Primitive Quotes - Page 20

• Here we stand in the middle of this new world with our primitive brain, attuned to the simple cave life, with terrific forces at our disposal, which we are clever enough to release, but whose consequences we cannot comprehend.

  Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

  Life, Clever, Simple

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• Yet it would be unfair to the generality of our kind to ascribe to their intellectual and moral weakness the gradual divergence of Buddhism and Christianity from their primitive patterns. For it should not be forgotten that by their glorification of poverty and celibacy both these religions struck straight at the root not merely of civil society but of human existence. The blow was parried by the wisdom or the folly of the vast majority of mankind, who refused to purchase a chance of saving their souls with the certainty of extinguishing the species.

  James G. Frazer

  Buddhism, Blow, Roots

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• So I do, of course, reject much that is central not only to the psychology of Descartes and Kant, but to their epistemology as well. No doubt, the best available theories of today will look primitive in comparison with what we are in a position to understand hundreds of years from now.

  Hilary Kornblith

  Years, Psychology, Doubt

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• The primitive in each of us climbs closer to the surface during the night, for the moon sings to it, and the cold void between the stars speaks its language. To that savage self, evil can look lovely in too little light.

  Dean Koontz

  Stars, Moon, Night

  Dean Koontz (2007). “False Memory”, p.136, Bantam

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• Nationalist Socialist Germany wants peace because of its fundamental convictions. And it wants peace also owing to the realization of the simple primitive fact that no war would be likely essentially to alter the distress in Europe. The principal effect of every war is to destroy the flower of the nation. Germany needs peace and desires peace!

  Adolf Hitler

  War, Flower, Simple

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• The age of the pulp magazine was the last in which youngsters, to get their primitive material, were forced to be literate.

  Isaac Asimov

  Age, Magazines, Lasts

  Isaac Asimov (2009). “I, Asimov: A Memoir”, p.78, Bantam

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• What then is the intellectual advantage of civilization over primitive savagery? It is not necessarily that each civilized man has more knowledge but that he requires far less.

  Thomas Sowell

  Men, Civilization, Intellectual

  Thomas Sowell (1996). “Knowledge And Decisions”, p.7, Basic Books

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• The paintings that laughed at him merrily from the walls were like nothing he had ever seen or dreamed of. Gone were the flat, thin surfaces. Gone was the sentimental sobriety. Gone was the brown gravy in which Europe had been bathing its pictures for centuries. Here were pictures riotously mad with the sun. With light and air and throbbing vivacity. Paintings of ballet girls backstage, done in primitive reds, greens, and blues thrown next to each other irreverantly. He looked at the signature. Degas.

  Irving Stone

  Girl, Wall, Light

  Irving Stone (1984). “Lust for Life”, Plume

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• Let's face it: I'm scared, scared and frozen. First, I guess, I'm afraid for myself ... the old primitive urge for survival. It's getting so I live every moment with terrible intensity. Last night, driving back from Boston, I lay back in the car and let the colored lights come at me, the music from the radio, the reflection of the guy driving. It all flowed over me with a screaming ache of pain ... remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I've taken for granted. When you feel that this may be the good-bye, the last time, it hits you harder.

  Sylvia Plath

  Pain, Taken, Bye

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• I used to say to my classes that the ways to get insight are: to study infants; to study animals; to study primitive people; to be psychoanalyzed; to have a religious conversion and get over it; to have a psychotic episode and get over it; or to have a love affair with an old Russian. And I stopped saying that when a little dancer in the front row put up her hand and said, 'Does he have to be old?

  Margaret Mead

  Religious, Animal, Hands

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• But when the group is literally capable of changing our perceptions, and when to stand alone is to activate primitive, powerful, and unconscious feelings of rejection, then the health of these institutions seems far more vulnerable than we think.

  Susan Cain

  Powerful, Thinking, Rejection

  Susan Cain (2012). “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking”, p.92, Broadway Books

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• Nothing, of course, will ever take the place of the good old fashion of 'liking' a work of art or not liking it; the more improved criticism will not abolish that primitive, that ultimate, test.

  Henry James

  Fashion, Art, Criticism

  Henry James, William Veeder, Susan M. Griffin (1986). “The Art of Criticism: Henry James on the Theory and the Practice of Fiction”, p.176, University of Chicago Press

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• Dwarfs were not a naturally religious species, but in a world where pit props could crack without warning and pockets of fire damp could suddenly explode they'd seen the need for gods as the sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat. Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it's nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, "Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!" or "Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!

