pp. 240-241
Pensé alguna vez que mi cara no era la que yo hubiera elegido. Entonces me pregunté cuál hubiera elegido y descubrí que no me convenía ninguna. La del joven del guante, de Tiziano, admirable en el cuadro, no me pareció adecuada, por corresponder a un hombre cuyo género de vida no deseaba para mí, pues intuía que en él la actividad física prevalecía en exceso. Los santos pecaban del defecto opuesto: eran demasiado sedentarios. A Dios padre lo encontré solemne. Las caras de los pensadores se me antojaron poco saludables y las de los boxeadores, poco sutiles. Las caras que realmente me gustan son de mujer; para cambiarlas por la mía no sirven.
Sara Facio y Alicia D'Amico (ed.), Retratos y autorretratos, Buenos Aires, 1973
Malas noticias. Parece que el gobierno va a impedir los viajes al Uruguay. Grotesco. Todo lo que quiera. Constitucionalmente imposible. Por lo tanto, verosímil.
Adolfo Bioy Casares, Ad porcos, Historias de amor, Madrid, 2002, p. 179
Como ocurre con las mujeres que nos gustan, todo me gusta en ella, desde el color oscuro del pelo hasta el perfume que sus manos dejan en las mías.
Adolfo Bioy Casares, Historias de amor, Madrid, 2002, p. 21
To some, the possibility that great religious figures might have been influenced by epileptic experiences negates the reality of the religious beliefs that resulted from them. Yet to others, the resulting revelations are “no less expressive of truth than Dostoevsky’s novels or Van Gogh’s paintings.” Evidence does exist of an organic basis for instinctive reactions that give rise to beliefs about a moral order resulting in a religious experience. However, some would argue that this is merely the way by which a spiritual God interacts with us mortal beings.
Michael S. Gazzaniga, The ethical brain: the science of our moral dilemmas, New York, 2005, p. 159
Se designó a sí mismo “el primer trabajador” y reunía a miles de personas que estaban obligadas a cantarle “Perón, Perón, que grande sos”. Una persona que actúa así debe de estar loca.
Jorge Luis Borges, Borges verbal, Barcelona, 1999, pp. 149-150
What is boasted of at the present time as the revival of religion, is always, in narrow and uncultivated minds, at least as much the revival of bigotry[.]
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, in J. M. Robson (ed.) The collected works of John Stuart Mill, Toronto, 1963, pp. 213–310, p. 2
About other people’s ideas, Mill says, Bentham’s only question was, were they true? Coleridge, in contrast, patiently asked after their meaning. To pin down the fundamental norms of our thinking calls for careful psychological and historical inquiry into how people think, and also into how they think they should think—what kind of normative attitudes they display in their actions and their reflection. These must be engaged with to be understood. So thinking from within is inherently dialogical. And it always remains corrigible. Both points are significant in Mill’s argument for liberty of thought and discussion.
What gives this method a critical and systematic edge? It can examine whether some normative dispositions are reducible to other such dispositions. It can also consider whether some are explicable in a way that subverts their authority. Suppose I can explain your low opinion of your brother’s intelligence as the product solely of sheer envy and resentment. That will subvert this opinion: it may be true, but your grounds for thinking it is are not good ones. Or an example Mill would have liked: normative notions of what women’s role should be may simply reflect unequal power relationships between men and women. That, if true, subverts these normative views. It does not show they are false but it does show that they are not justified. Thinking from within seeks to establish what basic normative dispositions are not subvertible in this way, but are resilient under reflection and thus preserve normative authority.
John Skorupski, Why read Mill today, London, 2006, pp. 9-10
Según Popper, no habría un paraíso de enunciados fácticos: solo existirían el infierno de las falsedades y el purgatorio de las conjeturas por falsar.
Mario Bunge, 100 Ideas: El libro para pensar y discutir en el café, Buenos Aires, 2006, pp. 105-106
All behavior patterns can in principle be altered by environmental intervention. The fact that currently we can alter some patterns and not others is a problem of knowledge and technology.
David M. Buss, The evolution of desire: strategies of human mating, New York, 1994, p. 17
At some level, we still hadn’t swallowed the hardest-won truth of all: The universe is indifferent.
Greg Egan, Luminous, London, 1998, p. 171
Happiness always brought with it the belief that it would last[.]
Greg Egan, Reasons to be cheerful, Reasons to be cheerful, no. April 1997, 2004, p. 191
Society was not invented by reasoning men. It evolved as part of our nature. It is as much a product of our genes as our bodies are.
Matt Ridley (ed.), The origins of virtue: human instincts and the evolution of cooperation, London, 1996, p. 6
People are less modern than the times in which they live[.]