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Joan Baez

Joan Chandos Báez (born 9 January 1941) is an American folk singer and songwriter, known for her distinctive vocal style as well as her outspoken political views.

Quotes

 * The only thing that's been a worse flop than the organization of nonviolence has been the organization of violence.
 * Daybreak (1968)

 * You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now.
 * Daybreak (1968)
 * Variant or paraphrase: You can't decide how you're going to die. Or when. What you can decide is how you're going to live now.

 * I went to jail for 11 days for disturbing the peace; I was trying to disturb the war.
 * Pop Chronicles, Show 19 - Blowin' in the Wind: Pop discovers folk music, interview recorded December 3, 1967

One Ex-Marine has a face like a Puerto Rican angel and a body count of 390. That means he and his unit killed 390 people in a variety of hideous ways, and the angel got to go count the dead bodies for the record. And now he and a lot of his buddies are trying to make up for what we made them do. We paid the taxes that bought the war that hired the men and dropped the fire that burned the huts and killed the people who then were the bodies that Scott counted. It's a rotten thing to brainwash someone into doing the dirty part of killing while we stay at home. It's a rotten thing to pretend the war is coming to an end when it's only taken to the air. And in 1972 if you don't fight against a rotten thing you become a part of it. What I'm asking you to do is take some risks. Stop paying war taxes, refuse the armed forces, organize against the air war, support the strikes and boycotts of farmers, workers and poor people, analyze the flag salute, give up the nation state, share your money, refuse to hate, be willing to work … in short, sisters and brothers, arm up with love and come from the shadows.
 * Some Vietnam veterans have told me what they did over there when they were animals. They have been giving testimony about it to the public, to juries, to judges. Some of the juries cry, and so do some of the judges.
 * Text notes on Come From The Shadows (1972)

 * If we survive this century it will only be because you and I refuse to become Nazis.
 * Joan Baez, SF Chronicle, 16 January 1973, reprinted as the epigraph of the book Bohemia: the protoculture then and now by Richard Miller (Nelson-Hall, Chicago, 1977)

When the sun sinks in the west Die a million people of the Bangladesh
 * Bangladesh, Bangladesh

 * Joan Baez, in the Song for Bangladesh (1971)

 * The only thing you can do about memory is just be very humble about it because it may not have much to do with reality.
 * Joan Baez Interview (2009)

 * (about Woodstock) I think it was fantastic. I think the only way its been overdone was thinking it changed the world, politically and as far as the war went. It was only a part of things. It wasn’t it.
 * Interview (2009)

 * I’ve never taken much time to do nothing, which I think is pretty important, especially at my age, and sort of contemplating what is coming. In this culture, we spend most of our time trying to avoid it. I would like to have more of a Buddhist approach.
 * Interview (2019)

 * We are left in the dust right now and I don’t know if disappointed is the word. I’d say “overwhelmed” because nobody back in the 1960s or 1970s could have imagined anything this fuckin’ awful.
 * Interview (2019)

 * I just sing when I feel like singing, feels sort of like exploding.
 * Interview with NPR (2023)

 * (If you could speak to your younger self, what would you tell her?) Take it easy. Take a break. Relax a little.
 * Interview (2023)

 * I tend more towards Buddhist and Native American thought. For me, the spirits are quite real.
 * Interview (2023)

Sacco e Vanzetti (1971)

 * Lyrics for songs written for the film; the music for the songs composed by Ennio Morricone.

And blessed are the pure in heart Blessed are the merciful And blessed are the ones who mourn
 * Blessed are the persecuted
 * "The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti, Part One"

With its immensity of strength and power Against us is the law! Police know how to make a man A guilty or an innocent Against us is the power of police! The shameless lies that men have told Will ever more be paid in gold Against us is the power of the gold! Against us is racial hatred And the simple fact that we are poor My father dear, I am a prisoner Don't be ashamed to tell my crime The crime of love and brotherhood And only silence is shame
 * Against us is the law
 * "The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti, Part Two"

They need this instead Imagination, suffering, light and love And care for every human being You never steal, you never kill You are a part of hope and life The revolution goes from man to man And heart to heart And I sense when I look at the stars That we are children of life Death is small
 * Rebellion, revolution don't need dollars
 * "The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti, Part Two"

They have fallen And yesterday they fought and fell But in the quest for joy and freedom And in the struggle of this life you'll find That there is love and sometimes more Yes, in the struggle you will find That you can love and be loved also Forgive me all who are my friends I am with you I beg of you, do not cry
 * Yes, your father and Bartolo
 * "The Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti, Part Three"

Rest forever here in our hearts The last and final moment is yours That agony is your triumph
 * Here's to you, Nicola and Bart
 * Here's to You

Diamonds & Rust (1975)

They bring diamonds and rust
 * We both know what memories can bring
 * Diamonds & Rust

Already a legend The unwashed phenomenon The original vagabond You strayed into my arms And there you stayed Temporarily lost at sea The Madonna was yours for free Yes the girl on the half-shell Would keep you unharmed
 * Well you burst on the scene
 * Diamonds & Rust

You're not nostalgic Then give me another word for it You who are so good with words And at keeping things vague Because I need some of that vagueness now It's all come back too clearly Yes I loved you dearly And if you're offering me diamonds and rust I've already paid
 * Now you're telling me
 * Diamonds & Rust

Gulf Winds (1976)

And often will they do so Now I think I was asleep till I heard The voice of the great Caruso Bring infinity home Let me embrace it one more time Make it the lilies of the field Or Caruso in his prime
 * Miracles bowl me over
 * Caruso

Was the lord of the monarch butterflies One-time ruler of the world of art
 * With the precision of a hummingbird's heart
 * Caruso

But that's only secondary It's the soul of the monarch butterfly That I find a little bit scary'''
 * '''True he was a vocal miracle
 * Caruso

To bear us to the hills of Truth That's Truth spelled with a great big T And peddled in the mystic's booth There are oh so many miracles That the western sky exposes Why go looking for lilacs When you're lying in a bed of roses?
 * Perhaps he's just a vehicle
 * Caruso

Children of the 80's (1980)

 * Full lyrics online · 24 December 1980 performance · 31 December 1981 performance · 1984 performance ·

We're tender as a lotus and we're tougher than stone And the age of our innocence is somewhere in the garden'''
 * '''We're the children of the 80's, haven't we grown

Recently have you looked in our eyes Maybe we're your conscience in disguise
 * Some of us may offer a surprise

The golden boys and the golden girls For a better world'''
 * '''We are the warriors of the sun

And a Voice to Sing With (1989)

 * I was born gifted. I can speak of my gifts with little or no modesty, but with tremendous gratitude, precisely because they are gifts, and not things which I created, or actions about which I might be proud. My greatest gift, given to me by forces which confound genetics, environment, race, or ambition, is a singing voice. My second greatest gift, without which I would be an entirely different person with an entirely different story to tell, is a desire to share that voice, and the bounties it has heaped upon me, with others. From that combination of gifts has developed an immeasurable wealth-a wealth of adventures, of friendships, and of plain joys. Over a period of nearly three decades I have sung from hundreds of concert stages, all over the world: Eastern and Western Europe, Japan, Australia, Northern Africa, South, Central, and North America, Canada, the Middle East, the Far East. I sang in the bomb shelters of Hanoi during the Vietnam War; in the Laotian refugee camps in Thailand; in the makeshift settlements of the boat people in Malaysia. I have had the privilege of meeting some extraordinary citizens of the world, both renowned and unsung: Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner; The Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina, Mairead Corrigan in Belfast, Bertrand Russell, Cezar Chavez, Orlando Letelier; Bishop Tutu, Lech Walesa; Presidents Corazon Aquino, François Mitterrand, Jimmy Carter, and Giscard d'Estaing; the King of Sweden. Through Amnesty International I have met political prisoners who have endured repression and tortures under both right- and left-wing governments and who have astounded me with their humor, good cheer, and courage.

 * Martin Luther King, Jr., more than any other public figure helped to solidify my ideas and inspired me to act upon them.

 * My personal life has also been complicated-and public-though I am beginning to find more of a sense of peace and self-acceptance than I ever thought possible. Once I wanted to be married and have heaps of kids scrambling around me, licking cake mix off eggbeaters and riding Saint Bernards through the kitchen while I cooked stew over an open fire. Alas, those images bore no relation to my areas of competence, and since my marriage to David Harris dissolved in January of 1974 I have lived mainly alone, with occasional romantic interludes, the best of which are magical and splendidly impractical.

 * My art, work, family and friends, my son Gabe, and a curious relationship with God remain the sustaining forces in my life.

 * Through all these changes my social and political views have remained astoundingly steadfast. I have been true to the principles of nonviolence, developing a stronger and stronger aversion to the ideologies of both the far right and the far left and a deeper sense of and sorrow over the suffering they continue to produce all over the world.

 * I am recording them for myself, to take a hard look back before facing forward in these most bizarre of times.

 * I had an affair with a girl when I was twenty-two. It was wonderful. It happened, I assume, after an overdose of unhappiness at the end of an affair with a man, when I had a need for softness and understanding. I assume that the homosexuality within me, which people love to say is in all of us, made itself felt at that time, and saved me from becoming cold and bitter toward everyone. I slowly mended, and since the affair with Kimmie have not had another affair with a woman nor the conscious desire to.

 * It seemed a miracle that I would meet, and have the blessing to know and work with, one of the two saints of the phenomenon which had won my heart when I was barely sixteen years old: the concept of radical nonviolence, introduced to the world as a revolutionary political tool by Mahatma Gandhi in India, and reintroduced now by Martin Luther King, Jr., in the United States of America.

