The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity QUOTES

1 " Estupefactos, nos adentramos por último en el territorio más pantanoso de todos: el de quienes afirman que entre nosotros hay un número considerable de personas que viven en un cuerpo equivocado y que, por tanto, las pocas certezas que le quedaban a la sociedad (incluidas las certezas arraigadas en la ciencia y el lenguaje) deben ser reformuladas de arriba abajo. "

― Douglas Murray , The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

2 " Sea como fuere, toda exhibición de virtud requiere exagerar los problemas, lo que a su vez hace que los problemas crezcan todavía más. "

― Douglas Murray , The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

3 " Como sabe cualquiera que haya vivido bajo un régimen totalitario, hay algo humillante y hasta autodestructivo en tener que marchar al son de consignas que uno no cree ni puede creer. "

― Douglas Murray , The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

4 " Lo peor es que hemos tratado de reordenar nuestras sociedades, no a partir de lo que sabemos gracias a la ciencia, sino de falsedades políticas patrocinadas por los activistas de las ciencias sociales. "

― Douglas Murray , The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

5 " Las redes se han convertido en el medio ideal para instaurar nuevos dogmas y aplastar al oponente justo cuando más convendría escucharlo. "

― Douglas Murray , The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

6 " ...si llegamos a la conclusión de que el diálogo respetuoso no conduce a ninguna parte, la única herramienta que nos queda es la violencia. "

― Douglas Murray , The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

7 " Internet nos ayuda a recordar, pero también nos lleva a abordar el pasado desde una extraña omnisciencia. Esto convierte al pasado -como todo lo demás- en rehén de cualquier arqueólogo con sed de venganza. "

― Douglas Murray , The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

8 " Antes de la aparición de internet, los errores de alguien podían ser recordados dentro de su comunidad o su círculo íntimo. Empezar de cero en otro lugar era, al menos, una posibilidad. Actualmente, las personas son perseguidas por su doble allá donde vayan. Incluso después de muertas, habrá quien las exhume y saquee su tumba, no con la intención de conocer y perdonar, sino con afán de represalia y venganza. Por debajo de esta actitud subyace el extraño instinto revanchista de nuestra época, un instinto hace que nos creamos mejores que nuestros antepasados, pues sabemos cómo se comportaron y que nosotros los habríamos hecho mejor. Detrás de esto se oculta una falacia colosal: evidentemente, la gente de hoy en día cree que habría actuado mejor porque sabe cómo termina la historia, pero nuestros ancestros no contaban con ese lujo. "

― Douglas Murray , The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

9 " If somebody has the competency to do something, and the desire to do something, then nothing about their race, sex or sexual orientation should hold them back. But minimizing difference is not the same as pretending difference does not exist. To assume that sex, sexuality and skin colour mean nothing would be ridiculous. But to assume that they mean everything will be fatal. "

― Douglas Murray , The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

10 " Disagreement is not oppression. Argument is not assault. Words – even provocative or repugnant ones – are not violence. The answer to speech we do not like is more speech. "

― Douglas Murray , The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

11 " As one of the consequences of the death of God, Friedrich Nietzsche foresaw that people could find themselves stuck in cycles of Christian theology with no way out. Specifically that people would inherit the concepts of guilt, sin and shame but would be without the means of redemption which the Christian religion also offered. Today we do seem to live in a world where actions can have consequences we could never have imagined, where guilt and shame are more at hand than ever, and where we have no means whatsoever of redemption. "

― Douglas Murray , The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

12 " From Michel Foucault these thinkers absorbed their idea of society not as an infinitely complex system of trust and traditions that have evolved over time, but always in the unforgiving light cast when everything is viewed solely through the prism of ‘power’. Viewing all human interactions in this light distorts, rather than clarifies, presenting a dishonest interpretation of our lives. Of course power exists as a force in the world, but so do charity, forgiveness and love. If you were to ask most people what matters in their lives very few would say ‘power’. Not because they haven’t absorbed their Foucault, but because it is perverse to see everything in life through such a monomaniacal lens. "

― Douglas Murray , The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

13 " If two people are in disagreement about something important, they may disagree as amicably as they like if it is just a matter of getting to the truth or the most amenable option. But if one party finds their whole purpose in life to reside in some aspect of that disagreement, then the chances of amicability fade fast and the likelihood of reaching any truth recedes. "

― Douglas Murray , The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

14 " public life is now dense with people desperate to man the barricades long after the revolution is over. Either because they mistake the barricades for home, or because they have no other home to go to. In each case a demonstration of virtue demands an overstating of the problem, which then causes an amplification of the problem. "

― Douglas Murray , The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

15 " There is a gigantic modern fallacy at work here. For of course people only think that they would have acted better in history because they know how history ended up. People in history didn’t – and don’t – have that luxury. They made good or bad choices in the times and places they were in, given the situations and shibboleths that they found themselves with. "

― Douglas Murray , The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

16 " To her audience in Boston she also explained how white people who see people as individuals rather than by their skin colour are in fact ‘dangerous’.70 Meaning that it took only half a century for Martin Luther King’s vision to be exactly inverted. "

― Douglas Murray , The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

17 " If there was a genuine chance of diminishing racism, sexism or anti-gay sentiment, who would not wish to seize it with every tool and engine at their disposal? The one overwhelming problem with this attitude is that it sacrifices truth in the pursuit of a political goal. "

― Douglas Murray , The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

18 " Prose this bad can only occur when the author is trying to hide something. A theoretical physicist like Sheldon Lee Glashow cannot afford to write in the unreadable prose of the social sciences. He needs to communicate exceptionally complex truths in as simple and clear a language as possible. "

― Douglas Murray , The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

19 " you are only a member of a recognized minority group so long as you accept the specific grievances, political grievances and resulting electoral platforms that other people have worked out for you. Step outside of these lines and you are not a person with the same characteristics you had before but who happens to think differently from some prescribed norm. You have the characteristics taken away from you. "

― Douglas Murray , The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

20 " Second-wave feminist rhetoric placed blame for the female condition entirely on men, or specifically on “patriarchy” . . . The exclusive focus of feminism was on an external social mechanism that had to be smashed or reformed. It failed to take into account women’s intricate connection with nature – that is, with procreation.’ Or why, ‘in this era of the career woman, there has been a denigration, or devaluing of the role of motherhood. "

― Douglas Murray , The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity