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M Quotes

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All M Quotes

“Much of our food system depends on our not knowing much about it, beyond the price disclosed by the checkout scanner; cheapness and ignorance are mutually reinforcing. And it's a short way from not knowing who's at the other end of your food chain to not caring–to the carelessness of both producers and consumers that characterizes our economy today. Of course, the global economy couldn't very well function without this wall of ignorance and the indifference it breeds. This is why the American food industry and its international counterparts fight to keep their products from telling even the simplest stories–"dolphin safe," "humanely slaughtered," etc.–about how they were produced. The more knowledge people have about the way their food is produced, the more likely it is that their values–and not just "value"–will inform their purchasing decisions.”

“Much of our intellectual development is the story of how we learn to sort impressions: self or environment, rocks, trees, clouds, books, cats. It is a story of how we learn to judge and recognize colors, numbers, shapes, and abstract concepts. When we learn a new category, our internal model of the world rotates - often slightly, occasionally more.... Some shifts are emotional: holding a newborn in your hands and understanding just what a rich and varied life will come to this tiny seed of an individual, looking into the eyes of an animal and recognizing a kinship despite having traveled very different evolutionary paths. Some shifts are abstract: learning the crystalline pure beauty of a geometric proof's logic. Fractal geometry also represents a shift, both emotional and abstract...”

“Much of our reasoning about human life and other beings on this planet now rests on the theory of natural selection. Most educated people believe (at least vaguely) in the scientific principle that the living organisms on earth have evolved over billions of years from other organisms that were unlike them, and are now mostly extinct. When this story is told of humanity, it wholly eliminates the role of personal meaning and human intentions in the development of societies and the lives of individuals. The ‘master molecule’ of the gene, falsely endowed with an autonomous power, is most often used to explain personal desires, intentions, and actions. The term ‘gene’ or ‘adaptation’ has replaced intention, purpose, and meaning in most psychological accounts of the ways in which people thrive or fail to thrive in their everyday lives. All of our struggles—such as finding a mate or becoming a compassionate person—can now be recast in terms of their supposed ‘advantages’ of leaving the greatest number of offspring.”

“Much of sportsbooks’ behavior is obviously less about competing with the black market and instead about cultivating a new generation of gamblers. “Anybody under twenty-five they have their eye on,” one former FanDuel employee said of their old company. The vast majority of these bettors would likely never have bet illegally. But the companies know that young people are crucial for their bottom line, that bettors between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five are “the guys that bring you all the money,” the former FanDueler told me.”

“Much of the atrocities that are committed towards Arab women occur partly because the victim does not know that she has a basic right for her body to be hers, for her privacy to be respected and for her education to be a necessity not a privilege she receives if it is financially possible after her brother has been educated.”

“Much of the attention on oceans has portrayed oceans as a villain. Warm water strengthened Hurricane Katrina that pounded Louisiana. Rising sea level will flood islands and coastal areas. Or, we're talking about new opportunities like a new shipping lane in the Arctic because of melting sea ice. These may be the obvious problems, but they're probably not the biggest ones.”

“Much of the clothing is moth-eaten, but I can see what they once were. A skirt with a beaded pattern of pomegranates, another that pulls up, like a curtain, to show a stage with jewelled mechanical puppets underneath. There is even one stitched with the silhouette of dancing fauns as tall as the skirt itself. I've admired Oriana's dresses for their elegance and opulence, but these awaken in me a hunger for a dress that's riotous. They make me wish I'd seen Locke's mother in one of her gowns. They make me think she must have liked to laugh.”

“Much of the Constitution is remarkably simple and straightforward - certainly as compared to the convoluted reasoning of judges and law professors discussing what is called 'Constitutional law,' much of which has no basis in that document....The real question [for judicial nominees] is whether that nominee will follow the law or succumb to the lure of 'a living constitution,' 'evolving standards' and other lofty words meaning judicial power to reshape the law to suit their own personal preferences.”

“Much of the criticism of economic globalization has centered on factory labor abuses. But the majority of the world's poor are not employed in factories; they are self-employed - as peasant farmers, rural peddlers, urban hawkers, and small producers, usually involved in agriculture and small trade in the world's vast "informal" economy .”