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Famous David Stove Quotes

“There are other beliefs which, though disproved countless times, never die out, because they appeal, not to something in everyone, but to a certain perennial type of person. An example is, the belief that everyone is at bottom selfish, or that no one ever acts intentionally except from motives of self-interest. There is a perennial human type to whom this belief is peculiarly and irresistibly congenial. It is almost never a woman. It is a kind of man who is deficient in generous or even disinterested impulses himself, and knows it, but keeps up his self-esteem by thinking that everyone else is really in the same case. He prides himself, both on having the perspicacity to realise, what most people disguise even from themselves, that everyone is selfish, and on having the uncommon candour not to conceal this unpleasant home truth. Who has not met people of this type? In the Australian-English of 50 years ago, there was a wonderful expression for this kind of man: he was said to be 'as flash as a rat with a gold tooth”

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Book:Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity and Other Fables of Evolution
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“People are mostly sane enough, of course, in the affairs of common life: the getting of food, shelter, and so on. But the moment they attempt any depth or generality of thought, they go mad almost infallibly. The vast majority, of course, adopt the local religious madness, as naturally as they adopt the local dress. But the more powerful minds will, equally infallibly, fall into the worship of some intelligent and dangerous lunatic, such as Plato, or Augustine, or Comte, or Hegel, or Marx.”

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Author:David Stove
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