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Quote by Carl Zimmer

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She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity

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Carl Zimmer
Carl Zimmer

Carl Zimmer is a renowned science writer, born on July 13, 1966. His work spans a wide range of scientific fields, from biology to environmental science, and is known for its clear and engaging writing style. more

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“In addition to the often unsatisfactory cards dealt to us by heredity...each of us will, throughout our lives, suffer innumerable encounters with disease, injury, emotional trauma, and personal defeat. These stochastic encounters are cumulative, and many of them will even come to shape core parts of our beings. But are our identities inextricably linked to our imperfections, struggles and genetic blemishes?”

IdentityGeneticsHeredityImperfectionsPersonal IdentityCore Identity
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“One of them was directly descended from Nathaniel Hawthorne who wrote 'The Scarlet letter'. Mom says everybody immediately began to feel oppressed by their humble backgrounds because they'd forgotten (or didn't know) that anyone who's descended from Nathaniel Hawthorne is also a descendant of John Hathorne, the Salem judge who put just about as many innocent people to death as he could, so was it any wonder that Hawthorne was so good at describing what it felt like to be racked with guilt day and night.”

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“While the estate team's defence may have been relevant to some of the Belleville properties, when applied specifically the the farms of Easterton and Westerton of Glenbanchor it was at best a gross distortion of reality, at worst duplicitous and even dishonest. Their houses were not unsafe; their farms were not too small; their land was not unsuitable for cultivation; the people did not leave of their own volition. The laird was not acting in their best interest but in the estate's, while the claim that no-one was evicted who wished to remain was a downright lie. And, as Fraser-Mackintosh laid bare, the Colonel could have stopped the evictions, but chose not to.”

Highland ClearancesLairdBadenochEvictions1876Belleville EstateGlen BanchorTenant Farmers
Book:Glen Banchor: A Highland Glen and its People
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“And then there was pain and blood and tears, all those things that cause suffering and revolt, the killing of Françoise, the killing of Fouan, vice triumphing, and the stinking, bloodthirsty peasants, vermin who disgrace and exploit the earth. But can you really know? Just as the frost that burns the crops, the hail that chops them down, the thunderstorms which batter them are all perhaps necessary, maybe blood and tears are needed to keep the world going. And how important is human misery when weighed against the mighty mechanism of the stars and the sun? What does God care for us? We earn our bread only by dint of a cruel struggle, day in, day out. And only the earth is immortal, the Great Mother from whom we spring and to whom we return, love of whom can drive us to crime and through whom life is perpetually preserved for her own inscrutable ends, in which even our wretched degraded nature has its part to play.”

PeasantsViceTerreEart
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“These romantic visions of the peasantry were constantly undone by contact with reality, often with devastating consequences for their bearers. The populists, who invested much of themselves in their conception of the peasants, suffered the most in this respect, since the disintegration of that conception threatened to undermine not only their radical beliefs but also their own self-identity.”

PeasantsPopulists
Book:A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891 - 1924
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