Men

577 quotes found

"Then God said, "Let us make man in our likeness, and let there be a creature not only the product of earth, but also gifted with heavenly, spiritual elements, which will bestow on him reason, intellect, and understanding." Truth then appeared, falling before God's throne, and in all humility exclaimed: "Deign, O God, to refrain from calling into being a creature who is beset with the vice of lying, who will tread truth under his feet." Peace came forth to support this petition. "Wherefore, O lord, shall this creature appear on earth, a creature so full of strife and contention, to disturb the peace and harmony of thy creation? He will carry the flame of quarrel and ill-will in his trail; he will bring about war and destruction in his eagerness for gain and conquest." Whilst they were pleading against the creation of man, there was heard, arising from another part of the heavens, the soft voice of Charity: "Sovereign of the universe." the voice exclaimed, in all its mildness, "vouchsafe thou to create a being in thy, likeness, for it will be a noble creature striving to imitate thy attributes by its actions. I see man now in Spirit, that being with God's breath in his nostrils, seeking to perform his great mission, to do his noble work. I see him now in spirit, approaching the humble hut, seeking out those who are distressed and wretched to comfort them, drying the tears of the afflicted and despondent, raising up them that are bowed down in spirit, reaching his helping hand to those who are in need of help, speaking peace to the heart of the widow, and giving shelter to the fatherless. Such a creature can not fail to be a glory to his Maker." The Creator approved of the pleadings of Charity, called man into being, and cast Truth down to the earth to flourish there; as the Psalmist says (Ps. lxxxv. 12): "Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven to abide with man"; and he dignified Truth by making her his own seal."

- Man

0 likesThemesMen
"Racial and national contentions are not restricted to any particular people or land; we find them in every country.The politician is too near to these... to see them in their proper light; even the historian is not far enough away from them to see them in their right perspective. ...For the anthropologist there are only two well-marked phases in human history. The first phase is that of Natural subsistence—an infinitely long and monotonous chapter, stretching over a million of years or more. The second is the phase of Artificial subsistence—a short chapter covering a period of 10,000 or 12,000 years at the utmost... In the first or long phase mankind was broken into small and scattered groups which gained as best they could a sparse, uncertain, and coarse sustenance from the natural produce of shore and stream, moorland and woodland. In the second or short phase man conquered nature; by means of cultivation and domestication he forced from the soil a sure and abundant supply of food, thus rendering possible the existence of our modern massed populations. ...In that immense first phase of our history an elaborate mental machinery had been evolved for binding small groups of mankind into social units. ...The mental adaptations which modern man has inherited from the immensity of his past we may briefly describe as part of Nature's tribal machinery. ...in our modern racial strifes and national agitations we see man's inherited tribal instincts at war with his present-day conditions of life. We have broken up, or are attempting to break up, Nature's ancient tribal machinery and at the present time are striving to replace her designs by others evolved in the minds of modern statesmen and politicians. ...We cannot understand the nature of our modern racial and national problems until we perceive that in these days we are endeavouring to build a new world out of the wreckage of an old."

- Man

0 likesThemesMen
"No notion of primitive man's concept of the external world, his analysis of himself, of the nature of the godhead, etc., is possible unless it be recognized that, as among us, there exist, roughly speaking, two general types of temperament: the man of action and the thinker. ...the man of action predominates overwhelmingly. But this predomination carries with it a far greater significance among primitive people than among us for the very simple reason that the population in any specific group is so small. ...neither the man of action nor the thinker has much understanding of and still less sympathy for the other... The man of action, broadly characterized, is oriented toward the object, interested primarily in practical results, and indifferent to the claims and stirrings of his inner self. ...The thinker ...although he, too, is definitely desirous of practical results ...is nevertheless impelled by his whole nature to spend considerable time in analyzing his subjective states and attaches great importance both to their influence upon his actions and to the explanations ...The former is satisfied that the world exists and that things happen. Explanations are of secondary importance. ...He prefers an explanation in which the purely mechanical relation ...is specifically stressed. His mental rhythm ...is characterized by a demand for endless repetition ...or, at best, of events all of which are of the same general level. Change for him means essentially some abrupt transformation. Monotony holds no terrors for him. ...his mentality is written over the vast majority of myths and magical incantations. ...Now the rhythm of the thinker is quite different. ...He insists on a description couched either in terms of a gradual progress and evolution from one to many and from simple to complex, or on the postulation of a cause and effect relation."

