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It’s all in the genes”: an explanation for the way things are that does not threaten the way things are. Why should someone feel unhappy or engage in antisocial behavior when that person is living in the freest and most prosperous nation on earth? It can’t be the system! There must be a flaw in the wiring somewhere.

Louis Menand

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Louis Menand
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: January 21
Academic
Historian
Writer
Syracuse
New York
Earth
Somewhere
Flaw
Persons
Behavior
Threaten
Person
Nation
Prosperous
Feel
System
Genes
Must
Nations
Engage
Feels
Living
Flaws
Freest
Way
Someone
Explanation
Wiring
Things
Doe
Unhappy
Antisocial

More quotes by Louis Menand

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Cognitive science is a rapidly developing area, so it could be that there are some surprises around the corner. That does seem to be kind of where the trend line is leading.
Louis Menand
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I don't think that you want to see universities in any way trying to have any kind of quota system about political views, or views in general. You want the market to work in the way the market works.
Louis Menand
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You have to have students wanting to take the courses, otherwise you're not going, they're not going to be very effective.
Louis Menand
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I don't think the same curriculum fits every student body.
Louis Menand
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The difficulty with coming up with a curriculum is mainly that faculty aren't trained to think in terms of general education. They're trained to think in terms of their own discipline, or their specialty.
Louis Menand
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Universities are set up to get people to work together by having them disagree with each other.
Louis Menand
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My own view is that the general education curriculum that a college picks has to be appropriate for the kind of student body that it has.
Louis Menand
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Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark professionals built the Titanic. Never, btw, ask that androgynous paper clip anything. S/he is just a stooge for management, leading you down more rabbit holes of options for things called Wizards, Macros, Templates, and Cascading Style Sheets.
Louis Menand
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The job of the critic, as it might have been conceived in the 1950's or 1960's, was some kind of role of moral arbiter for people, not a huge number of people, but people who were, you know, fairly educated, well-placed people.
Louis Menand
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A person whose financial requirements are modest and whose curiosity, skepticism, and indifference to reputation are outsized is a person at risk of becoming a journalist.
Louis Menand
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I think that the idea that there's such a thing as a national literature that's somehow uniquely expressive of a national soul or culture or mentality is probably also something that nobody really believes in anymore.
Louis Menand
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I suppose everybody does get attached to characters whether in movies or in stories, but I think that's part of the reason you get involved with literature is because there's somebody that grabs you about it and then you want to figure out why.
Louis Menand
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We have much wisdom to gain by learning to understand other people's cultures and permitting ourselves to accept that there is more than one version of reality.
Louis Menand
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The short story is not as restrictive as the sonnet, but, of all the literary forms, it is possibly the most single-minded. ...at the end there has to be the literary equivalent of the magician's puff of smoke, an outcome that is both startling and anticipated.
Louis Menand
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Obviously input is helpful to faculty in trying to come up with a curriculum, but ultimately it's the faculty's job to know what students need to know. Make a decision about it and present it.
Louis Menand
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Diminished circumstances had no effect on his sense of what was honorable: after The Spectator sent him a check for a piece it had accepted but was unable to run for a lack of space, he refused to write for the magazine again.
Louis Menand
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Basically what you want in any profession - I would say the same thing if I were a lawyer or a doctor - is you want bright undergraduates to look at your profession as something they would be interested in getting into.
Louis Menand
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You want diversity in any intellectual organization. I mean, that's how good ideas arise.
Louis Menand
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I don't think people believe that any more, I don't think people think that it really matters whether you appreciate Henry James more than Theodore Dreiser.
Louis Menand
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Harvard has something that manages, I think, to provide a lot of options for students, but still fairly prescriptive about the kinds of subjects that the courses ought to cover.
Louis Menand