Quotes on Demand

I have been accused of having believed when I wrote Sex and Temperament that there are no sex differences... This, many readers felt, was too much. It was too pretty. I must have found what I was looking for. But this misconception comes from a lack of understanding of what anthropology means, of the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in astonishment and wonder, that which one would not have been able to guess.

Because power corrupts, society's demands for moral authority and character increase as the importance of the position increases.

Of all the cares or concerns of government, the direction of war most peculiarly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand. The direction of war implies the direction of the common strength; and the power of directing and employing the common strength, forms a usual and essential part in the definition of the executive authority.

This demand follows from an insight that I was the first to articulate: that there are no moral facts.

A person who can laugh and go with life does not demand to be in control, which is why the most controlling people may be sarcastic but lack an authentic sense of humor.

If the aim is globalization without marginalization, we can no longer tolerate a world in which there live side by side the immensely rich and the miserably poor, the have-nots deprived even of essentials and people who thoughtlessly waste what others so desperately need. Such countries are an affront to the dignity of the human person. He further said, Ethics demand that systems be attuned to the needs of man, and not that man be sacrificed for the sake of the system.

Wise guidance never violates people's Free Will. A superior who demands obedience of his subordinates should show respect for their capacity to understand, and also for their Innate Right to their own Free Will.

I say that man is entitled to his own happiness and that he must achieve it himself. But that he cannot demand that others give up their lives to make him happy.

The company's most urgent task is to learn to welcome, beg for, demand - innovation from everyone.

[W]hen we look at the graphs of rising ocean temperatures, rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and so on, we know that they are climbing far more steeply than can be accounted for by the natural oscillation of the weather ... What people (must) do is to change their behavior and their attitudes ... If we do care about our grandchildren then we have to do something, and we have to demand that our governments do something.

That's the thing about pain, it demands to be felt.

Socialism has never and nowhere been at first a working-class movement. It is by no means an obvious remedy for the obvious evil which the interests of that class will necessarily demand. It is a construction of theorists.

Fans, true fans, are hard to find and precious. Just a few can change everything. What they demand, though, is generosity and bravery.

The problems are our lives. In the "developed" countries, at least, the large problems occur because all of us are living either partly wrong or almost entirely wrong. It was not just the greed of corporate shareholders and the hubris of corporate executives that put the fate of Prince William Sound into one ship; it was also our demand that energy be cheap and plentiful.

Great organizations demand a high level of commitment by the people involved.

...it is absurd to try to confine our knowledge and belief to matters which are conclusively established by sound deductive arguments. The demand for certainty will inevitably be disappointed, leaving skepticism in command of almost every issue.

I do feel that spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants.

Once in debt, interest is your companion every minute of the day and night; you cannot shun it or slip away from it; you cannot dismiss it; it yields neither to entreaties, demands, or orders; and whenever you get in its way or cross its course or fail to meet its demands, it crushes you.

The simple fact is that the world is not paying for the services the forests provide. At the moment, they are worth more dead than alive-for soya, for beef, for palm oil and for logging, feeding the demand from other countries. ... I think we need to be clear that the drivers of rainforest destruction do not originate in the rainforest nations, but in the more developed countries which, unwittingly or not, have caused climate change.

Social Science, is not a 'gay science' but rueful, which finds the secret of this universe in 'supply and demand' and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone. Not a 'gay science', no, a dreary, desolate, and indeed quite abject and distressing one; what we might call, the dismal science

Compassion is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy as hunger is a natural call for food