“We are not individually much cleverer than the average animal, a heron or a mole, but the knack of our species lies in our capacity to transmit our accumulated knowledge down the generations. The slowest among us can, in a few hours, pick up ideas that it took a few rare geniuses a lifetime to acquire.
Yet what is distinctive is just how selective we are about the topics we deem it possible to educate ourselves in. Our energies are overwhelmingly directed towards material, scientific and technical subjects – and away from psychological and emotional ones. Much anxiety surrounds the question of how good the next generation will be at maths; very little around their abilities at marriage or kindness. We devote inordinate hours to learning about tectonic plates and cloud formations, and relatively few fathoming shame and rage.
The assumption is that emotional insight might be either unnecessary or in essence unteachable, lying beyond reason or method, an unreproducible phenomenon best abandoned to individual instinct and intuition. We are left to find our own path around our unfeasibly complicated minds – a move as striking (and as wise) as suggesting that each generation should rediscover the laws of physics by themselves.”
Source: The School of Life: An Emotional Education
“These very basic concepts of good and bad gave me a concrete foundation; at the very least, if I could discern good from bad, I would be less likely to base my life solely on emotions.”
Source: Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose
“When I experienced pleasurable emotions, I was at peace; when I lacked them, I felt anxiety. When I experienced positive emotions, I felt my life was meaningful. When I lacked them, it felt void of purpose and meaning.”
Source: Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose
“How sad, ye Gods, how sad the world is at evening, how mysterious the mists over the swamps! You will know it when you have wandered astray in those mists, when you have suffered greatly before dying, when you have walked through the world carrying an unbearable burden. You know it too when you are weary and ready to leave this earth without regret; its mists; its swamps and its rivers; ready to give yourself into the arms of death with a light heart, knowing that death alone can comfort you.”
Source: The Master and Margarita
“Emotions had been the primary factor in my planning and decision-making. Most of the time, they made my life feel like a roller coaster ride that ended abruptly with a broken piece of track.”
Source: Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose
“Liyah wasn't surprised at the neglect. She's seen Sayed's war within himself on the day of her arrival. She thought he might be the one person of her acquaintance less willing to give into emotions than she was. (Chapter 11)”
Source: Sheikh's Scandal
“Memories are meaningless without emotion, and aside from love and drugs, nothing spurs an emotional reaction like music.”
Source: Electrasy: Calling All The Dreamers
“The prefrontal cortex, which hosts the ‘logical’ part of the brain, comes second in the process of reading the news. We are vulnerable to manipulation by those who appeal to our emotions with the intent to pursue their own agendas.”
“The idea of cold, unbiased, ‘mathematical’ rationality, while long celebrated in many schools of philosophy, is not backed by neuroscience.”
“Writing history is slippery, there is little Truth with an upper case T, but a lot of lower-case “truths” that are filtered through the perceptions of others.”
Source: "Look Here, Sir, What a Curious Bird": Searching for Ali, Alfred Russel Wallace's Faithful Companion