- Man

0 likesThemesMen
"The only thing about a classroom more important to adolescent boys than whether girls are present is whether or not it is on fire.Advocates of coeducation will tell you that the boys are learning to regard the girls as "human beings" rather than as sexual objects. These are the kinds of people who imagine that most males anywhere, under any circumstances – short of affliction by senility, homosexuality, or Bella Abzug – ever refrain from regarding females as sexual objects. These are the "imaginative" types of people who run our schools. They tend to think that their sexual interest in budding adolescent girls is their own secret perversion. It happens to be shared by the boys in the school (as well as by all the other male teachers).If the educator is particularly creative and imaginative, he will suppose that these young "human beings" are learning a lot about life in their work together. What in fact the boys are learning is that unless they are exceptionally "bright' and obedient, they will be exceeded in their studies by most of the girls. Unless you are imaginative, you will see that this is a further drag on their already faltering attention to Longfellow's Evangeline. Clearly in a losing game in masculine terms, the boys react in two ways: They put on a show for the girls and dominate the class anyway, or they drop out. Enough of them eventually drop out, in fact, to disguise the otherwise decided statistical superiority of female performance in school. But they do not drop out soon enough to suit educators for whom aggressive boys are the leading problem in every high school."

- Boy

0 likesThemesGenderMen
"When we wrote Ecofeminism we raised the issue of reductionist, mechanistic science and the attitude of mastery over and conquest of nature as an expression of capitalist patriarchy. Today the contest between an ecological and feminist world-view and a worldview shaped by capitalist patriarchy is more intense than ever. This contest is particularly intense in the area of food. GMOs embody the vision of capitalist patriarchy. They perpetuate the idea of ‘master molecules’and mechanistic reductionism long after the life sciences have gone beyond reductionism, and patents on life reflect the capitalist patriarchal illusion of creation. There is no science in viewing DNA as a ‘master molecule’ and genetic engineering as a game of Lego, in which genes are moved around without any impact on the organism or the environment. This is a new pseudo-science that has taken on the status of a religion.Science cannot justify patents on life and seed. Shuffling genes is not making life; living organisms make themselves. Patents on seed mean denying the contributions of millions of years of evolution and thousands of years of farmers’ breeding. One could say that a new religion, a new cosmology, a new creation myth is being put in place, where biotechnology corporations like Monsanto replace Creation as ‘creators’. GMO means ‘God move over’.Stewart Brand has actually said ‘We are as gods and we had better get used to it.’"

- Patriarchy

0 likesFamilyLawSocial sciencesFeminismMen
"Tipu's proclamation created universal resentment and the whole country rose in rebellion. Fearing forcible conversion about 30,000 Brahmins alone fled to Travancore. The Kottayam and Kadattanand Rajas sought the English East India Company's protection. Calicut was attacked in November, 1788. Tipu's officers laid hands on the Karanavappad of Manjeri. The Nairs of Calicut and South Malabar headed by Ravi Varma and other princes of the Padinjare Kovilakam turned in despair on their oppressors. Tipu set 6,000 troops under M. Lally to raise the siege, but Ravi Varma could not be driven out of the field. Earlier, in 1789, Tipu himself came down to Malabar via the Tamarasseri Ghat to enforce his proclamation at the point of his sword. General orders were issued to his army that 'every being in the district without distinction should be burned, that they should be traced to their lurking places, and that all means of truth and falsehood, force or fraud should be employed to effect their universal conversion'. The Kadattanad Raja's fortified palace at Kuttipuram was surrounded and 2,000 Nairs, forced to surrender after a resistance of several days, were circumcised and regaled with beef. Several. Rajas and rich land owners fled to Travancore where the Dharma Raja rendered them all help to rehabilitate themselves in their new surroundings. The poor Nairs, however, retreated into the jungles and were relentlessly pursued by Mysorean troops. From their jungle homes the Nairs could engage themselves in a kind of guerrilla warfare against the enemy forces. Hence Tipu organised a regular and systematic Nair hunt with the help of his soldiers. He then proceeded to Cannanore and after celebrating the marriage of his son with the daughter of the Ali Raja, marched along the coast of Chowghat to overawe the native population by a show of his power. From there he retired to Coimbatore after making arrangements for the administrative reorganisation of the province and leaving a permanent army of occupation to frighten the population into passive submission.""

