Pagel Quotes & Sayings

Imagine if one of them were turned. Imagine if one could be bought.'
'But they're chosen just so's they can't be bought ... '
'History ... ' Jacobs spoke with terse authority. Brought Ori to a hush. 'Is all full. And dripping. With the corpses. Of them who trusted the incorruptible. — China Mieville

We owe our big brains less to inventiveness than to conflicts of interest among social minds engaged in an arms race to be the best at manipulating others. — Mark Pagel

She's like a Philistine on a Sunday, the way she won't take but so many steps a day. Except every day's Sunday around here. — Kathryn Stockett

Culture has worked by coming to exercise a form of mind control over us. We willingly accept and even embrace this mind control, and probably without even knowing it. — Mark Pagel

You and I probably wouldn't be here if our ancestors hadn't been greedy savages. — Mark Pagel

Natural selection has duped us with an emotion that encourages group thinking. It is an emotion that makes us act as if for the good of the group; an emotion that brings pleasure, pride, or even thrills from coordinated group activity. — Mark Pagel

Privacy is precious in cities. It is indispensable. Perhaps it is precious and indispensable everywhere, but in most places you cannot get it. In small settlements everyone knows your affairs. In the city everyone does not - only those you choose to tell will know much about you. — Jane Jacobs

There have been a couple of jobs I've done without thinking, without being engaged, and they just stink. — Clancy Brown

America has 2.2 million of it's citizens incarcerated. It's a statistic we should be ashamed of ... — Henry Rollins

[Language allows you] to implant a thought from your mind directly into someone else's mind, and they can attempt to do the same to you, without either of you having to perform surgery. — Mark Pagel

As Heinz Pagels has said,
The challenge to our civilization which has come from our knowledge of the cosmic energies that fuels the stars, the movement of light and electrons through matter, the intricate molecular order which is the biological basis of life, must be met by the creation of a moral and political order which will accommodate these forces or we shall be destroyed. It will try our deepest resources of reason and compassion. — Michio Kaku

So what are MHGs for? "They are tools of control used by purveyors of religion to cement their grip on power," says Pagel. "As soon as you have a large society generating lots of goods and services, this wealth can be put to use by someone who can grab the reins of power. The most immediate way to do this is to align yourself with a supreme deity and then make lists of things people can and cannot do, and these become 'morals' when applied to our social behaviour. — Anonymous

Having culture means we are the only animal that acquires the rules of its daily living from the accumulated knowledge of our ancestors, rather than from the genes they pass to us. — Mark Pagel

A good quote: A timeless capsule of truth. — Garry Fitchett

Humans like to think of themselves as unusual. We've got big brains that make it possible for us to think, and we think that we have free will and that our behavior can't be described by some mechanistic set of theorems or ideas. But even in terms of much of our behavior, we really aren't very different from other animals. — Mark Pagel

The intensity of mattering, while ideologically constructed, is nevertheless always beyond
ideological challenge because it is called into existence affectively. — Linda Kintz

Sir, I have seen your film and it is vulgar! Madame, my film rises below vulgarity. — Mel Brooks

It might be inevitable that we have to confront the idea that our destiny is to be one world with one language. — Mark Pagel

No wonder the creationists don't believe the darwinian account. — Mark Pagel

What drives the separation of groups of people into subgroups is the desire to control resources. We begin with a single culture, and over time the number of individuals within that culture expands. — Mark Pagel

Each of you possesses the most powerful, dangerous and subversive trait that natural selection has ever devised. It's a piece of neural audio technology for rewiring other people's minds. I'm talking about your language. — Mark Pagel

We were at a swap meet in Cochituate last year, and there was this Boy Scout troop with a sign that read, 'Help Boy Scouts, Blind Kids.' Toby saw it, and he grabbed my shirt collar and pulled me away. I asked what was wrong, and with this scared expression on his face, he said, That's not right. They need to be stopped.'
I cracked up. 'Oh, no,' I said.
'When I asked him why helping blind kids and Boy Scouts was bad, Toby's whole face went white. He said, 'Forget it. Let's go.' But I had to know what the hell he was talking about, so I made him walk back over with me. We looked at the sign together, and finally he mumbled, 'I didn't see the comma. — Bill Konigsberg

Judgement is always based on experience and sometimes you will battle a person's history first, before commonsense will ever win the war. — Shannon L. Alder

We were wavering around like a ship without a sail. — Judy Holliday

I like vinyl because it's not quite random access. You have to pick up the needle, flip the record. I do think that an 18-20 minute block of music is sacred, and I can see why it's catching on. I really don't know if it will stay, but it's such a bizarre world, I think it's possible. — John Vanderslice

I think the driving force for cultural evolution is this desire for groups to be splitting off and separating and forming subgroups insofar as the environment will allow it. We see great cultural diversity and large numbers of cultures per unit area in regions of the world in which the environment is really rich. — Mark Pagel

Any time anyone fires bullets in an action movie that don't hit the target it immediately undermines the movie. — Shane Black

Don't go to war no more. Steady peace because peace is all we need. — Katherine Jackson

Human cultural diversity is vast; the range of cultural practices, beliefs, and languages that we speak is vast. — Mark Pagel

The schizophrenic delirium lays bare the material processes of the unconscious — Gilles Deleuze

Nothing in our evolutionary history specifically prepared us to live in large societies. Almost everything about the way culture works does. — Mark Pagel