Dominic Robin

“In investigating the lumpings that have shaped societies past and present, we should, I believe, be charitable toward those who merely inherited the classifications that were dominant in their own times. But we should be less patient with those, like Calhoun and Sanger, who pressed to enforce their preferred categories, to encode them in law and make them permanent. Such people are immensely dangerous, and for the health of our public world we need to become alert to the compelling power of lumping: having seen the ways lumping helps us manage information overload and create group solidarity, we should become aware of the temptations it poses to us—to all of us.”
― Alan Jacobs, How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds

“In humility, we recognize that we cannot convince everyone to agree with us. In tolerance, we make space for those with whom we disagree. In patience, we seek understanding, listening to the concerns of others, taking their questions seriously. The common good is served as we put these virtues into public practice, making room for differences.”
― S. Joshua Swamidass, The Genealogical Adam and Eve: The Surprising Science of Universal Ancestry

“What if we refused to be railroaded into the false choice between the critical and the uncritical? How might argument and interpretation proceed if critique were no longer our ubiquitous watchword and ever-vigilant watchdog? What other shapes of thought could we imagine? And how else might we venture to read, if we were not ordained to read suspiciously?”
― Rita Felski, The Limits of Critique

“A fool with a tool is still a fool.”
― Abraham Verghese