 * The first time I was in the South was in 1961. I was on a regular concert tour, and was barely aware of the civil rights movement, probably because I hadn't yet made the transition from Michael to the real world. I did discover, however, that no blacks were at any of my concerts, and would not have been allowed in if they had come. The following summer I wrote into the contract that I wouldn't sing unless blacks were admitted into the hall.

 * There was a revolution going on all around us, and if a white businessman and his family wanted to hear me sing "Fair and Tender Maidens," they had to come and sit in this boiling hot room and integrate an audience.

 * Of the many photographs I have of myself and famous people, there is one which I had framed and have never forgotten. It is of King and me at the head of that line of schoolchildren in Grenada, Mississippi. Ira is in back of me, and Andy, and then a long string of kids, all black.

 * I have never been involved in the campaign of any major political candidate, preferring to work entirely outside of the party structure. Occasionally I have slipped a check and a note of encouragement to some brave congressperson who has defied everybody and risked his or her return to office because of principles.

 * Seeing that nothing could come of our presence in Vietnam except disaster, I had a quiet revelation and decided to refuse to pay my military taxes.

 * What I have to say is this: I do not believe in war. I do not believe in the weapons of war...I am not going yo volunteer 60% of my year's income tax that goes to armaments... Maybe the line should have been drawn when the bow and arrow were invented, maybe the gun, the cannon, maybe. Because now it is all wrong, all impractical, and all stupid. So all I can do is draw my own line now. I am no longer supporting my portion of the arms race . ..
 * letter to IRS

 * one day I told Ira that I did not want to remain an ignoramus forever and asked if he would consider tutoring me more formally. Ira claims that I suggested the next idea, and I think that he did, but the discussion evolved into a proposition that we form a school called the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence.

 * There was a great deal of profound joy in my life, but there was practically no fun. I didn't know much about having fun. I felt too guilty, as though I wasn't supposed to start having fun until everyone in the world was fed and clothed.

 * I quit reading what the papers said about me because either they portrayed me as more self-sacrificing than I was, or they didn't like me and said, in a variety of ways, that I was a fake.

 * Al Capp, creator of the "L'il Abner" comic strip, launched the most imaginative of the negative attacks, introducing a character into his strip called Joanie Phoanie...I asked for a retraction but did not get one.

 * I learned to love the Japanese bow, and I use it to this day in concert to thank people for having come to hear me.

 * Although I later fell in love with France, and now consider it my second home, the first country to win my young heart and seduce me with its language and beauty and fashion and flowers and intellect and men was Italy.

 * "Never close the door, you may need this person someday," is one of her favorite expressions. In 1983, at Newsweek's fiftieth anniversary celebration, I was seated across from Mary McCarthy at the head table. The big feature of the evening was a videotaped speech by Henry Kissinger. When he appeared on the big screen I stuffed my stockinged feet into their high heels and left the table, and stood in the lobby until it was finished. My moderation and diplomacy end where Henry's nose begins.

 * I am thinking that Ronald Reagan is the same age as my father. They have some things in common. They are both young in spirit, buoyant, well-preserved, and optimistic. Beyond that, I can find only outstanding differences. The President is either ignorant of, or unconcerned by the ills of the world about which my father and I have been speaking. He is particularly immune to any part America may have in engendering these ills, as he dislikes the inconvenience of thinking beyond his own definitions of good-guys/bad-guys, and also doesn't like to be depressed. His pleasant, bumbling demeanor is preferable to the murderous efficiency of Kissinger and Kirkpatrick, but on the other hand, he is involved in the same dark and bloody deeds, all done under the same vast, all-encompassing and convenient banner of anticommunism. He feels that God is on his side, and that he really can do no wrong. What piques me is how this man and his followers can write off someone like my father. Because of my father's protestations about the raping of the Amazon forests, the pollution of our rivers, the misuse and depletion of natural energy, and the poisoning our children's air, people like my father are explained away with the flick of a wrist as a doomsayer, a depressive, a pessimistic liberal.

 * there really is no normal, and the things that I do change: study Aikido, take photos, take a dance course, get back cooking, illustrate a songbook, take on a human rights project-write a book. But there are some friends who have remained constant

 * All of us alive are survivors, but how many of us transcend survival? (p. 322)

Quotes about Baez

 * Women’s liberation was not on our radar, although I do remember noting to myself that women were basically running the office of the Boston draft resistance group behind the scenes. I was deeply involved because I had a draft resister boyfriend. That’s how most of us were involved (“Girls say yes to boys who say no,” as Joan Baez said
 * Ellen DuBois Interview

People would say, "What are you doing with that ragtag scrubby little waif?" And she'd tell everybody in no uncertain terms, "Now you better be quiet and listen to the songs." We even played a few of them together. Joan Baez is as tough-minded as they come. Love. And she's a free, independent spirit. Nobody can tell her what to do if she doesn't want to do it. I learned a lot of things from her. A woman with devastating honesty. And for her kind of love and devotion, I could never pay that back.
 * Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Joan Baez. She was the queen of folk music then and now. She took a liking to my songs and brought me with her to play concerts, where she had crowds of thousands of people enthralled with her beauty and voice.
 * Bob Dylan, Grammys 2015: Bob Dylan's MusiCares Person of Year speech (7 February 2015)

 * She was something else, almost too much to take. Her voice was like that of a siren from off some Greek island. Just the sound of it could put you into a spell. She was an enchantress. You'd have to get yourself strapped to the mast like Odysseus and plug up your ears so you wouldn't hear her. She'd make you forget who you were.
 * Bob Dylan, Q&A with Bill Flanagan (22 March 2017)

 * There was a new popular music of protest. Pete Seeger had been singing protest songs since the forties, but now he came into his own, his audiences much larger. Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, singing not only protest songs, but songs reflecting the new abandon, the new culture, became popular idols...
 * Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States

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Hi. Thanks for your edit on Pope Leo X. However, I had to revert it -- according to the WQ:FAQ, wikiquote has a strict policy of keeping popular misattributions, and explaining that these are misattributions. Instead of removing it, please state under the quote all information that led you to decide this is a misattribution. This policy serves two things: 1. It informs people of the nature of the misattribution, giving useful knowledge 2. It prevents the next naive contributor who comes along to add it again. Thanks for your work ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 9 July 2005 15:34 (UTC)

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Thanks for the Portugese interlang links! ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 9 July 2005 15:44 (UTC)

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Consumerism

Consumerism is a social and economic order and ideology that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-greater amounts.

Quotes

 * Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy?
 * Isaiah 55:2

 * We, we know the individuality that isolates the man from other men, the either/or, the lonely one that leads the flesh to clothing, jewelry, and land, the solitude of sight that separates the people from the people, flesh from flesh, that jams material between the spirit and the spirit. We have suffered witness to these pitiful, and murdering, masquerade extensions of the self. Instead, we choose a real, a living enlargement of our only life. We choose community.
 * June Jordan, "Black Studies: Bringing Back The Person" (1969), in Civil Wars: Observations from the Front Lines of America (1981), p. 47

 * The fear for me is that the world has been turned inside out, the dark side made to seem light. Indulgent self-interest that our people once held to be monstrous is now celebrated as success. We are asked to admire what our people viewed as unforgivable. The consumption-driven mind-set masquerades as "quality of life" but eats us from within. It is as if we've been invited to a feast, but the table is laid with food that nourishes only emptiness, the black hole of the stomach that never fills. We have unleashed a monster.
 * Robin Wall Kimmerer,

 * Ecological economists argue for reforms that would ground economics in ecological principles and the constraints of thermodynamics. They urge the embrace of the radical notion that we must sustain natural capital and ecosystem services if we are to maintain quality of life. But governments still cling to the neoclassical fallacy that human consumption has no consequences. We continue to embrace economic systems that prescribe infinite growth on a finite planet, as if somehow the universe had repealed the laws of thermodynamics on our behalf. Perpetual growth is simply not compatible with natural law. [...] Our leaders willfully ignore the wisdom and the models of every other species on the planet—except of course those that have gone extinct.
 * Robin Wall Kimmerer,

 * Racial injustice, war, urban blight, and environmental rape have a common denominator in our exploitative economic system.
 * Channing E. Phillips, speech, Washington, D.C., (22 April 1970)

 * Eat and drink, but waste not by excess; verily He loves not the excessive.
 * Qur'an 7.31

 * … the consumerist pornography of advertising
 * Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress, (2004) Chapter 5, note 68.

 * Balloon-frame houses illustrated four of the factors cited then and later to explain the emergence of the American system of manufactures. The first was what economists call demand and what social historians might call a democracy of consumption: the need or desire of a growing and mobile population for a variety of ready-made consumer goods at reasonable prices. Considering themselves members of the "middling classes," most Americans in the 1850s were willing and able to buy ready-made shoes, furniture, men's clothing, watches, rifles, even houses. If these products lacked the quality, finish, distinction, and durability of fine items made by craftsmen, they were nevertheless functional and affordable. A new institution, the "department store," sprang up to market the wares of mass production to a mass public. European visitors who commented (not always favorably) on the relationship between a political system of universal (white) manhood suffrage and a socioeconomic system of standardized consumption were right on the mark. Grinding poverty and luxurious wealth were by no means absent from the United States, but what impressed most observers was the broad middle.
 * James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1988)

 * He who knows he has enough is rich
 * Tao Te Ching Chapter 33

 * Under present conditions, people are preoccupied with consumer goods not because they are brainwashed but because buying is the one pleasurable activity not only permitted but actively encouraged by our rulers. The pleasure of eating an ice cream cone may be minor compared to the pleasure of meaningful, autonomous work, but the former is easily available and the latter is not. A poor family would undoubtedly rather have a decent apartment than a new TV, but since they are unlikely to get the apartment, what is to be gained by not getting the TV?
 * Ellen Willis, "Women and the Myth of Consumerism", Ramparts (1969)

 * Mass consumption, advertising, and mass art are a corporate Frankenstein; while they reinforce the system, they also undermine it. By continually pushing the message that we have the right to gratification now, consumerism at its most expansive encouraged a demand for fulfillment that could not so easily be contained by products.
 * Ellen Willis, Beginning to See the Light (1981).

