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Jonathan Gottschall Quotes

Total quotes: 7
“We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.”
— Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human
Tagged: Dreams, fiction, Reading, Sleep, Storytelling, Virtuality, Writing, Fiction Addiction, Best Reading Quotes
“In short, I set out to write about the darkness in men, but I ended up with a book about how men keep the darkness in check.”
— Jonathan Gottschall, The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch
“I watched because— God help the human race— there's nothing harder not to watch than two men fighting.”
— Jonathan Gottschall, The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch
Tagged: Fighting
“Tolstoy was right — the emotions and ideas in fiction are highly contagious, and people tend to overestimate their immunity to them.”
— Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human
Tagged: fiction, Media Virus
“The storytelling mind is allergic to uncertainty, randomness, and coincidence. It is addicted to meaning. If the storytelling mind cannot find meaningful patterns in the world, it will try to impose them. In short, the storytelling mind is a factory that churns out true stories when it can, but will manufacture lies when it can't.”
— Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human
Tagged: Epistemology, fiction, Illusion, Narrative Fallacy, Simulacrum, Story, Truth
“Here I was, a literature professor who'd been raised in the feminized (or at least androgynized) world of left-wing academia and the Unitarian Church. And yet I could have easily fought the guy over... what? I had so much to lose — certainly my job, probably my teeth — and so little to gain. And yet, for a furious moment, I was ready to risk everything just to prove, I suppose, that I'd risk everything.”
— Jonathan Gottschall, The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch
Tagged: Lizard Brain, Why We Fight
“I drag myself to the gym like a shift worker dragging himself to the factory. I limp onto the mat feeling tired and old, and after I warm up and get going . . . I have so much fun. The blubbery, congested sensation of incipient middle age gives way, and I feel young again, and strong. When I've competed well, and especially when I've held my own in the sparring, I leave the gym feeling so awake, my whole system revving with something purer than a runner's high. I drive home knowing that I've been going through life half asleep, and I feel a euphoric gratitude for my living muscle and bone and blood.”
— Jonathan Gottschall, The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch
Tagged: Exercise, Muscle, Renewal, Strategies for Renewal, Youth
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