A Quote by Rutger Bregman
If I say most people are pretty decent that may sound nice and warm but actually it's really radical and subversive and that's why, all throughout history, those who have advocated a more hopeful view of human nature - often the anarchists - have been persecuted.
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Women have been the most persecuted people throughout all of recorded history, more than any race or religion.
We have simply arrived too late in the history of the universe to see this primordial simplicity easily... But although the symmetries are hidden from us, we can sense that they are latent in nature, governing everything about us. That's the most exciting idea I know: that nature is much simpler than it looks. Nothing makes me more hopeful that our generation of human beings may actually hold the key to the universe in our hands - that perhaps in our lifetimes we may be able to tell why all of what we see in this immense universe of galaxies and particles is logically inevitable.
The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities-perhaps the only one-in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there. In most other fields of human endeavour there is change, but rarely progress ... And in most fields we do not even know how to evaluate change.
The amazing thing is that throughout Scripture and history it seems God has chosen the most seemingly unlikely and unqualified people to fulfill his plan and purpose on the earth. Most often, the response of those people has been to insist on their own unworthiness. And if they don’t-the people around them may do so, loudly and shrilly. And therein lies a danger: If we allow other people to tell us what we are and are not qualified to do, we will limit what God wants to do with us.
You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than any one else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes been objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see from the barons' wars.
Religion is a by-product of fear. For much of human history it may have been a necessary evil, but why was it more evil than necessary? Isn’t killing people in the name of god a pretty good definition of insanity?
In Israel's short history, army commanders and the heads of the intelligence agencies have often advocated the use of force and in many cases showed contempt for the law and human rights. Political leaders have typically been more measured.
My mum and my dad they both like to sing they have really nice voices and my sister and my brother actually they are good singers too. I've been really blessed actually more than most to have a really good people around me.
If you're a woman and you've decided to step in front of people on any kind of platform and say that you have feelings about anything, you are committing a radical act. People view it as such, so you might as well actually commit a radical act.
There were two recording studios in Bellingham. One was really expensive, a "nice studio." We were at the point where we were young and irreverent. We would scoff at the idea of a nice studio. "Why would you want to go to a nice studio? Oh wow, they have really expensive gear. Ooh, that's really fancy. Well we've got an eight-track. We've got it going on here." Now that we have the resources, we're like, "Oh wow, a nice studio is pretty nice! They do have nice outboards here. It's actually a pretty good place." It's funny how much changes so quickly.
Yes, it's in my left ear. It's excruciating... I mean, it's the worst thing 'cause it's not... It never... It does go away - it's not true to say that it doesn't but, uhh... It doesn't... The doctors say it won't... It isn't actually going away - you've just gotta suppress... They try to come to terms with what it actually... Why some people fear it - that's the psychology behind it. They know it's there but why is it such a horrible sound? Well, you can say why is a guy scratching at a window with his nails such a horrible sound - I couldn't put up with that! This is worse!
You don't often hear people say, 'Oh, since he's been taking them drugs, he's such a nice person! He's really come out of his shell, he's really nice, he's blossomed'.
Anarchists believe that we can govern ourselves in the absence of coercive and centralized authority; the underlying premise about human nature (to use an infinitely problematized but necessary term here) is fundamentally positive. And the evidence that in disasters people are really pretty kind, generous, brave, resourceful and creative fed that.
China has been on a historic commodities binge as it doubled the size of its economy in recent years to become one of the world's largest. Even so, those fundamentals begat - as they have so often throughout human history - a feeding frenzy.
It is probably true quite generally that in the history of human thinking the most fruitful developments frequently take place at those points where two different lines of thought meet. These lines may have their roots in quite different parts of human nature, in different times or different cultural environments or different religious traditions: hence if they actually meet, that is, if they are at least so much related to each other that a real interaction can take place, then one may hope that new and interesting developments may follow.
In the past 20 years scientists from very diverse disciplines - anthropologists, archaeologists, sociologists, psychologists - have all moved to a much more hopeful, optimistic view of human nature.
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