 * America’s central organizing principle is thoughtless consumption.
 * Amanda Mull, The Atlantic, 2021

 * How many things I can do without!
 * Socrates, from Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

 * Those who buy things out of season, at an extravagant price, expect never to live till the proper season for them.
 * Socrates, from Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

 * Those who want fewest things are nearest to the Gods.
 * Socrates, from Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

 * Satiety is generated by wealth, and insolence by satiety.
 * Solon, from Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

 * Man derives pleasure while acquiring gain.
 * Bias, from Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

 * In urban and rural communities alike, a consumer consciousness preceded other forms of political or industrial antagonism. Not wages, but the cost of bread, was the most sensitive indicator of popular discontent. Artisans, self-employed craftsmen, or such groups as the Cornish tin miners (where the traditions of the "free" miner coloured responses until the 19th century), saw their wages as regulated by custom or by their own bargaining. They expected to buy their provisions in the open market, and even in times of shortage they expected prices to be regulated by custom also. (The God-provided "laws" of supply and demand, whereby scarcity inevitably led to soaring prices, had by no means won acceptance in the popular mind, where older notions of face-to-face bargaining still persisted.) Any sharp rise in prices precipitated riot. An intricate tissue, of legislation and of custom regulated the "Assize of Bread", the size and quality of the loaf. Even the attempt to impose the standard Winchester measure for the sale of wheat, in the face of some customary measure, could ensue in riots.
 * E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1963), p. 63

 * The had produced much more food. That made food cheaper. In turn, that meant we had more money to spend. And we had started to spend it on “stuff”: televisions, video recorders, Walkmans, hair dryers, cars, and clothes. And we also started to spend it on vacations. Far more vacations. At the center of this spending spree was the astonishing growth of transportation. In 1960 there were 100 million cars on the world’s roads—by 1980 there were 300 million. With this came a massive expansion of road networks—carving up entire countries, further increasing loss of habitat for other species. In 1960 we flew 62 billion passenger miles. In 1980 we flew 620 billion passenger miles. Global shipping grew at a similarly astonishing rate. All of the stuff we were buying, plus all of the food we were consuming, plus all the raw materials and resources required to make everything was being shipped around the world. By this point, initial signs of the consequences of our growth were starting to show.
 * Stephen Emmott, Ten Billion (2013)

 * As GDP (gross domestic product, the standard measure of the wealth of a country and its inhabitants) increases, calorie consumption also increases. As we get richer (or suffer less poverty), we consume more food.
 * Stephen Emmott. Ten Billion (2013)

 * It’s worth reminding ourselves that our stuff does not come from Target, Whole Foods, A&P, Amazon, Walmart, or Best Buy. Our stuff comes from countries like China, Morocco, Brazil, Turkey, Spain, South Korea, and Peru. Whether it’s asparagus, pajamas, or electronics. Something like 500 million containers of stuff—stuff that we will consume—from Japanese and German cars, South African oranges, Peruvian asparagus, and Kenyan cut flowers, to T-shirts and dresses from Morocco or Vietnam, sneakers, music players, laptops, mobile phones, and televisions from China or South Korea—will be handled and transported around the world this year [2013]. Plus billions of tons of raw materials that will form the basis of our consumption—metals, phosphates, grain, oil, gas, and coal.
 * Stephen Emmott, Ten Billion (2013)

 * The behavioral changes that are required of us are so fundamental that no one wants to make them. What are they? We need to consume less. A lot less. Less food, less energy, and less stuff. Fewer cars, electric cars, cotton T-shirts, laptops, mobile-phone upgrades. Far fewer. Yet, every decade, global consumption continues to increase relentlessly.
 * Stephen Emmott, Ten Billion (2013)

 * …civilization’s survival dilemma in the 21st century is best described by a concept from population ecology—overshoot. This refers to the situation where a crucial resource temporarily becomes more abundant, thereby enabling a group of organisms to grow its population beyond levels that can be sustained over the long run. For a population of field mice in overshoot, the critical resource might consist of small plants whose unusually robust growth has been triggered by high levels of rainfall. For humanity currently, the critical resource is fossil energy. Temporary energy abundance has led to many good things (for some of us, anyway): more food, more people, more commercial products, more knowledge, more comfort, and more convenience. But we are about to become victims of our own success.
 * Richard Heinberg, "Why Understanding Limits is the Key to Humanity's Future" (19 January 2023)

 * ...it is not just population that has bloomed. Since 1800, propelled by a 28-fold increase in primary energy use, mostly fossil fuel, real global GDP has increased over 100-fold. World average per capita income (consumption) is up by a factor of 13, rising to 25-fold in the richest countries.  As  famously observed, Earth is being asked to accept not only more people but ever larger people.
 * , "The fractal biology of plague and the future of civilization". The Journal of Population and Sustainability (2020)

 * The so-called ‘environmental crisis’ has little to do with the ‘environment’ and everything to do with excess human demands on natural systems. For several decades, H. sapiens has been in a state of ‘ecological overshoot’—our species is exploiting even renewable resources faster than species and ecosystems can regenerate and dumping (often toxic) waste at rates well beyond nature’s assimilation and recycling capacities; think plunging biodiversity, collapsing fish stocks, desertification, soil depletion, tropical deforestation, ocean pollution, contamination of food supplies, rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, resultant climate change, etc., etc. By 2016, H. sapiens was 68% in overshoot—i.e., acting as if Earth were 68% larger or more productive than it is.
 * Ibid.

 * Simply stated, people want (and are encouraged to want) goods and services beyond their base needs, and markets are happy to oblige. A common recipe for countries to achieve high standards of living has been the combination of democracy and capitalism. For the most part, people vote for policies that will improve their circumstances, and corporations make decisions aimed at maximizing profits/growth. Politicians and financiers celebrate strong growth numbers (grumbling only when an overheated market might signal runaway inflation) while bemoaning weak quarters, and practically panicking at the prospect of a recessionary period. Today the financialized capitalist economic system dominating human activity is predicated on growth and the expectation of a bigger future, witnessed in interest rates, loans, investments, massive public and private debt, and the outsized role of the banking system. Growth is thought to be such an unarguable good that the UN’s 2015 Sustainable Development Goal #8 actually calls for growth rates of 7% in less developed countries. While this rate is intended to address the inequitable distribution of wealth across nations, the goal is still based on a business-as-usual, fossil-fuel-based economy.
 * Murphy, T., Murphy, D., Love, T., LeHew, M., & McCall, B. (2021). "Modernity is incompatible with planetary limits: Developing a PLAN for the future." Energy Research & Social Science, 81, 102239.

 * Yet built-in conflict looms. Growth, both material and economic, simply cannot continue indefinitely on a finite planet. Economists—supported by only a short period of empirical evidence—have argued that substitution and decoupling are mechanisms that can allow for indefinite growth. Plenty of examples from the past bolster such arguments. On substitution, the Stone Age did not end due to a lack of stones, one pithy argument goes. On decoupling, trading fine art has a tiny energy-to-monetary ratio. But the overall evidence does not support the idea that the basic operation of the modern economy can happen without massive material and energy throughput. In practice, efficiency gains are largely erased by further growth. Remember that all such past examples from the industrial era have taken place in the context of unsustainable exploitation of finite resources. The future need not look like the recent past—in fact, cumulative irreversible impacts mean that it can’t.
 * Ibid.

 * The latent fear that civilization is living on borrowed time has also spawned a counter-market of “happily ever after” optimists who desperately cling to their belief in endless progress. Popular Pollyannas, like cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, provide this anxious crowd with soothing assurances that the titanic ship of progress is unsinkable.  Pinker’s publications have made him the high priest of progress. While civilization circles the drain, his ardent audiences find comfort in lectures and books brimming with cherry-picked evidence to prove that life is better than ever, and will surely keep improving. Yet, when questioned, Pinker himself admits, “It’s incorrect to extrapolate that the fact that we’ve made progress is a prediction that we’re guaranteed to make progress.” Pinker’s rosy statistics cleverly disguise the fatal flaw in his argument.  The progress of the past was built by sacrificing the future—and the future is upon us.  All the happy facts he cites about living standards, life expectancy, and economic growth are the product of an industrial civilization that has pillaged and polluted the planet to produce temporary progress for a growing middle class—and enormous profits and power for a tiny elite.
 * Craig Collins, "Four Reasons Civilization Won’t Decline: It Will Collapse". August 10, 2020.

 * …consumption cannot happen without production and cannot happen without extraction from the environment. On the other side, there’s pollution, emissions waste, and, obviously, greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, carbon emissions are the—fun fact—largest waste, largest pollutant, by weight of industrial societies… so much larger than solid waste, for instance. When we consider the whole system, consumption is often viewed as the driver. Sometimes people call production the driver of consumption itself. But consumption is not equally distributed. So almost all environmental impacts can be traced to consumption activities. But those consumption activities themselves can be associated with different income classes around the world. And so one of the things we can see, now that we have much higher resolution data, is that we can really see that high affluence. Income and wealth are always tied to higher levels of consumption, much higher levels of environmental impact. So complete—disproportionately high, in fact—because we see that affluent populations consume more energy-intensive and resource-intensive goods, particularly in the form of transport, than less affluent ones.
 * , "What's Causing the Environmental Crisis?". The Great Unraveling. . September 15, 2020.

