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One cannot be devoutly religious, or patriotic, or moral, without differentiating oneself from the ungodly, the disloyal, or the immoral. To be for one’s own group, or nation, or race requires that one be against strangers.

— Butler D. Shaffer Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival (1985)

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More quotes by Butler D. Shaffer

It has persuaded us that others are the cause of our failures, and that others should be responsible for our happiness and well-being.

Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival (1985)

The efforts of one organism to live at the expense of another is, when confined to members of the same species, a form of cannibalism.

Boundaries of Order: Private Property of a Social System (2009)

The hubris that attends all political programs of central planning is fueled by an ignorance of the forces of chaos.

Wizards of Ozymandias: Reflections on the Decline and Fall (2012)

For our world to be predictable and controllable, it must be mechanistic and linear in nature. But, the illusions of the behaviorists to the contrary notwithstanding, there is nothing less mechanistic and linear in nature than the human mind, whose intricacies and capacities have yet to be matched by even the most sophisticated computers.

Boundaries of Order: Private Property of a Social System (2009)

We offset the pursuit of our well-being with notions of altruism, and temper our happiness with feelings of guilt. In the vernacular of pop psychology, we speak of being ‘self-alienated’ people who have learned to reject our very selves. Whatever other advantages flow to us from our institutionalized world, the personal disadvantages carry a prohibitive price tag.

Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival (1985)

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