Primitive Quotes - Page 23

• The common view of marriage as a primitive institution implies in the man more than arbitrary superiority, such as he exercised over the child, which still remained free. The woman's slavery was assumed to be for life.

  Henry Adams

  Marriage, Children, Men

  Henry Adams (1973). “Historical Essays”, p.1, Georg Olms Verlag

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• shocked to realize how much vitality is required simply to support our primitive requirements, we wonder, bewildered, where Art fits in.

  Muriel Barbery

  Art, Support, Vitality

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• Without the parallel development of systems of monetary - and credit-based exchange - there could have been no development of economies beyond the most primitive organizational forms and the most geographically restricted sales.

  Peter Dicken

  Credit, Development, Economy

  "Global Shift: Mapping the Changing Contours of the World Economy". Book by Peter Dicken, 1986.

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• But the fact that the word "chattel" has survived as the inclusive legal term for all movable goods, points, not merely to the great importance of cattle in primitive times, but to the importance of the notion of sale or barter in generating the institution of property.

  Edward Jenks

  Facts, Institutions, Importance

  Edward Jenks (1922). “A Short History of English Law: From the Earliest Times to the End of the Year 1919”

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• I'd support life extension by whatever means, from cryonic suspension to cyborgism to coding ourselves into our computers or whatever. There is nothing noble or beautiful or dignified about dying. Like poverty, it is ugly, nasty, brutal and primitive.

  Robert Anton Wilson

  Beautiful, Mean, Support

  Source: theanarchistlibrary.org

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• Going back into the history of a word, very often into Latin, we come back pretty commonly to pictures or models of how things happen or are done. These models may be fairly sophisticated and recent, as is perhaps the case with 'motive' or 'impulse', but one of the commonest and most primitive types of model is one which is apt to baffle us through its very naturalness and simplicity.

  J. L. Austin

  Latin, Simplicity, Done

  "A Plea for Excuses". Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, www.ditext.com. 1956.

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• Reptiles and amphibians are sometimes thought of as primitive, dull and dimwitted. In fact, of course, they can be lethally fast, spectacularly beautiful, surprisingly affectionate and very sophisticated.

  David Attenborough

  Beautiful, Reptiles, Dull

  "Life in Cold Blood". Documentary, 2008.

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• just as violence is the last refuge of the inarticulate, so it is also the first resort of the incompetent, the easy out for the man who is capable of expressing himself only in the most primitive and vulgar of dramatic terms. He leaves us with only the obscenity of violence per se - and the pornographer thereof will always be with us, in film as in any other medium. And so will his audience.

  Judith Crist

  Men, Lasts, Violence

  Judith Crist (1968). “The private eye, the cowboy, and the very naked girl: movies from Cleo to Clyde”

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• The subject matter covered in Carmina stays pretty basic: love, lust, the pleasures of drinking and the heightened moods evoked by springtime. These primitive and persistently relevant themes are nicely camouflaged by the Latin and old German texts, so the listener can actually feign ignorance while listening to virtually X-rated lyrics. (Veni Veni Venias! Come, come come now!)The music itself toggles between huge forces and a single voice, juxtaposing majesty and intimacy with ease.

  Carl Orff

  Latin, Drinking, Ignorance

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• Brent Berlin and Paul Kay in Basic Color Terms demonstrate exhaustively and empirically, the very simple thesis that anywhere in the world, as a language develops and acquires names for color, the colors always enter in the same order. The most primitive are black and white. Then red. Then either green or yellow.

  Alexander Theroux

  Black And White, Simple, Order

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• There are two ways of avoiding fear: one is by persuading ourselves that we are immune from disaster, and the other is by the practice of sheer courage. The latter is difficult, and to everybody becomes impossible at a certain point. The former has therefore always been more popular. Primitive magic has the purpose of securing safety, either by injuring enemies, or by protecting oneself by talismans, spells, or incantations.

  Bertrand Russell

  Practice, Two, Safety

  Bertrand Russell (1986). “Bertrand Russell on God and Religion”

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• Human beings are born with the instinct to express themselves through movement. Even before he could communicate with words, primitive man was dancing to the beat of his own heart.