 * Overshoot is a product of both excessive numbers and rising affluence. Access to the things that create what we call quality of life, like indoor lighting and temperature controls, especially air conditioning; more diverse dietary choices, especially meat; and greater access to transportation, especially air travel — all signs of rising affluence, all delightful if you are a human, yet all demand more energy and material inputs that involve scouring and denuding more wildlands and animal habitat to feed, clothe, house, and energize burgeoning humanity.
 * , "Adressing Climate Change Will Not Save the Planet". The Intercept. December 3, 2022.

 * We all are a product of our times where new, shiny, better, and "more, more, more" seem normal, but that’s only a reflection of the abnormal period of the last century or so, as we spend down our earthly inheritance.
 * Ben McCall, "Modernity Is Incompatible with Planetary Limits". The Academic Minute. November 26, 2021.

 * People want stuff. We’re like ravens: “shiny” stuff appeals. Ultimate success means a truly sustainable lifestyle, which could well be materially poorer than today’s life, depending on population. How would we mitigate intrinsic individual desires to acquire more stuff (and power)? It may be a fundamental incompatibility in that evolution prepares self-motivated organisms looking out for their own prosperity. If a species develops “unfair” power advantages that were not part of the evolutionary script, the result may be destined to end poorly as that species uses its discovered power to damage ecosystems beyond repair—ultimately only harming themselves.
 * Thomas W. Murphy, "Why Worry About Collapse?" Do the Math. May 18, 2021.

 * As soon as we take control of who lives and dies (crops, weeds, pests, animals), decide that we can “own” land, accumulate a lot of “things,” commodify food, and transform living beings into property, we have stepped deep into dangerous territory. It is no surprise that such a culture would develop an ingrained sense of human supremacy. […] General-purpose money—exchangeable for practically anything of value—is an outward manifestation of this objectification and arrived as a seemingly inevitable partner to our objectifying, agricultural ways. This construct facilitated and accelerated the pace of unfortunate, exploitative decisions.
 * Thomas W. Murphy "Our Time on the River." Do the Math. August 22, 2023.

 * As economies expand beyond subsistence level, a larger fraction of the total activity can go to “frivolous” elements, such as art and entertainment. The intensity of such activities can be quite low. An art collector may pay $1 million for a coveted painting. Very little energy is required. The painting was produced long ago. It may even remain on display in the same location—only the name of the owner changing. Financial transactions that require no manufacture, transport, and negligible energy are said to be “decoupled” from physical resources. Plenty of examples exist in society, and are held up by economists as illustrating how we can continue to expand the economy without a commensurate expansion of resource needs.
 * Thomas W. Murphy "Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet" (2022), p. 20.

 * … our current prosperity could be that we entered a period of prosperity due to the easy abundance of fossil fuels and the scarcity imposed upon us by their end could play out similar to the scarcity imposed by the onset of colder weather at the end of the high middle ages.
 * Adam Noel's commentary on Thomas W. Murphy's essay "Futuristic physicists." November 8, 2012.

title: Consumerism


text:
E. O. Wilson

Edward Osborne Wilson (10 June 1929 – 26 December 2021) was an American entomologist and biologist known for his work on ecology, evolution, and sociobiology. A two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, Wilson is also known for his advocacy for environmentalism, and his secular-humanism ideas pertaining to religious and ethical matters.

Quotes

 * [Biology has] become the paramount science, exceeding other disciplines, including physics and chemistry at least, in the creative tumult of its disciplines and disputations. [...] I'll also be so bold at this point to suggest that we are now at the edge of establishing the two fundamental laws of biology: The first law is that all of the phenomena of biology, the entities and the processes, are ultimately obedient to the laws of physics and chemistry. Not immediately reducible to them, but ultimately consistent and in consilience with them, by a cause and effect explanation. The second law is that all biological phenomena, these entities and processes that define life itself, have arisen by evolution through natural selection.
 * Talk at the 50th anniversary of New Scientist magazine (2006).

 * This planet can be a paradise in the 22nd century.
 * Statement quoted at the "TED Prize" website, which he won in 2007

 * My definition of a scientist is that you can complete the following sentence: ‘he or she has shown that…’,”
 * Why Richard Dawkins 'is not a scientist', the survival of the least selfish, and what ants tell us about humans - EO Wilson on his new book Independent, 10 November 2014

 * Wonderful theory, wrong species. (On Marxism, which he considered more suited to ants than to humans.)
 * Quoted in Quotations for our times: 75 sayings for the modern world Independent, 23 August 2007, citing The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations

 * The toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us.

 * Will we solve the crises of next hundred years? asked Krulwich. “Yes, if we are honest and smart,” said Wilson. “The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.” Until we understand ourselves, concluded the Pulitzer-prize winning author of On Human Nature, “until we answer those huge questions of philosophy that the philosophers abandoned a couple of generations ago—Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?—rationally,” we’re on very thin ground.
 * Quoted in Harvard Magazine from a public discussion between Wilson and James Watson moderated by NPR correspondent Robert Krulwich, September 10, 2009.

 * The pattern of human population growth in the 20th century was more bacterial than primate. When Homo sapiens passed the six billion mark we had already exceeded by perhaps as much as 100 times the biomass of any large animal species that had ever existed on the land. We and the rest of life cannot afford another 100 years like that.
 * quoted in Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation. University of Georgia Press (2012), p. 83

 * We have stone age emotions, medieval institutions and god-like technology.
 * attributed to 2011 commencement address at the University of North Carolina in

Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975)

 * Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975

 * In the process of natural selection, then. any device that can insert a higher proportion of certain genes into subsequent generations will come to characterize the species.
 * p. 3

 * Samuel Butler's famous aphorism that the chicken is only an egg's way of making another egg has been modernized: the organism is only DNA's way of making more DNA.
 * p. 4

 * The key to the sociobiology of mammals is milk.
 * p. 456

 * Scientists and humanists should consider together the possibility that the time has come for ethics to be removed temporarily from the hands of philosophers and biologized.
 * p. 562

On Human Nature (1978)

 * The evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have.

 * God remains a viable hypothesis as the prime mover, however undefinable and untestable that conception may be.

 * We are not compelled to believe in biological uniformity in order to affirm human freedom and dignity.

 * The genius of human society is in fact the ease with which alliances are formed, broken, and reconstituted, always with strong emotional appeals to rules believed to be absolute.

Ch.3 Development

 * Genetic determinism... On its interpretation depends the entire relation between biology and the social sciences.

 * The mosquito is an automaton. It can afford to be nothing else.

 * The channels of human mental development... are circuitous and variable. Rather than specify a single trait, human genes prescribe the capacity to develop a certain array of traits.

 * The borderline between normal and schizophrenic people is broad and nearly imperceptible.

 * The three extreme kinds of schizophrenia are unmistakable: the haunted paranoid surrounded by his imaginary community of spies and assassins, the clownish, sometimes incontinent hebephrenic, and the frozen catatonic.

 * Although the capacity to become schizophrenic may well be within all of us, there is no question that certain persons have distinctive genes predisposing them to the condition.

 * Evidence has... been adduced that schizophrenia is widespread in other kinds of human societies. ...and they form a substantial fraction of the clientele of the tribal shamans and healers.

 * There is no such thing as a typically "schizophrenogenic" (schizophrenia-producing) family arrangement, one most likely to produce a mentally ill adult from a child with the potential for the disease.

 * The central idea of the philosophy of behaviorism, that behavior and the mind have an entirely materialist basis subject to experimental analysis, is fundamentally sound.

 * Piaget, who was originally trained as a biologist, views intellectual development as an interaction of an inherited genetic program with the environment. It is no coincidence that he calls this conception "genetic epistemology," in effect the study of the hereditary unfolding of understanding.

 * The rules followed are tight enough to produce a broad overlap in the decisions taken by all individuals and hence a convergence powerful enough to be labelled human nature.

 * Because the brain can be guided by rational calculation only in a limited degree, it must fall back on the nuances of pleasure and pain mediated by the limbic system and other lower centers of the brain.

 * We can search among the unconscious, emotion-laden learning rules for the kind of behavior most directly influenced by genetic evolution.

 * In early history phobias might have provided the extra margin needed to insure survival...

 * The incest taboo is another major category of primed learning.

 * We seem to be able to be fully comfortable only when the remainder of humanity can be labeled as members versus nonmembers.

Ch.4 Emergence

 * Because of mathematical indeterminancy and the uncertainty principle, it may be a law of nature that no nervous system is capable of acquiring enough knowledge to significantly predict the future of any other intelligent system in detail. Nor can intelligent minds gain enough self-knowledge to know their own future, capture fate, and in this sense eliminate free will.

 * The cardinal mystery of neurobiology is not self-love or dreams of immortality but intentionality. What is the prime mover, the weaver who guides the flashing shuttles?

 * A schema is a configuration within the brain, either inborn or learned, against which the input of the nerve cells is compared. ...the conscious mind ...can fill in details that are missing from the actual sensory input and create a pattern in the mind which is not necessarily present in reality. In this way, the gestalt of objects—the impression...—is aided by the taxonomic powers of the schemata.

 * Cultural change is the statistical product of the separate behavioral responses of large numbers of human beings who cope as best they can with social existence.

 * Cultural evolution is Lamarckian and very fast, whereas biological evolution is Darwinian and usually very slow.

 * Because it is... far slower than Lamarckian evolution, biological evolution is always quickly outrun by cultural change.

 * Intertribal aggression, escalating in some cultures to limited warfare, is common enough to be regarded as a general characteristic of hunter-gatherer social behavior.

 * The only other mammalian carnivores that take outsized prey are lions, hyenas, wolves, and African wild dogs. Each... has an exceptionally advanced social life, prominently featuring the pursuit of prey in coordinated packs.

