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Quote by Michel de Montaigne

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The Complete Essays

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Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne

Michel de Montaigne was a French Renaissance philosopher, essayist, and writer. He is considered one of the most significant figures in the history of the essay. Montaigne's work, particularly his book 'Essays', has been influential in the development of modern prose. more

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“The anthropologist Clifford Geertz says that humans are ‘symbolizing, conceptualizing, meaning-seeking’ animals. In our species, he says, ‘the drive to make sense out of our experience, to give it form and order, is evidently as real and as pressing as the more familiar biological needs.’ To Geertz, a human being is an organism ‘which cannot live in a world it is unable to understand.”

HumansHuman NatureHuman SpeciesMeaning MakingSensemakingClifford GeertzGeertz
Book:Triumph Of Narrative
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“[Option 3 for the fat man] Or he can get tough and stick to a big fat steak and a half cup of black coffee three times a day... In doing this he will be somewhat in the class of a pioneer, and a pioneer always meets with suspicion. No matter how well he does, he need not expect the approval of his neighbors. Any disaster that may overtake him, even to the extent of ground moles getting in his lawn, will be blamed on his “red meat” diet...”

Human NatureMeatHomo SapiensRed MeatCarnivore
Author:Dr. Blake F. Donaldson
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“Chaos, the eternal feminine, is also the crushing force of sexual selection. Women are choosy maters (unlike female chimps, their closest animal counterparts). Most men do not meet female human standards. It is for this reason that women on dating sites rate 85 percent of men as below average in attractiveness. It is for this reason that we all have twice as many female ancestors as male (imagine that all the women who have ever lived have averaged one child. Now imagine that half the men who have ever lived have fathered two children, if they had any, while the other half fathered none).41 It is Woman as Nature who looks at half of all men and says, “No!” For the men, that’s a direct encounter with chaos, and it occurs with devastating force every time they are turned down for a date. Human female choosiness is also why we are very different from the common ancestor we shared with our chimpanzee cousins, while the latter are very much the same. Women’s proclivity to say no, more than any other force, has shaped our evolution into the creative, industrious, upright, large-brained (competitive, aggressive, domineering) creatures that we are.42 It is Nature as Woman who says, “Well, bucko, you’re good enough for a friend, but my experience of you so far has not indicated the suitability of your genetic material for continued propagation.”

Human NatureEvolutionary PsychologySexual SelectionHuman MatingFemale NatureSexual Strategies
Book:12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
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