Monday Quotations

2/14/11.

"Visions rest ultimately on some sense of the nature of man --- not simply his existing practices but his ultimate potential and ultimate limitations. Those who see the potentialities of human nature extending far beyond what is currently manifested have a social vision quite different from those who see human beings as tragically limited creatures whose selfish and dangerous impulses can be contained only by social contrivances which themselves produce unhappy side effects."

--- Thomas Sowell
      (1930 -   )

"The fatal conceit:  the idea that the ability to acquire skills stems from reason."

 --- F.A. Hayek

     (1899 1992)

"With few exceptions, women writers build their stories on a predictable list of generic complaints. They are:

• Bad men treat women badly.
• Good men treat women badly.
• Men do not understand that all women are creatures of fine intelligence, character, and sensitivity.
• Life in any society debases women and fails to support their physical and emotional needs and desires.
• Men impose themselves on women's bodies and inflict abuse and pain..

One or a combination of these grievances is the tension and the reason for every romance novel and for most  of the of the novels from the finer women writers. They are also the basic grievances of the feminists."

 --- Helen Hazan