 * Primitive men are ecological analogs of lions, wolves, and hyenas... they have adopted pack hunting in the pursuit of big game. ...habitually slaughtering surplus prey, storing food, feeding solid food to their young, dividing labor, practicing cannibalism, and interacting aggressively with competing species. ...this way of life persisted for millions of years or longer and was abandoned in most societies only during the last few thousand years.

 * The selection pressures of hunter-gatherer existence have persisted for over 99 percent of human evolution.

 * The increase in brain size and refinement of stone artifacts point to an unbroken advance in mental ability over the last two or three million years. ...No organ in the history of life has grown faster.

 * The theory of population genetics and experiments on other organisms show that substantial changes can occur in the span of less than 100 generations, which for man reaches back to the time of the Roman Empire.

 * The emergence of civilization has everywhere followed a definable sequence.

 * At the apogee of the state's evolution, architecture was monumental, and the ruling class were exalted as a pseudospecies. The sacred rites of statehood became the central focus of religion.

 * Nationalism and racism, to take two examples, are the culturally nurtured outgrowths of simple tribalism.

 * Daily life is a compromised blend of posturing for the sake of role-playing and of varying degrees of self-revelation. Under stressful conditions even the "true" self cannot be precisely defined, as Erving Goffman observes. ...Little wonder that the identity crisis is a major source of modern neuroticism, and that the urban middle class aches for a return to a simpler existence.
 * Wilson cites Goffman's Frame Analysis (1974) as a reference here.

 * Early human beings... filled a special ecological niche: they were carnivorous primates of the African plains. ...When agriculture permitted the increase of population density, game was no longer abundant... carnivorism remained a basic dietary impulse, with cultural aftereffects that varied according to the special conditions of the environment in which the society evolved.

 * Ancient Mexico, like most forest-invested New World tropics, was deficient in the kind of large game that flourished on the plains of Africa and Asia. ...The situation was partially relieved by cannibalizing the victims of human sacrifice. ...The [ Aztec ] priesthood... sanctified it... immediately after their hearts had been cut out, the victims were systematically butchered like animals and their parts distributed and eaten.

 * I interpret contemporary human social behavior to comprise hypertrophic outgrowths of the simpler features of human nature joined together into an irregular mosaic.

 * The fraction of Americans working in occupations concerned primarily with information has increased from 20 to nearly 50 percent of the work force.

 * Pure knowledge is the ultimate emancipator. It equalizes people and sovereign states, erodes the archaic barriers of superstition and promises to lift the trajectory of cultural evolution. But I do not believe that it can change the ground rules of human behavior or alter the main course of history's predictable trajectory.

 * Self-knowledge will reveal the elements of biological human nature from which modern social life proliferated in all its strange forms.

Ch.5 Aggression

 * Are human beings innately aggressive? ...The answer to it is yes. ...Only by redefining the words "innateness" and "aggression" to the point of uselessness might we correctly say that human aggressiveness is not innate.

 * The most peaceable tribes of today were often ravagers of yesteryear and will probably again produce soldiers and murderers in the future.

 * Most kinds of aggressive behavior among members of the same species are responsive to crowding in the environment.

 * Animals use aggression as a technique for gaining control over necessities... that are scarce or are likely to become so... They intensify their threats and attack with increasing frequency as the population around them grow. As a result the behavior itself induces members of the population to spread out in space, raises the death rate, and lowers the birth rate. In such cases aggression is said to be a "density-dependent factor" in controlling population growth.

Naturalist (1994)

 * If we were to vanish today, the land environment would return to the fertile balance that existed before the human population explosion. Only a dozen or so species, among which are the crab louse and a mite that lives in the oil glands of our foreheads, depend on us entirely. But if ants were to disappear, tens of thousands of other plant and animal species would perish also, simplifying and weakening land ecosystems almost everywhere.

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (1998)

 * We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.
 * p. 294.

 * True character arises from a deeper well than religion. It is the internalization of moral principles of a society, augmented by those tenets personally chosen by the individual, strong enough to endure through trials of solitude and adversity. The principles are fitted together into what we call integrity, literally the integrated self, wherein personal decisions feel good and true. Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others. It is not obedience to authority, and while it is often consistent with and reinforced by religious belief, it is not piety.

 * The most dangerous of devotions, in my opinion, is the one endemic to Christianity: I was not born to be of this world. With a second life waiting, suffering can be endured- especially in other people. The natural environment can be used up. Enemies of the faith can be savaged and suicidal martyrdom praised.
 * p. 245.

 * Old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false.
 * p. 256.

 * If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.
 * p. 262.

 * The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another.
 * p. 264.

 * Few will doubt that humankind has created a planet-sized problem for itself. No one wished it so, but we are the first species to become a geophysical force, altering Earth's climate, a role previously reserved for tectonics, sun flares, and glacial cycles. We are also the greatest destroyer of life since the ten-kilometer-wide meteorite that landed near Yucatan and ended the Age of Reptiles sixty-five million years ago. Through overpopulation we have put ourselves in danger of running out of food and water. So a very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic.
 * p. 277-278.

 * Nothing fundamental separates the course of human history from the course of physical history.

The Diversity of Life

 * Stable climates with muted seasons allow more kinds of organisms to specialize on narrower pieces of the environment, to outcompete the generalists around them, and so persist for longer periods of time. Species are packed more tightly. No niche, it seems goes unfilled. Specialization is likely to be pushed to bizarre, beautiful extremes.

Gaia Atlas of Planet Management

 * The worst thing that can happen during the 1980s is not energy depletion, economic collapse, limited nuclear war, or conquest by a totalitarian government. As terrible as these catastrophes would be for us, they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process ongoing in the 1980s that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly that our descendents are least likely to forgive us.

Biophilia (1984)

 * The naturalist is a civilized hunter. He goes alone into the field or woodland and closes his mind to everything but that time and place, so that life around him presses in on all the senses and small details grow in significance. He begins the scanning search for which cognition was engineered. His mind becomes unfocused, it focuses on everything, no longer directed toward any ordinary task or social pleasantry.

Letters to a Young Scientist (2013)

 * To know how scientists engage in visual imagery is to understand how they think creatively.
 * chapter 5, "The Creative Process", page 69.

 * Be prepared mentally for some amount of chaos and failure. Waste and frustration often attend the earliest stages.
 * chapter 5, "The Creative Process", page 69.

 * Much of good science — and perhaps all of great science — has its roots in fantasy.
 * chapter 5, "The Creative Process", page 69.

 * The ideal scientist thinks like a poet and only later works like a bookkeeper.
 * chapter 5, "The Creative Process", page 74.

 * To search for unasked questions, plus questions to put to already acquired but unsought answers, it is vital to give full play to the imagination. That is the way to create truly original science.
 * chapter 16, "Searching for New Worlds on Earth", page 177.

Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life (2016)

 * For the first time in history a conviction has developed among those who can actually think more than a decade ahead that we are playing a global endgame. Humanity's grasp on the planet is not strong. It is growing weaker. Our population is too large for safety and comfort. Fresh water is growing short, the atmosphere and the seas are increasingly polluted as a result of what has transpired on the land. The climate is changing in ways unfavorable to life, except for microbes, jellyfish and fungi. For many species it is already fatal.

 * If we choose the path of destruction, the planet will continue to descend irreversibly into the Anthropocene Epoch, the biologically final age in which the planet exists almost exclusively by, for, and of ourselves.

 * The biology of extinction is not a pleasant subject. The death of a species is especially disheartening to the scientists who study endangered and newly extinct species. Together these vanishing remnants of Earth's biodiversity test the reach and quality of human morality. Species brought low by our hand now deserve our constant attention and care.

Quotes about Wilson

 * Sorted alphabetically by author or source

 * Protected areas provide hope that the creatures of Ed Wilson's dream of an encyclopedia of life, or the census of marine life, will live not just as a list, a photograph, or a paragraph.
 * Sylvia Earle "My wish: Protect our oceans" (2009 TED talk)

 * His critics accuse him of a reductionist and mechanistic view of culture and morality, with dangerous eugenic and racist overtones, while his admirers claim that his work is Darwinian in scope and that... he is the target of philistines who object to his conclusions on ethical and emotional, rather than scientific, grounds.
 * Robert Finch, John Elder, Nature Writing: The Tradition in English (2002).

 * Wilson himself argued that it would be in the best interest of humanity if organized religions as we know them would disappear. There is, however, a misunderstanding. Wilson was not an atheist, nor was he against asking religious questions. Since his main interest were ants, it is to his interesting we should turn to understand more about his ideas on religion.
 * Massimo Introvigne, "Edward Wilson’s Legacy: Ants and Religion", Bitter Winter (January 1, 2022)

 * Religion, Wilson theorizes, is so prevalent because it provided a definite evolutionary advantage for those early humans who adopted it. ...when our apelike ancestors gradually became more intelligent, individuals could rationally begin to question the power of their leader. ...a dangerous, dissipative force on the tribe. ...Thus, according to Wilson, a selective pressure was placed on intelligent apes to suspend reason and blindly obey the leader and his myths...
 * Michio Kaku, Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension (1995).

