Home / Quotes / Quote by Gertrude Himmelfarb

Quote by Gertrude Himmelfarb

“Postmodernism entices us with the siren call of liberation and creativity, but it may be an invitation to intellectual and moral suicide.”

Quote by Gertrude Himmelfarb

Author

Gertrude Himmelfarb

Gertrude Himmelfarb is an esteemed historian known for her profound insights into modern history and culture. Her research focuses on 19th-century Britain and the United States, particularly on social, political, and moral issues. more

You May Also Like

“The Marxist combination of materialism and determinism is fatally anti-humanistic. It denies a consciousness, a mind, that is independent of material conditions and class relations. It denies a will and volition that are capable of shaping the course of history. It denies an individuality that is not reducible to class. It denies both the idea and the reality of freedom, a freedom that is something more than the "bourgeois" freedom to buy and sell. It denies a morality that transcends class interests. And it denies the spirituality of man.”

Source: On Looking Into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society

“My family owns a music store in Claremont, California, called The Claremont Folk Music Center.”

My Family Folks Stores California Folk Music

Author:Ben Harper

“The computer takes up where psychoanalysis left off. It takes the ideas of a decentered self and makes it more concrete by modeling mind as a multiprocessing machine.”

Mind Ideas Self Left Psychology Computer Machines Concrete Modeling Psychoanalysis

Book:The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit

Source: The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit

“Terrified of being alone, yet afraid of intimacy, we experience widespread feelings of emptiness, of disconnection, of the unreality of self. And here the computer, a companion without emotional demands, offers a compromise. You can be a loner, but never alone. You can interact, but need never feel vulnerable to another person.”

Source: The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit

“One thing is certain: the riddle of mind, long a topic for philosophers, has taken on new urgency. Under pressure from the computer, the question of mind in relation to machine is becoming a central cultural preoccupation. It is becoming for us what sex was to the Victorians--threat and obsession, taboo and fascination.”

Source: The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit

“Ours has been called a culture of narcissism. The label is apt but can be misleading. It reads colloquially as selfishness and self-absorption. But these images do not capture the anxiety behind our search for mirrors. We are insecure in our understanding of ourselves, and this insecurity breeds a new preoccupation with the question of who we are. We search for ways to see ourselves. The computer is a new mirror, the first psychological machine. Beyond its nature as an analytical engine lies its second nature as an evocative object.”

Source: The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit

“Pinball games were constrained by physical limitations, ultimately by the physical laws that govern the motion of a small metal ball. The video world knows no such bounds. Objects fly, spin, accelerate, change shape and color, disappear and reappear. Their behavior, like the behavior of anything created by a computer program, is limited only by the programmer's imagination. The objects in a video game are representations of objects. And a representation of a ball, unlike a real one, never need obey the laws of gravity unless its programmer wants it to.”

Source: The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit

“When the whole world is writing letters, it's easy to lap into the quiet within, tell the story of an hour, keep alive the narrating inner life. To be alone in the presence of one's thought is not a value, only a common practice.”

Thinking World Writing Whole Stories Values Easy Hours Common Practice Alive Solitude Quiet Letters Whole World Thoughtful Lap Inner Life

Author:Vivian Gornick

“When cafe life thrives, talk is a shared limberness of the mind that improves appetite for conversation: an adequate sentence maker is then made good, a good one excellent, an excellent one extraordinary.”

Mind Made Language Conversation Extraordinary Sentences Excellent Thrive Makers Appetite Adequate Cafes

Book:Approaching Eye Level

Source: Approaching Eye Level

“Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class. At a time when I had not yet grasped the significance of the fact that in my house English was a second language, or that I wore dresses while my brother wore pants, I knew--and I knew it was important to know--that Papa worked hard all day long.”

Knows Long Important Hard Facts Girl House Language Work Class Brother Members Dresses My Brother Significance Pants Working Class Papa

Book:The romance of American Communism

Source: The romance of American Communism