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Tom Wolfe Quotes
AKA: | Tom Wolfe |
Birthday: | March 2, 1931 |
Educated At: | Washington And Lee University, Yale University |
Nationality: | American, United States Of America |
Occupations: | Journalist, Author, Essayist, Non-fiction Writer, Novelist |
Religion: | Atheism |
Total quotes: 21

Tom Wolfe
BirthnameAKA: Tom Wolfe
Birthday: March 2, 1931
Educated At: Washington And Lee University, Yale University
Nationality: American, United States Of America
Occupations: Journalist, Author, Essayist, Non-fiction Writer, Novelist
Religion: Atheism
Total quotes: 21
“Subscribing to Darwinism showed that one was part of a bright, enlightened minority who shone far above the mooing herd down below.”
Tagged:
Evolution
“You’re not going to find many traditional judges who can lead you any longer, since they now wander helplessly, bemused by the willful ignorance of that bizarre twentieth-century organism, the intellectual. You’re going to have to make the crucial judgments yourselves.”
Tagged:
Death of God, Death of The Author
“When a plane gets out of control, there's only one thing you could let yourself think about: What do I do next?
The mark of a good fighter pilot is that when it all goes to shit, what is he yelling in the microphone? It isn't a prayer, it's: 'I've tried A! I've tried B! I've tried C! I've tried D! Tell me what else I can try.'”
The mark of a good fighter pilot is that when it all goes to shit, what is he yelling in the microphone? It isn't a prayer, it's: 'I've tried A! I've tried B! I've tried C! I've tried D! Tell me what else I can try.'”
Tagged:
Obstacles
“In Germany, on the other hand, The Origin of Species was an immediate sensation. By 1874 Nietzsche had paid Darwin and his theory the highest praise with the most famous declaration in modern philosophy: ‘God is dead.’ Without mentioning Darwin by name, he said the ‘doctrine that there is no cardinal distinction between man and animal’ will demoralize humanity throughout the West; it will lead to the rise of ‘barbaric nationalistic brotherhoods’— he all but called them by name: Nazism, Communism, and Fascism— and result within one generation in ‘wars such as never have been fought before.’ If we take one generation to be thirty years, that would have meant by 1904. In fact, the First World War broke out in 1914. This latter-day barbarism, he went on to say, will in the twenty-first century lead to something worse than the great wars: the total eclipse of all values.”
Tagged:
Evolution
“Darwin's students wanted to know some small but fundamental details about the moment Evolution got under way and how exactly, physically, it started up— and from what? Darwin had apparently never thought of it quite that way before. Long pause… and finally, ‘Ohhh,’ he said, ‘probably from four or five cells floating in a warm pool somewhere.’ h One student pressed him further. He wanted to know where the cells came from. Who or what put them in the pool? An exasperated Darwin said, in effect, ‘Well, I don’t know… look, isn’t it enough that I’ve brought you man and all the animals and plants in the world?’ In this respect, Darwinism was typical of the more primitive cosmogonies. They avoided the question of how the world developed ex nihilo. Darwin often thought about it, but it made his head hurt. The world was just… here. All cosmogonies, whether the Apaches’ or Charles Darwin’s, faced the same problem. They were histories or, better said, stories of things that had occurred in a primordial past, long before there existed anyone capable of recording them.”
Tagged:
Evolution
“Soon speech will be recognized as the Fourth Kingdom of Earth. We have regnum animalia, regnum vegetabile, regnum lapideum (animal, vegetable, mineral)— and now regnum loquax, the kingdom of speech, inhabited solely by Homo loquax. Or is ‘kingdom’ too small a word for the eminence of speech, which can do whatever it feels like doing with the other three— physically and in every other way? Should it be Imperium loquax, making speech an empire the equal of Imperium naturae, the empire of Nature? Or Universum loquax, the Spoken Universe… this ‘superior intelligence,’ this ‘new power of a definite character’?”
Tagged:
Evolution
“Today mnemonics is not thought of as anything more practical than a memory device for remembering ingredients, lists, and in some cases formulas. Virtually all the sciences depend upon mnemonics, typically in the form of sentences or phrases in which the first letter of each word stands for a different item or procedure— or even in the form of a single word whose letters stand for different components. Chemistry, for example, produces mnemonics by the gross. Some are rather clever, such as the one for organic chemistry’s sequence of dicarboxylic acids: oxalic, malonic, succinic, glutaric, adipic, pimelic, suberic, azelaic, and sebacic. If you capitalize the first letter of each word and are clever enough, you can come up with ‘Oh My, Such Good Apple Pie, Sweet As Sugar.’ That’s the mnemonic.
And that is all that speech is, a mnemonic system— one that has enabled Homo sapiens to take control of the entire world. It is language, and only language and its mnemonics, that creates memory as Homo sapiens experiences it.”
And that is all that speech is, a mnemonic system— one that has enabled Homo sapiens to take control of the entire world. It is language, and only language and its mnemonics, that creates memory as Homo sapiens experiences it.”
Tagged:
Evolution
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