 * You see, if E. O. Wilson says that Indian scientists should do taxonomy, now of course, someone will say that you are preventing them from doing the sort of high science that is done elsewhere. So it should not come from there, it should come from us. I think that we must recognize where we have the advantages and where we have the disadvantages.
 * Raghavendra Gadagkar,

 * Recently, E.O. Wilson's sociobiology has offered the traditionalist view on gender in an argument which applies Darwinian ideas of natural selection to human behavior. Wilson and his followers reason that human behaviors which are "adaptive" for group survival become encoded in the genes, and they include in these behavjors such complex traits as altruism, loyalty, and maternalism. They not only reason that groups practicing a sex-based division of labor in which women function as child-rearers and nurturers have an evolutionary advantage, but they claim such behavior somehow becomes part of our genetic heritage, in that the necessary psychological and physical propensities for such societal arrangements are selectively developed and genetically selected. Mothering is not only a socially assigned role but one fitting women's physical and psychological needs. Here, once again, biological determinism becomes prescriptive, in fact a political defense of the status quo in scientific language. Feminist critics have revealed the circular reasoning, absence of evidence and unscientific assumptions of Wilsonian sociobiology. From the point of view of the nonscientist, the most obvious fallacy of sociobiologists is their ahistoricity in disregarding the fact that modern men and women do not live in a state of nature. The history of civilization describes the process by which humans have distanced themselves from nature by inventing and perfecting culture. Traditionalists ignore technological changes, which have made it possible to bottle-feed infants safely and raise them to adulthood with caretakers other than their own mothers. They ignore the implications of changing life spans and changing life cycles. Until communal hygiene and modern medical knowledge cut infant mortality to a level where parents could reasonably expect each child born to them to live to adulthood, women did indeed have to bear many children in order for a few of them to survive. Similarly, longer life expectancy and lower infant mortality altered the life cycles of both men and women. These developments were connected with industrialization and occurred in Western civilization (for whites) toward the end of the nineteenth century, occurring later for the poor and for minorities due to the uneven distribution of health and social services. Whereas up to 1870 child-rearing and marriage were co-terminus-that is, one or both parents could expect to die before the youngest child reached adulthood-in modern American society husbands and wives can expect to live together for twelve years after their youngest child has reached adulthood, and women can expect to outlive their husbands by seven years." Nevertheless, traditionalists expect women to follow the same roles and occupations that were functional and species-essential in the Neolithic.
 * Gerda Lerner The Creation of Patriarchy (1986)

 * Specifically, sociobiology entails using explanatory principles and empirical findings derived from evolutionary biology to describe and explain social behavior among animals, including humans. It also draws on and incorporates thinking and research in ecology, especially behavioral ecology. The contributions of biologists such as R. A. Fisher, W. D. Hamilton, Robert Trivers, and George Williams were foundational for the development and emergence of sociobiology, and that emergence culminated with the publication of Sociobiology: The Modern Synthesis by Edward O. Wilson in 1975. This chapter explores the impact of sociobiology on theory and research in sociology during the nearly four decades since the publication of Wilson’s opus. Wilson’s book is a tome, stretching to twenty-seven chapters and 697 pages of text. Had it not been for the fact that the title and subject of Chapter 27 was “Man: From Sociobiology to Sociology,” it might have been recorded in the annals of science as a magisterial synthesis of much of what was then known about the evolution of social behavior in animals, but its inﬂuence may not have extended much beyond a few other fields such as biological anthropology or comparative psychology. But by expanding the scope of his analysis to include humans, Wilson provoked one of the great intellectual and scientific debates of the late twentieth century and helped stimulate the development of entirely new programs of research in the social and behavioral sciences.
 * Richard Machalek and Michael W. Martin, "Neo-Darwinian Evolutionary Theory and Sociology: Throwing New Light On an Old Path", published in Handbook on Evolution and Society (2015) edited by Jonathan H. Turner, Richard Machalek, Alexandra Maryanski

 * Wilson clearly laid down a radical biosociological research programme, claiming that sociology should be reduced to biology. This idea has profoundly influenced sociobiology and its reception in the larger public. Because of his claims to 'biologicize' culture and even ethics and the changes in evolutionary biology, which he at least co-provoked, sociobiology was soon singled out for criticism. But this challenge to other subject areas also inspired interesting new theories for instance in psychology or in philosophy.
 * Momme von Sydow, From Darwinian Metaphysics Towards Understanding the Evolution of Evolutionary Mechanisms (2012).

But irrationality must soon recede. It will soon be possible to read individual genetic messages at costs which will not bankrupt our health systems. In so doing, I hope we see whether changes in DNA sequence, not environmental influences, result in behaviour differences. Finally, we should be able to establish the relative importance of nature as opposed to nurture.
 * Since 1978, when a pail of water was dumped over my Harvard friend E. O. Wilson for saying that genes influence human behaviour, the assault against human behavioural genetics by wishful thinking has remained vigorous.
 * James Watson, in "James Watson: To question genetic intelligence is not racism", in The Independent (19 October 2007).

title: E. O. Wilson


text:
The Great Mouse Detective

The Great Mouse Detective is a 1986 Disney animated feature film set in a world of talking mice, in which famed detective Basil of Baker Street sets out to find a little girl's father, and in the process stop crime lord Professor Ratigan from enacting his evil plan to take over Mousedom.
 * Directed by John Musker, Ron Clements, Dave Michener, and Burny Mattinson. Written by John Musker, Ron Clements, Burny Mattinson, Matthew O'Callaghan, and Melvin Shaw.

Can he bring the dirty rat to justice?

Basil of Baker Street

 * [of Professor Ratigan] He's a genius, Dawson! A genius twisted for evil! The Napoleon of Crime!

 * Not a corner of London is safe while Ratigan is at large. There's no evil scheme he wouldn't concoct, no depravity he wouldn't commit! Who knows what dastardly scheme that that villain may be plotting even as we speak?

 * Remember, Dawson, we're low-life ruffians.

 * There's always a chance, Doctor, as long as one can think.

 * [in an almost friendly tone] Ratigan, no one can have a higher opinion of you than I have. [furiously] And I think that you're a slimy, contemptible sewer rat!

Professor Ratigan

 * Poor Basil. Oh, he is in for a surprise!

 * My friends! We are about to embark on the most odious, the most evil, the most diabolical scheme of my illustrious career! A crime to top all crimes, a crime that will live in infamy! [The henchmen cheered. Ratigan holds up a newspaper featuring the Queen's picture on the front page.] Tomorrow evening, our beloved monarch celebrates her Diamond Jubilee. And...with the enthusiastic help of our good friend, Mr. Flaversham... [The henchmen chuckle] it promises to be a night she will never forget! [burns her picture with his cigarette. The henchmen gasp in terror] Her last night...and my first, as supreme ruler of all mousedom! [The henchmen cheer.]

 * [Rubbing his head, irritated] How dare that idiot Basil poke his stupid nose into my wonderful scheme and foul up everything!

 * Bravo, Basil! A marvelous performance. Though frankly, I expected you 15 minutes earlier. Trouble with the chemistry set, old boy?

 * You don't know what a delightful dilemma it was, trying to decide on the most appropriate method for your demise. Oh, I had so many ingenious ideas I didn't know which to choose. So I decided to use them all. [the camera zooms out to show many various weapons aimed at the mousetrap] Marvelous, isn't it? Oh, ho, but, here, let me show you how it works. Picture this, first, a sprightly tune I've recorded especially for you. As the song plays, the cord tightens, and when the song ends, the metal ball is released, rolling along its merry way until... [gestures to mousetrap] Snap! [gestures to gun] Boom! [gestures to crossbow] Twang! [gestures to axe] Thunk! [gestures to anvil] SPLAT! And so ends the short, undistinguished career of Basil of Baker Street.

 * Now, you will remember to smile for the camera, won't you?

 * Fidget, you delightful little maniac!

 * There's no escape this time, Basil!

 * Stay where you are. Or the girl dies!

 * Oh, I love it when I'm nasty.

 * [looks above the doorway to another barrel, where Fidget, the bat, is hanging from the faucet, sleeping] Fidget? [Fidget doesn't wake up, so Ratigan screams in his ear.] Fidget! [Startled, Fidget falls from his perch and rolls down the stairs at Rattigan's feet.] Bright and alert as always. [hands Fidget a list] Here's the list. You know what to do, and no mistakes!

The Mouse Queen

 * [reading Professor Ratigan's letter] "To our beloved Queen, this gift we send, as her sixty-year reign.... comes to an end?"

 * Ah, I just adore Jubilees.

Olivia Flaversham

 * [to Fidget] Stop! Let me go! You ugly old thing! Help, let me out! Let me out!
 * [after the fight's over with Fidget, door closes, and the cupboard door, Olivia was put in, creaks open with big mess.] Dad, where are you?! [goes to a window] Father... where are you?!! Papa! [echoing noise] DADDY!
 * [to Ratigan] Just wait! Basil's smarter than you! He's going to put you in jail. [tugs on his tail to accent her next few insults.] He's not afraid of a big, old, ugly, rat like youǃ

Dialogue

 * Ninety The Sea Turtle: [in voiceover] Hi Everybody I’m Ninety.

 * All: Hello Everybody?
 * Ninety The Sea Turtle: [deep sigh] We’re Going On A Halloween Adventure Will You Help Us.

 * All: Yeah Sure Okay?
 * Ninety The Sea Turtle: Now Come On Let’s Go On A Halloween Adventure?
 * Ninety The Sea Turtle: Seatbelts On Now Count Down Everybody Start With 10--?
 * All: 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Blast Off.
 * Woman: Ninety Six Seven & Chuck Are Going On A Halloween Adventure & Give There Sea Animal Friends To Say Trick Or Treat!
 * Chuck Crow: Trick Or Treat.

 * Fish Kids: [to Chuck] Oh Thank You Chuck I Can’t Wait Me Too.
 * Ninety The Sea Turtle: Mission Completed Its Time For The Curtain Call Let’s Clap For Our Team Clap With Us Let’s Clap For Ninety Six Seven Submarine!
 * Six The Fish: Let’s Clap For The Art Clap For Haystacks By Claude Monet!
 * Seven The Dolphin: & Now The Moment We’ve All Been Waiting For Let’s Clap Really Really Hard From The Special Music We’ve Heard Today Fugues By Johann Sebastian Bach Yeah Bach.

 * Chuck: See You On The Next Undersea Adventure.