  Terry Pratchett

  Religious, Atheist, Strong

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• He was tall, one of the tallest men she had ever seen. Dressed in jeans, boots and a cotton shirt. Thick black hair grew rakishly long, falling over the collar of his shirt. Intense brown eyes, almost the color of amber, surveyed the diner slowly before coming back to her. Electricity sizzled in the air then, as though invisible currents connected them, forcing her to recognize him on a primitive level. Not that she wouldn’t take notice anyway. He was power, strength, and so incredibly male that her breath caught at the sight of him.

  Lora Leigh

  Fall, Eye, Men

  Lora Leigh (2018). “Elizabeth's Wolf”, p.34, Penguin

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• You're thinking that people don't keep up old jealousies for twenty years or so. Perhaps not. Not just primitive, brute jealousy. That means a word and a blow. But the thing that rankles is hurt vanity. That sticks. Humiliation. And we've all got a sore spot we don't like to have touched.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Hurt, Mean, Blow

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2013). “The Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries: Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, and Unnatural Death”, p.187, Open Road Media

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• Basque and Celt. Criminals and barbarians. I didn't think there could be a more primitive pairing of genes.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Thinking, Criminals, Barbarians

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• It is interesting to note that the "sexual revolution" was sometimes portrayed as a communal utopia, whereas in fact it was simply another stage in the historical rise of individualism. As the lovely word "household" suggests, the couple and the family would be the last bastion of primitive communism in liberal society. The sexual revolution was to destroy these intermediary communities, the last to separate the individual from the market. The destruction continues to this day.

  Michel Houellebecq

  Couple, Interesting, Community

  "The Elementary Particles". Book by Michel Houellebecq, August 24, 1998.

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• People in the future look back on primitive machinery or technology or painting, and in some ways, it always seems amazingly intricate and finely wrought.

  Robyn Hitchcock

  Technology, People, Looks

  Interview with Christopher Bahn, www.avclub.com. November 13, 2007.

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• In my day, the drug was alcohol and the weapon was a fist, so it was very sort of innocent and primitive. Now you've got drugs, guns, and knives, which are so lethal.

  Michael Caine

  Gun, Knives, Alcohol

  Interview with Sean O'Neal, www.avclub.com. April 30, 2010.

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• Chemists in earlier centuries were quite interested in the nature of acids. They had no interest in analysing their concept of acid. After all, they knew that their understanding of acids was at a fairly primitive level, and what they wanted to do was understand something about the world better - the nature of acidity - not something about their own concepts.

  Hilary Kornblith

  Understanding, World, Levels

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Hip is the sophistication of the wise primitive in a giant jungle.

  Norman Mailer

  Wise, Giants, Literature

  Dissent Summer 1957, p. 281

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• If your workplace was somehow transplanted into the jungle and everyone was forced to survive at a very primitive level, it's safe to say that eventually your boss would rape you.

  Scott Dikkers

  Boss, Levels, Safe

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• As I conceive this doctrine to be a gross misrepresentation of the character and moral government of God, and to affect many other articles in the scheme of Christianity, greatly disfiguring and depraving it; I shall show, ... that it has no countenance whatever in reason, or the Scriptures; and, therefore, that the whole doctrine of atonement, with every modification of it, has been a departure from the primitive and genuine doctrine of Christianity.

  Joseph Priestley

  Character, Government, Atheism

  "A History of the Corruptions of Christianity". Book by Joseph Priestley, Part II: Opinions Relating to the Doctrine of Atonement, Introduction, 1782.

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• When we awake it is the animal, the plant, that thinks in us. Primitive thought without the least disguise. We see a terrible universe, because we see clearly. A little later, intelligence introduces its impeding contrivances. It brings the little toys which man invents in order to hide the void. It is then that we think we are seeing clearly. We attribute our uneasiness to the miasmas of the brain as it passes from dream to reality.

  Jean Cocteau

  Dream, Animal, Reality

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• What I have always wanted for myself is much more primitive. It is probably nothing more than the affection of the people with whom I am in contact, and their good opinion of me.

  Anna Freud

  People, Opinion, Affection

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