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Quote by Boris Pasternak

“Under the old order, which enabled those whose lives were secure to play the fools and eccentrics at the expense of the others while the majority led a wretched existence, it had been only too easy to mistake the foolishness and idleness of a privileged minority for genuine character and originality. But the moment the lower classes had risen, and the privileges of those on top had been abolished, how quickly had those people faded, how unregretfully had they renounced independent ideas--apparently no one had ever had such ideas!”

Quote by Boris Pasternak

Book:Doctor Zhivago
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Doctor Zhivago

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Author

Boris Pasternak
Boris Pasternak

Russian poet, writer, and translator. Boris Pasternak is renowned for his profound psychological insight and beautiful poetic language. His works widely cover themes such as love, humanity, morality, and philosophy, and have had a profound impact on 20th-century literature. more

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Book:The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy
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“The propositions that accompany most of the chapters . . . are not as snappy as I would prefer—but there’s a reason for their caution and caveats. On certain important points, the clamor of genuine scientific dispute has abated and we don’t have to argue about them anymore. But to meet that claim requires me to state the propositions precisely. I am prepared to defend all of them as “things we don’t have to argue about anymore”—but exactly as I worded them, not as others may paraphrase them. Here they are: 1. Sex differences in personality are consistent worldwide and tend to widen in more gender-egalitarian cultures. 2. On average, females worldwide have advantages in verbal ability and social cognition while males have advantages in visuospatial abilities and the extremes of mathematical ability. 3. On average, women worldwide are more attracted to vocations centered on people and men to vocations centered on things. 4. Many sex differences in the brain are coordinate with sex differences in personality, abilities, and social behavior. 5. Human populations are genetically distinctive in ways that correspond to self-identified race and ethnicity. 6. Evolutionary selection pressure since humans left Africa has been extensive and mostly local. 7. Continental population differences in variants associated with personality, abilities, and social behavior are common. 8. The shared environment usually plays a minor role in explaining personality, abilities, and social behavior. 9. Class structure is importantly based on differences in abilities that have a substantial genetic component. 10. Outside interventions are inherently constrained in the effects they can have on personality, abilities, and social behavior.”

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Book:Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class
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“The "left" ABC (Anything But Class) theorists say we are giving too much attention to class. Who exactly is doing that? Surveying the mainstream academic publications, radical journals, and socialist scholars conferences, one is hard put to find much class analysis of any kind. Far from giving too much attention to class power, most U.S. writers and commentators have yet to discover the subject. While pummeling a rather minuscule Marxist Left, the ABC theorists would have us think they are doing courageous battle against hordes of Marxists who dominate intellectual discourse in this country-yet another hallucination they hold in common with conservatives”

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Book:Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
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“Had he lived some centuries ago, in the brightly coloured civilisations of the past, he would have had a definite status, his rank and his income would have corresponded. But in his day the angel of Democracy had arisen, enshadowing the classes with leathern wings, and proclaiming, “All men are equal — all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas,” and so he was obliged to assert gentility, lest he slip into the abyss where nothing counts, and the statements of Democracy are inaudible.”

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Book:Howards End
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“I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges, I see my father strolling out under the ochre sandstone arch, the red tiles glinting like bent plates of blood behind his head, I see my mother with a few light books at her hip standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks with the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its sword-tips black in the May air, they are about to graduate, they are about to get married, they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are innocent, they would never hurt anybody. I want to go up to them and say Stop, don't do it--she's the wrong woman, he's the wrong man, you are going to do things you cannot imagine you would ever do, you are going to do bad things to children, you are going to suffer in ways you never heard of, you are going to want to die. I want to go up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it, her hungry pretty blank face turning to me, her pitiful beautiful untouched body, his arrogant handsome blind face turning to me, his pitiful beautiful untouched body, but I don't do it. I want to live. I take them up like the male and female paper dolls and bang them together at the hips like chips of flint as if to strike sparks from them, I say Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it”

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Author:Sharon Olds
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