 * Dr. David Q. Dawson: Toby's?
 * Basil of Baker Street: Oh, you must meet him, he's just the chap for this.
 * Dr. David Q. Dawson: You- You want me to come?
 * Basil of Baker Street: Hah! I should think a stout-hearted army mouse like you would surely leap at the chance for adventure!
 * Dr. David Q. Dawson: [chuckles] Well, I am rather curious.
 * Olivia Flaversham: Wait for me! I'm coming, too! [her hat and scarf knocks over Basil's violin in the process. He dives down to catch it]
 * Basil of Baker Street: What?! Certainly not! [sets the violin back on the chair] This is no business for children.
 * Olivia Flaversham: Are we going to take a cab?
 * Basil of Baker Street: [puts his hand on his forehead with a sigh as Olivia puts several crumpets into her pocket] My dear, I don't think you understand. It will be quite dangerous. [sits on his violin, snapping it in two] Why you-! Look what- [restrains himself] Young lady, you are most definitely NOT accompanying us! AND THAT IS FINALǃ!! [Later, as they sneak out into Sherlock Holmes' house, with Olivia right beside them] And not a word out of you. Is that clear?

 * [Hiram is programming the robot; Professor Ratigan arrives from the shadows]
 * Professor Ratigan: [chuckles evilly] Quite an ingenious scheme, eh, Flaversham? And aren't you proud to be a part of it?
 * Hiram Flaversham: This whole thing, i-i-i-it's monstrous!
 * Professor Ratigan: We will have our little device ready by tomorrow evening, won't we? [holds up his bell] You know what happens if you... fail.
 * Hiram Flaversham: [angry] I don't care!
 * [Hiram pulls the levers of the robot, causing it go haywire until it falls apart and spatters a drop of oil onto Professor Ratigan's jacket, which he wipes off with a handkerchief.]
 * Hiram Flaversham: You can do what you want with me. I won't be a part of this-this... this evil any longer!
 * [Pause]
 * Professor Ratigan: Oh, very well. If that is your decision. [noticed the wind-up doll Hiram Flaversham made for Olivia] Oh, by the way, I'm taking the liberty of having your daughter brought here. [he winds up the doll to let it dance]
 * Hiram: [gasps] Olivia?
 * Professor Ratigan: Yes. [he lets go of the wind-up doll to let it dance] Yes. I would spend many a sleepless night if anything unfortunate were to befall her.
 * Hiram Flaversham: [understands what Professor Ratigan is saying] Y-You wouldn't!
 * [Professor Ratigan picks up the wind-up doll and squeezes it so hard, its head pops off.]
 * Professor Ratigan: [after a tense silence, then screams bloody murder] FINISH IT, FLAVERSHAM!

 * The Henchmen: [singing] Oh, Ratigan! Oh, Ratigan! You're tops, and that's that! To Ratigan! To Ratigan!
 * Bartholomew: [drunkly singing] To Ratigan, the world's greatest rat! [hiccups]
 * [Professor Ratigan spits out a mouthful of wine in shock, gasping. The henchmen turn around, gasping in terror.]
 * Professor Ratigan: WHAT WAS [turns to Bartholomew] THAT?!!!!! What did you call me?!!!!
 * The Henchman #1: Oh, he didn't mean it, Professor!
 * Bill the Lizard: It was just a slip of the tongue!
 * Professor Ratigan: [seizing Bartholomew] I AM NOT A RAT!
 * The Henchman #2: 'Course you're not. You're a mouse!
 * The Henchman #1: Yeah, that's right. A mouse!
 * Bill the Lizard: Yeah, a big mouse!
 * Professor Ratigan: SILENCE!
 * [Professor Ratigan throws Bartholomew out of the hideout.]
 * Professor Ratigan: Oh, my dear Bartholomew. I'm afraid you've gone and upset me. [Pulls a small bell out of his pocket] You know what happens when someone upsets me...
 * [The henchmen watch from the door, frightened as Professor Ratigan rings the bell. They then look up and gasp in terror. Felicia, Professor Ratigan's pet cat, hears the ringing of the bell and slowly walks up to Bartholomew]
 * Bartholomew: [drunkly singing] Oh, Ratigan. Oh, Ratigan. You're the tops, and that's that. [hiccups] Whoops, dear. To Ratigan. To Ratigan. To Ratigan, the world's greatest-
 * [The henchmen tremble and gasp in fear as they see Bartholomew being eaten, while Professor Ratigan nonchalantly smokes and watches. A gulp is heard. The henchmen quietly mourn their lost friend with two removing their hats and placing them over their hearts and one shedding a tear]
 * Professor Ratigan: [hugging Felicia] Oh, Felicia, my precious, my baby. [Fatherly] Did Daddy's little honey-bun enjoy her tasty treat?
 * [Felicia burps. Professor Ratigan's smile slowly collapses into a look of slight dismay. He soon regains his smile and turns back to his henchmen]
 * Professor Ratigan: I trust that there will be no further interruptions.

 * Basil of Baker Street: [after Toby has picked up Fidget's scent] Miss Flamchester!
 * Olivia Flaversham and Dr. David Q. Dawson: Flaversham!
 * Basil of Baker Street: Whatever. [hooks up Toby's leash] Your father is as good as found.

 * Dr. Dawson: Olivia! Olivia! where is she?
 * Basil of Baker Street: She's gone, Dawson! Confound it! Told you to watch over the girl! Now she's been spirited away by that maniacal little monster! Soon to be in the clutch of the most depraved mind in all of London! I should've known better than to… than to… Dawson? I say! Dawson old chap!
 * Dr. Dawson: Poor girl. I'm so sorry.
 * Basil of Baker Street: Don't worry, old fellow. We'll get her back.
 * Dr. Dawson: Do you think there's a chance?
 * Basil of Baker Street: There's always a chance, Doctor! As long as one can think.
 * Dr. Dawson: ''[finds Fidget's checklist; reads:] "Get the following: Tools, Gears, Girl, Uniforms"…
 * Basil of Baker Street: Dawson, you've done it! This list is precisely what we need! Quickly! Back to Baker Street!

 * Professor Ratigan: Ah, the uniforms! Oh, Fidget, I knew I could rely on you. Now, you didn't forget anything?
 * Fidget: No problem. I took care of everything. Everything on the list. [tries to display the list, but finds it's not there] Uh oh.
 * Professor Ratigan: What's wrong?
 * Fidget: [searching himself, to no avail] The list, but I knew I had it!
 * Professor Ratigan: Where's the list?
 * Fidget: Well, you see, it was.... It was like this; [reenacting] I was in the toy store, getting the uniforms, when I heard a 'Aroo! Aroo!'
 * Professor Ratigan: [irritated] You're not coming through.
 * Fidget: [reenacting still] A dog came. I ran! I had a baby bonnet, girl in bag, and Basil… he chase me!
 * Professor Ratigan: [shocked] What?! (You know what, Fidget) BASIL ON THE CASE?! [furious] WHY, YOU GIBBERING LITTLE--!!! [groans as he holds his anger in, then calms down and picks Fidget up] Oh, my dear Fidget. You have been hanging upside down too long.
 * Fidget: You mean, you're not mad? I'm glad you're taking it so well. [Professor Ratigan takes Fidget behind a wall. A bell is heard ringing and screaming soon follows. Cut to Felicia holding a struggling Fidget in her paw, about to eat him] Not me, you idiot! No, stop, you stupid furball! [He breaks free, but Felicia catches him and stuffs him into her mouth] Open up! Open up! Oh! Ay! Ah! Ooh! You're hurting my wing!
 * Professor Ratigan: [ranting to himself] How dare that idiot Basil pokes his stupid nose into my wonderful scheme and foul up everything?!
 * Fidget: [inside Felicia's mouth] Let me out! Let me out! [opens Felicia's mouth and still struggling for help] Help! [Felicia puts Fidget backs in her mouth with her finger]
 * Professor Ratigan: Oh, I can just see that insufferable grin on his smug face! [realizes something] Yes. Yes, I can just see it. Felicia, release him.
 * Fidget: [inside Felicia's mouth] I'm too young to die!
 * [Felicia sulks for a moment, then spits out a battered Fidget]
 * Professor Ratigan: [holding Fidget up by his cheeks] Fidget, you delightful little maniac. You've presented me with a singular opportunity. [drops Fidget, feigning a look of concern] Poor Basil. Oh, he's in for a little surprise.

 * Professor Ratigan: Bravo, Basil! A marvelous performance. Though frankly, I expected you 15 minutes earlier. Trouble with the chemistry set, old boy?
 * Basil: Ratigan, no one can have a higher opinion of you than I have. And I think you're a slimy, contemptible sewer rat!
 * Professor Ratigan: Oh, Basil, I just love your disguise! One would hardly recognize you: the greatest detective in all Mousedom! [laughs]
 * Basil: [enraged] Ratigan, so help me.... [screams] ....I'LL SEE YOU BEHIND BARS YET!
 * Professor Ratigan: [also enraged] You fool! Isn't it clear to you? The superior mind has triumphed! I've won! [He, Fidget, and the rest of their posse start laughing at Basil. Basil steels himself against the jeering and pointing, but after a few moments, he slumps and hangs his head as the cruel laughter continues and Professor Ratigan points at him] Ooh, I love it, I love it, I love it!

 * [Basil and Dawson are tied by Professor Ratigan to a machine, which he explains]
 * Professor Ratigan: Let me show you how it works! First, a sprightly tune I've recorded especially for you. [indicates a record player]. As the song plays, the cord tightens, and when the song ends, the metal ball is released, rolling along its merry way until;–– snap! [indicates a mousetrap]. Boom! [indicates a gun] Twang! [indicates a crossbow] Bunk! [indicates an axe and an iron weight] Splat! And so ends the short, undistinguished career of Basil of Baker Street.
 * Dr. David Q. Dawson: You're despicable!
 * Professor Ratigan: Yes. Now, I would love to stay and watch, but you were fifteen minutes late, and I do have an important engagement at Buckingham Palace. Now you will remember to smile for the camera, won't you? Say Cheese!

