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Quote by Hermann Hesse

Work

Klein und Wagner

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Author

Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse was a German poet and novelist, born on July 2, 1877, and died on August 9, 1962. Known for his profound psychological descriptions and exploration of human nature, his works include classics such as 'Steppenwolf' and 'The Glass Bead Game'. more

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“When Hammett turns to the respectable world, the world of respectable society, of affluence and influence, of open personal and political power, he finds only more of the same. The respectability of respectable American society is as much a fiction and a fraud as the phony respectable society manufactured by the criminals. Indeed, he unwaveringly represents the world of crime as a reproduction in both structure and detail of the modern capitalist society it depends on, preys off, and is part of. He not only continually juxtaposes and connects the ambiguously fictional worlds of art and writing with the fraudulently fictional worlds of society; he connects them, juxtaposes them, and sees them in dizzying and baffling interaction... It is into this bottomlessly equivocal, endlessly fraudulent and brutally acquisitive world that Hammett precipitates the Op.”

“If you should chance to strike up a conversation with an articulate, English-speaking Russian in, say, the restaurant of one of the luxury hotels along Lake Geneva, and he is wearing a $3,000 suit and a pair of Gucci loafers, and he tells you that he is an executive of a Russian trading company and wants to talk to you about a joint venture, then there are four possibilities. He may be what he says he is. He may be a Russian intelligence officer working under commercial cover. He may be part of a Russian organized crime group. But the really interesting possibility is that he may be all three—and that none of those three institutions have any problem with the arrangement.”

“Crime increases as IQ decreases in both whites and blacks, but blacks commit more crime than whites who have the same IQ. Lynn suggests that this is because blacks are more likely to have a psychopathic personality, as evidenced, for example, by their inability to work consistently, unlawful behaviors, aggressiveness, failure to pay debts, impulsiveness, deception, recklessness, poor parenting, absence of remorse, and disruptive childhood behavior. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is used to measure psychopathic personality. Blacks and American Indians have the highest psychopathic scores, then Hispanics, followed by whites, then ethnic Japanese and Chinese, who have the lowest scores. Consciousness and character are concentrated in the frontal lobe of the brain, which is a recent evolutionary development and therefore not yet completely stable. Europeans have the most developed frontal lobe and Africans the least.”