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Quote by William Kingdon Clifford

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The Ethics of Belief and Other Essays

This book is a compilation of essays that delve into the philosophical underpinnings of belief, examining its role in ethical decision-making and the broader implications of holding certain beliefs. The essays within explore various aspects of belief, including its formation, justification, and the ethical responsibilities associated with it. more

Author

William Kingdon Clifford
William Kingdon Clifford

William Kingdon Clifford was a British mathematician and philosopher, born on May 4, 1845, and died on March 3, 1879. He made significant contributions to the fields of geometry and algebra in mathematics. more

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“The upshot of pervasive public belief in the uncontrollable sexuality of teenagers, and even of pre-teenagers, is that parents arehalf-hearted in their efforts to supervise and control their children, even when they are filled with anxiety as to their children's ability to cope with a full-fledged sexual relationship. "How can we buck the tide?" parents say helplessly, often without making quite certain that the ocean they see is a real one and not a mirage.”

“A decline in supervision is not the entire story. Even in the fifties there were undersupervised children . . . who nevertheless did not become pregnant at thirteen . . . and who did not smoke anything stronger than an occasional Camel or Lucky Strike. . . . It took a combination of unsupervised children and a permissive, highly charged sexual atmosphere and an influx of easily acquired drugs and the wherewithal to buy them to bring about precocious experimentation by young and younger children. This occurred in the mid-seventies.”

“It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today's children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.”

“The new concept of the child as equal and the new integration of children into adult life has helped bring about a gradual but certain erosion of these boundaries that once separated the world of children from the word of adults, boundaries that allowed adults to treat children differently than they treated other adults because they understood that children are different.”