[exit Ratigan; the music plays on the record player].
 * Dr. David Q. Dawson: Basil, what did he mean, An engagement at Buckingham Palace?
 * Basil of Baker Street: Haven't you guessed, Doctor? The Queen's in danger, the Empire's doomed.
 * Dr. David Q. Dawson: The Queen?!

 * Dr. David Q. Dawson: Basil?
 * Basil of Baker Street: [groans]
 * Dr. David Q. Dawson: Basil?!?
 * Basil of Baker Street: Oh, how could I have been so blind?
 * Dr. David Q. Dawson: Well, we all make mistakes, but we can't let that stop us. We have to.
 * Basil of Baker Street: Ratigan's proved he's more clever than I. He never would have walked into such an obvious trap.
 * Dr. David Q. Dawson: Oh, pull yourself together. You can stop that villain.
 * [The record begins to skip over Ratigan's continues 'So Long' with repeating the song: "Goodbye So Soon".]
 * Dr. David Q. Dawson: Basil, the record!
 * Basil of Baker Street: It's finally happened! I've been outwitted!
 * Dr. David Q. Dawson: Basil, please!
 * Basil of Baker Street: Beaten! Duped! Made a fool of! So ridiculed and belittled!
 * Dr. David Q. Dawson: [finally loses his temper] That's enough! [The record resumes playing, startling Dawson.] Dash it all, Basil. The Queen's in danger. Olivia's counting on us. We're about to be horribly splattered, and all you can do is lie there feeling sorry for yourself. I know you can save us, but if you've given up, then why don't we just set it off now and be done with it?!
 * Basil of Baker Street: [weak chuckle] Set it off now. [slight pauses, as his eyes go wide, and he realizes something] Set it.... off.... now? [suddenly regains his old confidence] Yes, ha-ha-ha, yes, we'll set the trap off NOW!
 * Dr. David Q. Dawson: Basil, wait. I didn't mean we'd--
 * [The marble starts falling as the record's done.]
 * Basil of Baker Street: Angle of the trajectory, multiplied by the square root of an isosceles triangle.... [mutters] ....dividing Guttermeg's principle of opposing forces in motion, [continues to mutter] and adjusting for the difference in equilibrium.... [all this while the marble has been rolling closer and closer] Dawson, at the exact moment I tell you, we must release the triggering mechanism. Get ready Dawson, steady.... [Olivia pushed stuck the green bottle in a corks] now! [Dawson screams and the trigger is released, but the bar traps the marble, stops the bar. A spring pops off, hits the gun which misfires into the crossbow. The bow is offset, hitting the axehead off and causing it to chop the mousetrap in half, freeing the two. Finally, the anvil crashes down, burying the axe, shaking the ground, and causes Olivia's bottle to shake and pop her out. Basil then whips off his disguise, and puts his detective outfit back on.] Thank you, Dawson. [catches Olivia] Smile everyone! [Their pictures are taken]

 * [At Buckingham Palace, the Mouse Queen is preparing for her speech. Outside, the two guards at the door are knocked out by Professor Ratigan's henchmen, dressed as the guards]
 * The Henchman 1: [As the other henchmen moves the box to the door] Psst! Over here. Come on. Over here.
 * [They knock on the door]
 * The Mouse Queen: Come in.
 * The Henchman 2: Uh, begging your Majesty's pardon? A present has just arrived in honour of your jubilee.
 * The Mouse Queen: A present? Oh, how wonderful! Oh, I just adore jubilees.
 * Fidget: [Hands the queen a note] Here you are, sweetheart.
 * The Mouse Queen: Have you been with us long? [reads the note sent with the present] "To our beloved Queen, this gift we send as her 60 year reign..." [she becomes confused at the last words] "...comes to an end"?
 * [Fidget and the henchmen open the box to reveal an exact duplicate of the Queen.]
 * The Mouse Queen: How interesting.
 * [The Robot Queen activates and chases the real Queen around the room.]
 * The Mouse Queen: Good gracious!
 * [The Robot Queen stops. We see Professor Ratigan at the door with Hiram Flaversham at the controls]
 * Professor Ratigan: Amazing likeness, isn't it, Your Majesty?
 * The Mouse Queen: Professor Ratigan! [To Professor Ratigan's henchmen] Guards! Seize this despicable creature!
 * [Fidget and the henchmen do nothing except grin. Professor Ratigan takes control of the Robot Queen]
 * Professor Ratigan: [As the Queen] Guards, seize this despicable creature.
 * [Professor Ratigan cackles into the reciever while Fidget and the henchmen seize the Queen]
 * The Mouse Queen: How dare you!
 * Professor Ratigan: Take her away. [Rings his bell, dooming the Queen to be a meal for Felicia]
 * The Mouse Queen: Let go of me, you ruffians!
 * Fidget: Move along, honey!
 * The Mouse Queen: You fiends! [cries] Traitors!

 * [Professor Ratigan reads an extremely long list of laws he intends to pass as the Queen's Royal Consort]
 * Professor Ratigan: Item 96: [chuckles] A heavy tax shall be levied against all parasites and spongers, such as the elderly, the infirm, and especially [glaring] little children.
 * The Crippled Old Mouse: That's ridiculous! You're insane!
 * Professor Ratigan: Perhaps I haven't made myself clear. [Professor Ratigan grabs the crippled old mouse's crutch, jumps up on stage and snaps it in 2.] I have the power!
 * The Robot Queen: Of course you do.
 * Professor Ratigan: I am supreme!
 * The Robot Queen: Only you.
 * Professor Ratigan: THIS IS MY KINGDOM! [laughs maniacally, then calms down] That is, of course, with your Highness's permission. [The Robot Queen doesn't respond. Professor Ratigan slaps it gently to get it going again]
 * The Robot Queen: Most assuredly.... you insidious fiend!
 * Professor Ratigan: [horrified] What?
 * The Robot Queen: You're not my royal consort!
 * Professor Ratigan: [to the crowd] What a sense of humour.
 * The Robot Queen: You're a cheap fraud and impostor!
 * Professor Ratigan: [aside] Flaversham!
 * [Cut to backstage, where we see Basil at the controls of the robot, Olivia and her father reunited and Fidget and the rest of Professor Ratigan's minions tied up by Dawson and the real Queen]
 * Basil of Baker Street: [controlling the Robot Queen] A corrupt, vicious, demented, lowlife scoundrel! There's no evil scheme you wouldn't concoct!
 * [The Robot Queen's head springs up and bites Professor Ratigan on the nose. Professor Ratigan tries in vain to keep the robot down]
 * The Robot Queen: No depravity you wouldn't commit!
 * [The Robot Queen rapidly starts flailing and falling apart until little remains but a pile of scrap metal and a pair of eyes and a set of teeth on a spring.]
 * Basil of Baker Street: [Controlling the Robot Queen] You, Professor....
 * The Robot Queen: [as Professor Ratigan starts to grow infuriated, seeing through the insults] ....are none other than a foul stenchus rodentus, commonly known as a--!
 * Professor Ratigan: DON'T SAY IT!
 * Basil of Baker Street: [reveals himself] SEWER RAT!!
 * [Professor Ratigan screams in anger upon hearing Basil]
 * Basil of Baker Street: Arrest that fiend!
 * [Professor Ratigan sees in horror that Basil is behind him]

 * Olivia Flaversham: [to Professor Ratigan] Just wait! Basil's smarter than you! He's going to put you in jail. [tugs on his tail to accent her next few insults.] He's not afraid of a big, old, ugly, rat like youǃ
 * Professor Ratigan: [being much stronger, easily takes his tail back.] Would you kindly sit down and SHUT UP?!?!?!

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 * Fidget: We have to lighten the load! [looks pointedly at Olivia]
 * Professor Ratigan: [mockingly] Ohh. You want to lighten the load? Excellent idea!
 * [Professor Ratigan grabs Fidget and tosses him overboard]
 * Fidget: [as he pitifully flutters in the air] No! Not me! Wait, I can't fly! I can't fly! [falls towards the river]

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 * Professor Ratigan: [After knocking Basil off the clock hand, seemingly to his death] I'VE WON! AHAHAHAHA!
 * Basil of Baker Street: On the contrary! The game's not over yet!

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 * Olivia Flaversham: [hugs Basil] Goodbye, Basil. I'll never forget you.
 * [Basil smiles at Olivia and leans down and puts his hands on her shoulders]
 * Basil of Baker Street: Nor I you, Miss--Miss Flangerhanger. [Olivia stares for a moment, then shakes her head, a smile on her face]
 * Dr. David Q. Dawson: [chuckles] Whatever.

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 * Dr. David Q. Dawson: [closing lines; voiceover] From that time on, Basil and I were a close team, and over the years we had many cases together. But I shall always look back on that first with the most fondness: My introduction to Basil of Baker Street: The Great Mouse Detective.

Cast

 * Barrie Ingham - Basil of Baker Street/Bartholomew
 * Val Bettin - Dr. David Q. Dawson/Thug Guard
 * Vincent Price - Professor Ratigan
 * Candy Candido - Fidget the Bat/Bar Patron
 * Alan Young - Hiram Flaversham
 * Susanne Pollatschek - Olivia Flaversham
 * Patricia Parris - Daisy Duck/Lady/Peg/Cleo/Kanga/Anastasia Tremaine
 * Diana Chesney - Mrs. Judson

title: The Great Mouse Detective