Parochialism Quotes

• Scientists tend to resist interdisciplinary inquiries into their own territory. In many instances, such parochialism is founded on the fear that intrusion from other disciplines would compete unfairly for limited financial resources and thus diminish their own opportunity for research.

  Hannes Alfven

  Science, Opportunity, Discipline

  "Hannes Alfvén: Dean of the Plasma Dissidents". Book by Anthony L. Peratt, p. 192, 1998.

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• The world's religions, for all their parochialism, did supply a kind of consolation for this great ache. This shattering recognition of our mortality is at the root of far more mental illness than I suspect even psychiatrists are aware.

  Stanley Kubrick

  Depression, Roots, World

  Interview with Eric Nordern, Playboy, September 1968.

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• I think that parochialism is built into many kinds of nationalism and educational institutions in which children are brought up to treat their own culture as the unmarked case, and to mark the products of other culture.

  Jay L. Garfield

  Children, Educational, Thinking

  "Buddhist howls". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. December 28, 2012.

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• We are in the middle of a tough, ideological conflict that is being waged across the entire continent. On the one side are those who say that global challenges like migration and terror cannot be met with national parochialism. On the other side are those who would like to see a renaissance of the nation-state.

  Martin Schulz

  Challenges, Renaissance, Migration

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• To conclude this discussion, assessment of justice demands engagement with the 'eyes of mankind',first, because we may variously identify with the others elsewhere and not just with our local community;second, because our choices and actions may affect the lives of others far as well as near;and third,because what they see from their respective perspective of history and geography may help us to overcome our own parochialism.

  Amartya Sen

  Eye, Assessment, Justice

  Amartya Sen (2009). “The Idea of Justice”, p.130, Harvard University Press

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• Once you get past the grand normative claims made in the West for literature, especially the novel, in the post-Christian era - that it is a secular substitute for religion, hallmark of modern civilization, a priori liberal and cosmopolitan, with authors appearing to implicitly embody such pious ideals - you encounter a less agreeable reality: parochialism, blinkered views, even racial prejudices of the kind the bourgeoisie have held everywhere.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Christian, Past, Reality

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• To out-group-members, oxytocin makes you crappier - less cooperative and more preemptively aggressive. It's not the luv hormone. It's the in-group parochialism/xenophobia hormone.

  Robert M. Sapolsky

  Xenophobia, Oxytocin, Groups

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• But there is no doubt that to attempt a novel of ideas is to give oneself a handicap: the parochialism of our culture is intense. For instance, decade after decade bright young men and women emerge from their universities able to say proudly: 'Of course I know nothing about German literature.' It is the mode. The Victorians knew everything about German literature, but were able with a clear conscience not to know much about the French.

  Doris Lessing

  Men, Ideas, Giving

  Doris May Lessing (1989). “The Doris Lessing Reader”, Jonathan Cape

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• I don't want to die and leave a few sad songs and a hump in the ground as my only monument. I want to leave a world that is liberated from trash, pollution, racism, nation-states, nation-state wars and armies, from pomp, bigotry, parochialism, a thousand different brands of untruth and licentious, usurious economics.

  George Jackson

  Song, War, Army

  George Jackson (1970). “Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson”, Chicago Review Press

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• Sunshine takes its intelligent and honourable place in the history of grownup science fiction on the screen and on the page: a genre that seeks to break free of parochialism and think about where and why and what we are without the language of religion... I loved Sunshine for its radical proposal that humans can and will do something about a catastrophe, and that our weapons could be used up in the service of preservation.

  Peter Bradshaw

  Sunshine, Intelligent, Thinking

  "Sunshine" by Peter Bradshaw, www.theguardian.com. April 6, 2007.

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• I assume the same problem exists in Australia as in America of back-biting and jealousy and parochialism among disciplines - there are the scientists, and there are the humanities people, and there are chemists and the physicists and everybody snipes at everybody else and inter-disciplinary communication is rare. But it's very precious and necessary.

  Richard Lewontin

  Communication, America, Australia

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• I have always been spurred on by my not finding expressed anywhere the kinds of perspectives that I thought these issues most perspicuously needed and deserved; but that is just another way of saying that Americans have overwhelmingly expunged from their public understanding the strongest and most clarifying resources out of ancient and traditional European cultures. By far we prefer our familiar and user-friendly parochialisms, and there is no percentage in trying to pry these pachydermal plates apart.

  Kenny Smith

  Issues, Perspective, Understanding

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