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Quote by Pandora Sykes

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How Do We Know We're Doing It Right: & Other Essays on Modern Life

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Pandora Sykes

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“Look, I don't know what it's like to be you...and I'm not going to pretend we didn't grow up in different worlds." Angie leveled her face closer to Vince's ear. "But I do know what it's like to be depressed. ... I remember how it was, feeling like you're standing on the outside, watching yourself--wondering why you feel the way you do. Like there's something heavy and horrible sitting on your shoulders, coloring the way you see things. I remember wondering why I couldn't snap myself out of it." The recollection poured to of her so easily, she didn't have to think about it. "I know what it's like to just want to feel normal, never mind happy.”

“Apes do evidently understand what others are doing, and they can prudently do the same, in which sense they "cooperate"—for their own reasons. But they lack the ability to symbolically par­ticipate in others' existence and thus communalize their own. [...] "Traditional models of economic decision-making assume that peo­ple are self-interested rational maximizers. Empirical research has demonstrated, however, that people will take into account the inter­est of others and are sensitive to norms of cooperation and fairness. [...] Here we show that in an ultimatum game, humans' closest living relatives, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), are rational maximizers and are not sensitive to fairness. These results support the hypothesis that other-regarding preferences and aversion to inequitable outcomes, which play key roles in human social organization, distinguish us from our clos­est living relatives." {Jensen, Call, and To masello 2007, 107; see also Jensen et al. 2006) So much, then, for the dismal economic science—whose future is not bright either, inasmuch as chimpanzees are disappearing.”

“If I had to sum up motherhood in one philosophical statement it would be this: They come out of the womb as narcissists, and you have eighteen years to try to change that. If, by the time they move out of your house, they are able to consider others with some level of empathy, attend to the feelings of others, and see the world outside themselves and the people who inhabit it as valid and important, you've done your job.”