A Quote by Steven Pinker
It's misleading to essentialize an entire society as if it were a single mind.
Related Quotes
Such words as "society" and "community" are likely to be misleading, for they have a tendency to make us think there is a single thing corresponding to the single word.
The real world of American society is one which it is very misleading to call simply a democracy. Of course, it is in a sense a democracy, but it is one in which there are enormous inequities in the distribution of power and force. For example, the entire commercial and industrial system is in principle excluded from the democratic process, including everything that goes on within it
The costs of marriage breakdown are borne by the entire society, and therefore it is reasonable for the entire society to demand support for marriage - to insist that it is privileged both culturally and legally.
It would be misleading to say, 'I believe in the Force,' in the same sense that it would be misleading to say, 'I believe in the sun.' Give it whatever name you like - the Force, the Tao, the Holy Spirit, the Universal Mind - I see it in action everywhere I look, both in the world and in myself.
We said that a single injustice, a single crime, a single illegality, particularly if it is officially recorded, confirmed, a single wrong to humanity, a single wrong to justice and to right, particularly if it is universally, legally, nationally, commodiously accepted, that a single crime shatters and is sufficient to shatter the whole social pact, the whole social contract, that a single legal crime, a single dishonorable act will bring about the loss of ones honor, the dishonor of a whole people. It is a touch of gangrene that corrupts the entire body.
It's not easy for a film to tell a story of the experiences of an entire society. However, from an individual's perspective, it is possible to tell one aspect of an entire society's story.
The Heart is the Capital of the Mind— The Mind is a single State— The Heart and the Mind together make A single Continent— One—is the Population— Numerous enough— This ecstatic Nation Seek—it is Yourself.
Though analogy is often misleading, it is the least misleading thing we have.
In our contemporary society, one so over-inundated with imagery, it is easy to overlook the power of a single frame to change the way we look at the world, or rally disparate hearts to a single cause. Yet, ours is a society shaped by this very phenomenon.
Dad always warned that it was misleading when one imagined people, when one sas them in the Mind's Eye, because one never remembered them as they really were, with as many inconsistencies as there were hairs on a human head (100,000 to 200,000). Instead, the mind used a lazy shorthand, smoothed the person over into their most dominating characteristic--their pessimism or insecurity (something really being lazy, turning them into either Nice or Mean)--and one made the mistake of judging them from this basis alone and risked, on a subsequent encounter, being dangerously surprised.
There are many who lust for the simple answers of doctrine or decree. They are on the left and right. They are not confined to a single part of the society. They are terrorists of the mind.
A satisfying prayer life elevates and purifies every act of body and mind and integrates the entire personality into a single spiritual unit. In the long pull we pray only as well as we live.
You can have your beliefs, but if you're not devout, you can't quite believe that something which grows out of a story, a book or a piece of literature can rise to dominate and make entire nations go to war with each other. I think that's endlessly fascinating, and it's a human construct. It's something that's constructed to occupy the mind and occupy society, and some people would say to control society.
Normally my films have a single thread of an emotion, an insight or one single belief, and then I turn the entire story and build it around that.
It's really hard to talk about writing, and I'm usually conscious if I'm misleading people or misleading the questioner, because the problem with writing is the next line.
In the entire first Christian century Jesus is not mentioned by a single Greek or Roman historian, religion scholar, politician, philosopher or poet. His name never occurs in a single inscription, and it is never found in a single piece of private correspondence. Zero! Zip references!
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