Peter N. Stearns > Quotes

“As a part of the holy trinity, Jesus was regarded as divine, and in predominant Christian belief this divinity was not compatible with human copulation. So Mary was a virgin, with the baby Jesus implanted by divine intervention.
This was of course a marked departure from other religions in the classical
world that had not ventured such a complex statement about divine presence among mortals, and that had often been quite comfortable with the idea of sexual exploits among the gods and as sources of other gods.”
― Peter Stearns

“Shame, as an emotion, has a core meaning, in relating individuals to wider social groups and norms -- real or imagined.”
― Peter N. Stearns, Shame: A Brief History

“Guilty people apologize and also take steps to avoid repetition. Shame, in contrast, is a more global emotion, which can emerge in response to the same kind of wrong act and violation of standards. It may develop earlier in life than guilt-- guilt requires more cognitive sorting capacity-- but above all it emphasizes self-abasement. It is the self that is at fault, not the commission of the act. This creates greater pain and intensity than guilt. A shamed person feels very bad indeed-- but also makes it more difficult to escape.”
― Peter N. Stearns, Shame: A Brief History

“The ending of revolutions reduced the drama of social conflict in Western and Central Europe. But revolutions had produced scant benefits for the urban masses that participated in them, often at great sacrifice. Freed from the goad of the worst misery, taught by their experiences in 1848, the working classes stopped fighting a futile battle against industrialization and gradually elaborated the concrete political and economic demands that had begun to emerge in the 1848 revolutions themselves. Each reader must judge whether the methods of protest subsequently developed have been more or less successful than those which produced the wave of revolutions. Each must judge, also, whether conditions may induce a return to the classic revolutionary method in the future. It is clear that the revolutions of 1848 encouraged a reorientation of expectations—or some might argue, a tragic narrowing of hopes—on the part of various classes in Europe. This conditioned the history of Europe for more than a century.”
― Peter N. Stearns, 1848: The Revolutionary Tide in Europe