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There may be no more-radioactive term in the English language than what we now almost always refer to as the 'n-word' - itself a coy means of linguistic sidestepping that is a sign of how perilous it is to utter the thing in full, even in conversations about language.

Jeffrey Kluger

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Jeffrey Kluger
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: May 21
Author
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Thing
Almost
Perilous
Always
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May
English
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More quotes by Jeffrey Kluger

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When it comes to raising civilized kids there are no hard rules, but there are two things on which most parents agree: Boys are generally wilder than girls, and adolescents are wilder than kids of any other age. If you've got an adolescent boy, you're in the sweet spot for trouble.
Jeffrey Kluger
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Becoming food savvy is one thing, but it's amazing how fast savvy turns to snooty, and snooty leaves you preparing three-hour meals that break your budget and that the kids won't even eat.
Jeffrey Kluger
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Marriage is a lot of things - a source of love, security, the joy of children, but it's also an interpersonal battlefield, and it's not hard to see why: Take two disparate people, toss them together in often-confined quarters, add the stresses of money and kids - now lather, rinse, repeat for the rest of your natural life. What could go wrong?
Jeffrey Kluger
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Everybody loves to spend money at least some of the time - because everybody loves the stuff you can buy with it. The key to the pleasure level of any transaction is the balance between the pain of the payment and the reward of the purchased object.
Jeffrey Kluger
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A mere ape in our world may be a scholar in its own, and the low life of any beast may be a source of deep satisfaction for the beast itself.
Jeffrey Kluger
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There's no one place a virus goes to die - but that doesn't make its demise any less a public health victory. Throughout human history, viral diseases have had their way with us, and for just as long, we have hunted them down and done our best to wipe them out.
Jeffrey Kluger
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Psychopaths know the technical difference between right and wrong - which is one of the reasons their insanity pleas in criminal cases so rarely succeed they just fail to act on that knowledge.
Jeffrey Kluger
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A close family member once offered his opinion that I exhibit the phone manners of a goat, then promptly withdrew the charge - out of fairness to goats.
Jeffrey Kluger
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Paul McCartney had a baby when he was 61 Rod Stewart was 66 Rupert Murdoch was a stunning 72. Not only does that mean they'll have less stamina than the average dad, that means they'll, well, check out a lot sooner too.
Jeffrey Kluger
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Science has yet to isolate the Godiva Chocolate or Prada gene, but that doesn't mean your weakness for pricey swag isn't woven into your DNA. According to a new study of identical twins, it's less TV ads or Labor Day sales that make you buy the things you do than the tastes and temperaments that are already part of you at birth.
Jeffrey Kluger
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More and more NFL players have been willing their bodies to science so that their brains can be studied even if they die of other causes.
Jeffrey Kluger
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When our culture shifts, it tends to overcorrect, throwing out everything associated with an era we've moved past, rather than saving what was good and combining it with what is new.
Jeffrey Kluger
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Narcissistic personalities usually do do better than you and me and the average person. We've always seen it in the office. The person who speaks up more in meetings, the person who's charismatic, who can sell an idea with more excitement and energy.
Jeffrey Kluger
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The truth, of course, is that the only necessary and sufficient condition for human beings to murder one another is the simple fact of being human.
Jeffrey Kluger
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Even the best computer in the world has no idea that it exists. You do. No one knows what creates that ineffable awareness that we're here.
Jeffrey Kluger
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Well, I think of the folks who are the climate deniers as the flat Earthers and the people who say the moon landings never happened.
Jeffrey Kluger
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Kids are anarchy writ large.
Jeffrey Kluger
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There's a universe inside your head - a place of pictures and passions, of songs and sorrows. It's everything you are - and it's an utter mystery.
Jeffrey Kluger
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Spare a thought for the poor introverts among us. In a world of party animals and glad-handers, they're the ones who stand by the punch bowl. In a world of mixers and pub crawls, they prefer to stay home with a book. Everywhere around them, cell phones ring and e-mails chime and they just want a little quiet.
Jeffrey Kluger
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There's a deep-freeze of sorts for all good intentions - a place that you store your plans to make changes in your life when you know you're not going to make them at all.
Jeffrey Kluger