- Forced circumcision

0 likesMenReligion and violence
"The reversion of Mangalore to the possession of Tipu was signalized by the forcible circumcision of many thousands of Indian Christians and their deportation to Seringapatam. A revolt in Coorg next year led to the same treatment of the greater part of the inhabitants the occasion being marked by Tipu's assumption of the tide of Badshah. ... A simultaneous rebellion occurred now in Coorg and Malabar, and the Sultan, passing through Coorg to quiet it, entered Malabar. Large parties of the Nairs were surrounded and offered the alternative of death or circumcision. ... Over 8,000 temples were also desecrated, their roofs of gold, silver and copper and the treasures buried under the idols amounting to many lakhs, being treated as royal plunder....His orders were, that 'every being in the district, without distinction, should be honoured with Islam; that the houses of such as fled to avoid that honour should be burned; that they should be traced to their lurking places, and that all means of truth and falsehood, fraud or force, should be employed' to effect their universal conversion. The following is a translation of an inscription on the stone found at Seringapatam, which was to have been set up in a conspicuous place in the fort:"Oh Almighty God! dispose the whole body of infidels! Scatter their tribe, cause their feet to stagger! Overthrow their councils, change their state, destroy their very root! Cause death to be near them, cut off from them the means of sustenance! Shorten their days! Be their bodies the constant object of their cares (i.e. infest them with diseases), deprive their eyes of sight, make black their faces (i.e. bring shame).""

- Forced circumcision

0 likesMenReligion and violence
"James Scurry, a British sailor, was taken prisoner by the French and was among the 500 British prisoners of war handed over to Haidar by the French Admiral Suffrein in June 1782. Scurry was barely sixteen years old then. After being lodged in Bangalore for a few months, he and several of his batch of prisoners were packed off to Srirangapatna. Here, after shaving off their heads, the unfortunate prisoners were to learn that Haidar had ordered for their forced circumcision and thereby a conversion to Islam. Scurry writes: ‘A mat, and a kind of sheet, was provided for each of us, wewere ordered to arrange ourselves in two rows, and then lie down on our mats. This being done, the guards, barbers . . . came among us, and seizing the youngest, Randal Cadman, a midshipman, they placed him on a cudgeree pot, when four of these stout men held his legs and arms, while the barber performed his office [circumcised him]. In this manner, they went through the operation, and in two hours, the “pious” work wasfinished, and we were laid on our separate mats.’56 Even as they lay writhing in pain and being fed a strong opiate, majum, priests were ushered in to instruct the ‘converts’ on the theology of their new faith and its tenets. The converted were then drafted into Haidar’s chela (slave) battalion. Their ears were pierced and a slave’s mark put on each of them. They were normally given excruciating tasks and many kept fainting while they did these. The chelas were bundled together in dank, dingy rooms, with little place to even breathe and surrounded by mounds of filth that was seldom cleaned. All of this led to the outbreak of numerous diseases and fatal epidemics.57 Scurry managed to escape only in 1791 and reached a small fort that was under Maratha control and thereafter joined a British detachment operating with the Maratha army near Dharwad. Another prisoner of war James Bristow recounts the horrific ritual of forcible conversion and circumcision that took place in September 1781 at the behest of one Sergeant Dempster whose name repeatedly occurs in all accounts as the collaborator conducting this act: This incident spread general terror amongst the rest of the prisoners, everyone apprehending that he might be the next victim devoted to Mahometism; nor were our fears groundless, for early in January 1782, the same persons entered our prison, accompanied by Sergeant Dempster, and made a second selection of fourteen, in which number I had the misfortune to be included. As Dempster was suspected of a share in this horrid business, at least so far as pointing out the objects on whom the choice ought to fall; every one of us were highly exasperated against him, and it was fortunate for him that he was protected by his guards. The treatment the first victim had undergone, served in some degree to apprise us of the inutility of resistance. With horror and indignation, we swallowed the narcotic potion, and those whom the dose had no effect upon, were forcibly seized and pinioned by stout coffres whilst the operation [circumcision] was performed (having previously shaved us in the customary manner). After the operation, our right ears were perforated and small silver rings with round knobs fixed in them, this being the mark of slavery amongst the Mahometans. As soon as we had recovered from this diabolical ceremony, we were transferred to what is termed the tyrant’s Chaylah battalions (that is, slaves), these are composed of such of his own subjects as have been condemned to perpetual slavery, and such unfortunate captives as he takes in war . . . after we had been made what was termed Musselmen, we neglected no opportunity of evincing our contempt for the religion of our tormentors, and the cruel force they had employed against us, by catching dogs and bandicoots and circumcising them publicly."

- Forced circumcision

0 likesMenReligion and violence