The trouble with human beings is not really that they love themselves too much; they ought to love themselves more. The trouble is simply that they donโt love others enough. "The End of Anthropocentrism?
Mary MidgleyEvolution is the creation-myth of our age. By telling us our origin it shapes our views of what we are. It influences not just our thought, but our feelings and actions too, in a way which goes far beyond its official function as a biological theory.
Mary MidgleyWhen some portion of the biosphere is rather unpopular with the human race-a crocodile, a dandelion, a stony valley, a snowstorm, an odd-shaped flint-there are three sorts of human being who are particularly likely still to see point in it and befriend it. They are poets, scientists and children. Inside each of us, I suggest, representatives of all these groups can be found.
Mary MidgleyHubris calls for nemesis, and in one form or another it's going to get it, not as a punishment from outside but as the completion of a pattern already started.
Mary MidgleyIt is this claim to a monopoly of meaning, rather than any special scientific doctrine, that makes science and religion look like competitors today. Scientism emerged not as the conclusion of scientific argument but as a chosen element in a worldview - a vision that attracted people by its contrast with what went before - which is, of course, how people very often do make such decisions, even ones that they afterwards call scientific.
Mary Midgley