Brian Boyd Quotes

There's a young Danish guy who has done a lot of work from an evolutionary perspective, Mathias Clasen. Basically, his argument is we've evolved to fear the monstrous, to be very wary of large, unknown, life-threatening forces. In art, we can play with these things in ways that allow us to feel the intensity of the horror, but in "safe mode," if you like, detached from real consequences.

Brian Boyd

• Argument
• Monstrous
• Danish guy
• Mathias Clasen

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• Tolerance, openness to argument, openness to self-doubt, willingness to see other people's points of view - these are very liberal and enlightened values that people are right to hold, but we can't allow them to delude us to the point where we can't recognise people who are needlessly perpetrating human misery.

  

  Sam Harris
  • People
  • Doubt
  • Values

• Neither irony or sarcasm is argument.

  

  Samuel Butler
  • Argument
  • Irony
  • Sarcasm

• I can make the argument that people who don't have the biggest ranges but have very unique voices, even if they may be pitchy at times... with the right record that's really unique and distinct, they can have big hits.

  

  Kara DioGuardi
  • People
  • May
  • Unique

• The strangest thing about the low quality of Internet argument is that effective argument isn't really so difficult. Sure, not everyone can be Clarence Darrow, but anyone who wants to be at least competent at argument can do it.

  

  Barry Eisler
  • Quality
  • Argument
  • Effective

• I'm not going to get in to an argument with anyone about the relative merits of Judaism and Christianity, and what it means for a Jewish kid to be a Christian - I'm just not interested in that argument.

  

  T Bone Burnett
  • Christian
  • Just
  • Argument

• There is something about guns that inhibits understanding. It is not just that they can put an end to argument. They somehow generate beliefs that are obviously contrary to observable fact.

  

  Edmund Morgan
  • Understanding
  • End
  • Argument

• I used to buy into a former Supreme Court justice's argument that you can't scream fire in a crowded theater. Well, I think you can.

  

  Larry Flynt
  • Justice
  • Fire
  • Argument

• Pentagon dollars are essentially seen as a different kind of funding that doesn't have to stand for itself and make an argument for itself in the house of Congress.

  

  Rachel Maddow
  • Different
  • House
  • Kind

• I was having an argument with my stepfather, and he was like, 'Why don't you join the Marine Corps?' And I was like, 'Noooo! Well, maybe, actually... ' I went and saw the recruiter, who was like, 'Are you on the run from the cops? Because we've never had someone want to leave so fast.'

  

  Adam Driver
  • Why
  • Want
  • Argument

• Don't take the wrong side of an argument just because your opponent has taken the right side.

  

  Baltasar Gracian
  • Taken
  • Just
  • Argument

• If you pick up an eighteenth-century play, at the top it says 'The Argument,' and then you have a list of characters, and then you have the play. I was just always struck by that - that, of course, good drama is about conflict.

  

  Damian Lewis
  • Up
  • Good
  • Drama

• Marriage is a series of desperate arguments people feel passionately about.

  

  Katharine Hepburn
  • People
  • Marriage
  • Argument

• History is either a moral argument with lessons for the here-and-now, or it is merely an accumulation of pointless facts.

  

  Andrew Marr
  • History
  • Moral
  • Argument

• The fly in her argument is that when she says, 'they' will feel like lemons, we don't know who 'they' are. And 'they' might BE lemons.

  

  Louise Rennison
  • She
  • Feels
  • Knows

• A master salesman is one who takes the offensive and never the defensive sale of an argument, if argument arises.

  

  Napoleon Hill
  • Argument
  • Salesman
  • Defensive

• Such exaggerations have been so common that the public takes them with a grain of salt and partly excuses them as being due to the advertiser's license of self-assertiveness. Nevertheless, the fact remains that superlative generalities are weak arguments and far less convincing than a statement of facts. Much advertising copy would be improved immensely by doing away with brag and substituting actual facts about the merits of the article.

  

  Daniel Starch
  • Common
  • Argument
  • Advertising

• A silly row which got out of hand.

  

  Bill Vaughan
  • Hand
  • Hands
  • Silly

• The Jewish sages also tell us that God dances when His children defeat Him in argument, when they stand on their feet and use their minds. So questions like Anne's are worth asking. To ask them is a very fine kind of human behavior. If we keep demanding that God yield up His answers, perhaps some day we will understand them. And then we will be something more than clever apes, and we shall dance with God.

  

  Mary Doria Russell
  • Up
  • God
  • Children

• Typography has one plain duty before it and that is to convey information in writing. No argument or consideration can absolve typography from this duty.

  

  Emil Ruder
  • Information
  • Duty
  • Argument

• Boston: Their hotels are bad. Their pumpkin pies are delicious. Their poetry is not so good.

  

  Edgar Allan Poe
  • Poetry
  • Boston
  • Hotels

• The school systems at my childhood had enough money or enough parent involvement that they felt like learning music and songs, and exploring the whole pop or classical canon, were just as important as algebra or biology. Music is such a visceral and tactile experience for a kid, and to just replace that with video games or something that doesn't have the same sort of physical impact would definitely be a poor choice, and have a negative impact.

  

  Carrie Brownstein
  • School
  • Kids
  • Song

• Thus the law of nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other mens actions, must, as well as their own and other mens actions, be conformable to the law of nature, i.e. to the will of God, of which that is a declaration, and the fundamental law of nature being the preservation of mankind, no human sanction can be good, or valid against it.

  

  John Locke Nazareth
  • God
  • Declaration
  • Law Of Nature

• In church your grandsire cut his throat; to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my hearty vote to cut his throat before he married.

  

  Jonathan Swift
  • Job
  • Church
  • Married

• There's a young Danish guy who has done a lot of work from an evolutionary perspective, Mathias Clasen. Basically, his argument is we've evolved to fear the monstrous, to be very wary of large, unknown, life-threatening forces. In art, we can play with these things in ways that allow us to feel the intensity of the horror, but in "safe mode," if you like, detached from real consequences.

  

  Brian Boyd
  • Argument
  • Monstrous
  • Danish guy