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Tom
https://www.goodreads.com/tomjtanguaygmailcom
“In the wake of the Cognitive Revolution, gossip helped Homo sapiens to form larger and more stable bands. But even gossip has its limits. Sociological research has shown that the maximum ‘natural’ size of a group bonded by gossip is about 150 individuals. Most people can neither intimately know, nor gossip effectively about, more than 150 human beings.”
― Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
― Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
“Domesticated chickens and cattle may well be an evolutionary success story, but they are also among the most miserable creatures that ever lived. The domestication of animals was founded on a series of brutal practices that only became crueller with the passing of the centuries.”
― Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
― Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
“Failure to summon forth the courage to risk a nondogmatic and nonevasive stance on such crucial existential matters can also blur our ethical vision. If our actions in the world are to stem from an encounter with what is central in life, they must be unclouded by either dogma or prevarication. Agnosticism is no excuse for indecision. If anything, it is a catalyst for action; for in shifting concern away from a future life and back to the present, it demands an ethics of empathy rather than a metaphysics of fear and hope.”
― Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening
― Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening
“Faith is not a question of the existence or non-existence of God. It is believing that love without reward is valuable.”
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“This is the essence of the Agricultural Revolution: the ability to keep more people alive under worse conditions.”
― Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
― Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Exceptional Books
— 2576 members
— last activity Sep 20, 2025 02:26PM
This book club is ONLY for books that are WRITTEN VERY WELL and have a GREAT STORY LINE. We ask that each member shelve at least 2 exceptional books ...more
Tom’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Tom’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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