War, as Rousseau pointed out long before Tolstoy took up the theme, only makes manifest events already determined by moral causes (Emile,Bk. IV). For this reason our main energies must be directed against the moral causes of war. Those moral causes lie within ourselves - and pacifists should not suppose for a moment that they are pure in heart in this respect.
Herbert ReadRelated topics
heart lie moment pure reason respect should suppose take theme war Rousseau EmileRelated quotes
It is now generally accepted that the roots of our ethics lie in patterns of behavior that evolved among our pre-human ancestors, the social mammals and that we retain within our biological nature elements of these evolved responses. We have learned considerably more about these responses, and we are beginning to to understand how they interact with our capacity to reason.
Peter Singer
It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.
Voltaire
Organisms [...] are directed and limited by their past. They must remain imperfect in their form and function, and to that extent unpredictable since they are not optimal machines. We cannot know their future with certainty, if only because a myriad of quirky functional shifts lie within the capacity of any feature, however well adapted to a present role.
Stephen Jay Gould
It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.
J. B. S. Haldane
All illegal narcotics are medicinal. Boredom is a disease worse than cancer. Drugs cure it, with little or no side effects if used as directed. Life's temporary for a reason, it gets boring after awhile. You should be inventing new drugs is what you should be doing! Newer, crazier drugs... and more holes, that's what you ladies need!
Doug Stanhope