Tom > Tom's Quotes

“The most prominent approach argues that humans have five largely independent dimensions of personality: (1) openness to experience (“adventurousness”), (2) conscientiousness (“self-discipline”), (3) extraversion (vs. introversion), (4) agreeableness (“cooperativeness” or “compassion”), and (5) neuroticism (“emotional instability”). These have often been interpreted as capturing the innate structure of human personality. Psychologists call these personality dimensions the “BIG-5,” but I’ll call them the WEIRD-5.”
― Joseph Henrich, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous

“Frederic Bartlett, one of the most important figures in the history of memory research, “literal recall is extraordinarily unimportant.”
― Charan Ranganath, Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters

“And so a strange, cosmic unity bodied forth that week in American political history, as Lyndon Johnson came off his first campaign tour: the FBI and the Warren Commission asserting that all it took was one man to tear a social fabric asunder; Mississippians bombing their way past illusions about the American way of reconciling conflict; Berkeley students saying no to “neutrality”; a third of the nation still stubbornly insisting on backing Barry Goldwater—all of them, at the same time, making the idea of an American consensus seem little more than a stubborn, fanciful mythology.”
― Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus

“The lies went back to Harry Truman, the article explained. Military aid to France had “directly involved” the United States in preserving a European colony; the Eisenhower administration played “a direct role in the ultimate breakdown in the Geneva settlement” and the cancellation of free elections scheduled for 1956. (President Nixon always said honoring Geneva was the reason we had to continue the war.) Kennedy—this in the Pentagon study’s words—transformed the “limited-risk gamble” he inherited into a “broad commitment.” Lyndon Johnson laid plans for full-fledged war as early as the spring of 1964—campaigning against Barry Goldwater with the line “We seek no wider war.”
― Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: America's Second Civil War and the Divisive Legacy of Richard Nixon 1965-72

“The third day revealed the smokingest gun of all—a memo from Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs John McNaughton breaking down, in Robert McNamara’s preferred statistical terms, why we were persisting in Vietnam: 70%—To avoid a humiliating U.S. defeat…. 20%—To keep SVN (and the adjacent) territory from Chinese hands. 10%—To permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life. ALSO—To emerge from the crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used. NOT—To “help a friend.”
― Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: America's Second Civil War and the Divisive Legacy of Richard Nixon 1965-72