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Quote by Margaret Cavendish

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The Blazing World

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Author

Margaret Cavendish
Margaret Cavendish

Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, was an English writer and philosopher who made significant contributions to the early modern period. She was one of the first women to publish her own works and is considered a pioneer of the novel form. more

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“[A]s moral philosophers through the ages have pointed out, a philosophy of living based on “Not everyone, just me!” falls apart as soon as one sees oneself from an objective standpoint as a person just like others. It is like insisting that “here,” the point in space one happens to be occupying at the moment, is a special place in the universe.”

AltruismEgoismImpartialityAmoral EgoismPoint Of View Of The UniverseEqual ConsiderationImpartial View
Book:The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
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“The aim of therapy is not to help people transition through a sex change, and nor is it to try to persuade them against having a sex change. Neither of these aims is appropriate as they would indicate an overt or hidden agenda on the part of the therapist, who would not be in a position to help the patient, as their own political, moral or religious ideals would interfere with their ability to adopt an essentially impartial position.”

TherapyTransgenderTransLgbtqiaImpartialityCounselling
Book:TRANS: Exploring Gender Identity and Gender Dysphoria
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“Children love both magic and science for the same reason both are enablers. Both offer power and solutions to impossible problems. But then something shifts when people discover the instability magic brings to existence. It shatters the world that’s been built on predictability and logic. Suddenly the material, the countable, the definable is pulled from underfoot by the capricious, slippery and ego-centric nature of the mind. In that respect it’s the opposite of science, which remains dispassionate and impartial to the observer, predictable no matter what. The laws of motion won’t change because the scientist gets a speeding fine.”

SciencePowerMagicEnablingPredictabilityImpartialityDispassionate
Book:Magic
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“How can we humans claim ourselves to be superior to other animals? Is it because of the technological development we’ve made? Destroying one resource to create another one! Egotism is what we humans are fraught with… We boast of our intellectual superiority, but why do we have to depend upon a dog to sniff out a thief, one from our own race? Why do we need a dog for that? Why don't we just train ourselves and do the job on our own? The defence we produce here is that we don't have as many olfactory receptors in our nose as there are in a dog, and a part of a dog’s brain is devoted to analyzing smells. But then why is our developed logical and intellectual ability considered superior to their developed instinctive abilities? Isn't it ironical that a race that considers itself superior to others needs another race that it looks down upon, to sniff out someone of its own race? Doesn't it seem at variance with our own asset, logic that is, that we, who haven't yet developed a reliable device to predict an earthquake, consider ourselves better than a race that has an uncanny ability to predict future catastrophe? Being at the top of the food chain isn’t everything; even the dinosaurs disappeared, and the ones which were at the bottom still exist… I truly believe in nature's impartiality.”

HumansGodEqualityAnimalsImpartialitySuperiorInstinctive AbilityLogical Ability
Book:The Web of Karma
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