Deflating Human Beings: Sources and Quotations from Around the World, v. 2

by Xiuwu R. Liu (Other)

Overview

This collection of sources and quotations offers a panorama of the downside of the human condition, human conduct, and human nature: vanity, errors, sins, limitations, illusions, vulnerability, stupidity, inanity, misunderstanding, ignorance, self-deception, cruelty and much more, at individual, group, institutional and societal levels. Quotes—some may better be called excerpts—are selected from classics from around the world, from antiquity onward. To provide the widest coverage, it also samples contemporary works including college textbooks and trade books in two dozen fields or academic disciplines, highlighting history, literature and philosophy. Toward the same goal, it dips into published collections of quotes—as bibliographic record as much as for their insights—and borrows from wits and aphorists both well-known and obscure, providing a showcase for their labors and fancy, for this is, after all, mostly a compendium of human folly and worse. The serious general reader, college students and faculty will find much to ponder in these quotes and excerpts. You may even find inspiration in this, among other things, anti-self-help collection. (This is the second of four volumes.)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940162726456
Publisher:	Hermit Studio
Publication date:	07/10/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

I've been an assistant professor of interdisciplinary studies at Miami University since 1994. In 26 years as an academic recluse, I haven't published a paper in a journal or presented one at a conference. I have no real estate, stocks, bonds or savings; no TV or home phone. I never look at my cell phone, for I've never had one. Where I'm inconsistent is that I've bought too many books, a manifestation of greed, vanity, delusion (see v. 1, no. 547) and folly. (Some may say this book—even this very bio—is yet another such manifestation.) Though I've gone through 1,000 books for deflationary quotes on human beings, that hasn't affected my mood much; my last vacation was in 2008. And I skipped all my graduation ceremonies.