A Quote by Katherine Dunn

My perception of the human animal is as an extremely dangerous predator. That's who I perceive us to be as a species. Maybe the most dangerous predator on the planet, with the exception of a few microbes. I'm really grateful for the degree of socialization that prevents us, most of the time, from killing and eating each other. And I admire all the social structures that have been designed and layered and niched in that encourage bonding toward a kind of social harmony that is meant to contain and counteract our natural inclinations toward predation, ferocity, and eating whatever moves.

Katherine Dunn

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Admire Animal Been Bonding Contain Dangerous Degree Designed Each Eating Encourage Exception Extremely Ferocity Few Grateful Harmony Human Human Animal Killing Kind Maybe Meant Microbes Most Moves Natural Other Our Perceive Perception Planet Predator Prevents Really Social Social Harmony Social Structure Socialization Species Structures Time Toward Us Whatever

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Katherine Dunn
American - Novelist
October 24, 1945 - May 11, 2016

Believing that the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator when it is only the wind does not cost much, but believing that a dangerous predator is the wind may cost an animal its life.

Michael Shermer

Natural inclinations are present in things from God, who moves all things. So it is impossible for the natural inclinations of a species to be toward evil in itself. But there is in all perfect animals a natural inclination toward carnal union. Therefore it is impossible for carnal union to be evil in itself.

Thomas Aquinas

While there are relatively few extreme introverts or extroverts, most of us lean in one direction or the other. If we lean more toward introversion, we'll generally prefer less social activity than more extroverted people. One inclination is not 'better' than another, but our culture can make it seem as if extroverts have a social advantage.

Vivek Murthy

Human social life, I suggest, is the magma that erupts and builds up, so to speak, at the fault lines where natural human capacities meet and grind against and over natural human limitations…. This meeting of powers and limitations produces a creative, dynamic tension and energy that generates and fuels the making of human social life and social structures…. It is real human persons living through the tensions of natural existential contradictions who construct patterned social meanings, interactions, institutions, and structures.

Christian Smith

Our social and economic statistics are telling us what we already know in our hearts: we have created a world that works for only a few. To change this, we must learn to act toward each other and our environment in profoundly different ways.

Vaclav Havel

We are the most dangerous species of life on the planet, and every other species, even the earth itself, has cause to fear our power to exterminate. But we are also the only species which, when it chooses to do so, will go to great effort to save what it might destroy.

Wallace Stegner

An asteroid could hit us at any moment. This is not - and also, the most successful kind of life on this planet is not us, it's microbes. They're the ones who greatly outnumber us, and may eventually destroy us.

Barbara Ehrenreich

Eat by Choice, Not by Habit combines the author's humor, deep compassion for others and knowledge about food in a way that makes me eager to follow her lead toward healthy eating-and more importantly, toward a healthy attitude about eating. She aptly teaches us all to frame our food issues in a language that is both liberating and comforting.

Judith Hanson Lasater

I think that we live in a world - and this is something which living in Pakistan, perhaps, has taught me - and, you know, we live in a world where there is a constant feed from social media, the news, etc., of things that can scare us. And we become so anxious because human beings are meant - are designed to be sensitized to dangerous stuff.

Mohsin Hamid

We have a responsibility toward the other life-forms of our planet whose continued existence is threatened by the thoughtless behavior of our own human species. . . . Environmental responsibility – for if there is no God, then, obviously, it is up to us to put things right.

Jane Goodall

As a society, we pick words that are offensive based on what we're most afraid of. We associate sounds with some dangerous idea, and right now the most dangerous thing to us are the differences between us.

Richard Dooling

The gift moves towards the empty place. As it turns in its circle it turns towards him who has been empty-handed the longest, and if someone appears elsewhere whose need is greater it leaves its old channel and moves toward him. Our generosity may leave us empty, but our emptiness then pulls gently at the whole until the thing in motion returns to replenish us. Social nature abhors a vacuum.

Lewis Hyde

I think most character people that you talk to, it's like, whatever they offer us, we are thrilled to do. I won't do anything that's immoral or illicit. I did turn down eating a dead body once. I turned down a few really creepy horror movies. For the most part, I can usually find a way into whatever character.

Beth Grant

If you think about evolution, sleep, at some time, was a dangerous undertaking. You lie down in your cave or shelter, and along comes a predator and has you for dinner. Many creatures do not sleep or sleep while standing so they can escape from dangerous situations.

Bernie Siegel

This isn't animal experimentation, where you an imagine some proportionate good at the other end of the suffering. This is what we feel like eating. Tell me something: Why is taste, the crudest of our sense, exempted from the ethical rules that govern our other sense? If you stop and think about it, it's crazy. Why doesn't a horny person has as strong a claim to raping an animal as a hungry one does to killing and eating it?

Jonathan Safran Foer

The web is at a really important turning point right now. Up until recently, the default on the web has been that most things aren’t social and most things don’t use your real identity. We’re building toward a web where the default is social.

Mark Zuckerberg

A Quote by Katherine Dunn

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