  Bob Fosse

  Dance, Heart, Men

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• We may... have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth... The developmental process described in this essay has been a process of evolution from primitive beginnings-a process whose successive stages are characterized by an increasingly detailed and refined understanding of nature. But nothing that has been or will be said makes it a process of evolution toward anything.

  Thomas Kuhn

  Nature, Science, Understanding

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• How to become a really modern society when today we are so - as a human being, we feel so powerful. We have high technology and a superb way of controlling our life. And at the same time, in many ways we are so primitive. We are not on - even just a step away from the most brutal and primitive crudity. To be very crude on those issues, which is always challenges and we always have to look at the situation like a mirror, to draw some understanding.

  Ai Weiwei

  Powerful, Technology, Understanding

  Source: www.politico.com

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• Life on a small farm might seem primitive, but by living such a life we become able to discover the Great Path. I believe that one who deeply respects his neighborhood and everyday world in which he lives will be shown the greatest of all worlds.

  Masanobu Fukuoka

  Believe, Garden, Everyday

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• The glory of the farmer is that, in the division of labors, it is his part to create. All trade rests at last on his primitive activity. He stands close to Nature; he obtains from the earth the bread and the meat. The food which was not, he causes to be.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Garden, Division Of Labor

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.393, Penguin

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• A garden was the primitive prison, till man with Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily sinned himself out of it.

  Charles Lamb

  Men, Garden, Evil

  Charles Lamb (1838). “The letters of Charles Lamb, with a sketch of his life. The poetical works”, p.284

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• The conception of gods originated in fear and curiosity. Primitive man, unable to understand the phenomena of nature, and harassed by them, saw in every terrifying manifestation some sinister force expressly directed against him; and as ignorance and fear are the parents of all superstition, the troubled fancy of primitive man wove the God idea.

  Emma Goldman

  Ignorance, Men, Primitive Man

  Emma Goldman (1915). “Mother Earth, a Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Social Science and Literature”

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• Only in time of fear is government thrown back to its primitive and sole function of self-defense and the many interests of which it is the guardian become subordinate to that.

  Jane Addams

  Fear, Government, Self

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• Only a country that is based upon an extremely primitive religion, which is Christianity, I am a devoted enemy of monotheism in all of its forms, could have come with a categorizing of people as one thing or the other.

  Gore Vidal

  Country, People, Enemy

  "Fresh Air Remembers Writer And Critic Gore Vidal". www.npr.org. August 2, 2012.

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• I said, well, it's a very primitive country, the United States, and it's full of superstitions, which come out of a very fundamental religious bias, which is primitive Christianity.

  Gore Vidal

  Country, Religious, United States

  "Fresh Air Remembers Writer And Critic Gore Vidal". www.npr.org. August 2, 2012.

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• The theme of the diary is always the personal, but it does not mean only a personal story: it means a personal relationship to all things and people. The personal, if it is deep enough, becomes universal, mythical, symbolic; I never generalize, intellectualise. I see, I hear, I feel. These are my primitive elements of discovery. Music, dance, poetry and painting are the channels for emotion. It is through them that experience penetrates our bloodstream.

  Anais Nin

  Mean, Discovery, People

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• There is a relative order to the fossilized species of plants found in the geologic record for which Flood Geology cannot account, unless you can imagine apple and orange trees with Nike sneakers on their roots, racing past the magnolias and primitive mammals, leaving the ginkgoes back there with the dinosaurs when the Flood waters began to rise.

  Frank Zindler

  Nike, Past, Order

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• The 'gallows' are not only a symbol of death, but also a symbol of cruelty, terror and irreverence for life; the common denominator of primitive savagery, medieval fanaticism and modern totalitarianism.

  Arthur Koestler

  Irreverence, Common, Medieval

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• Art addresses itself to the mind, and not to the eyes. It has always been considered in this way by primitive peoples, and they are right.

  Jean Dubuffet

  Art, Eye, Mind

  Jean Dubuffet (1974). “Dubuffet: Paintings, Drawings, Gouaches 1946-1966 ; March, 1974, Donald Morris Gallery”

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