| The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996. |
| |
| |
| NUMBER: | 44824 |
| QUOTATION: | For three hundred years the idea that nurture is the determining factor in human actions has been used to argue for a variety of social programs—if we can only change people’s environments, the argument goes, we can make a better humanity; reduce crime, fight poverty, get rid of the sex difference in math. This creed is usually associated with the politics of the Left. On the other hand, if nature is responsible for much of what we are—heavily influencing such things as intelligence, personality traits, perhaps even propensity to commit crimes—then there are limits to what social programs can do to reduce the individual differences between people. This conviction is often thought to fit better with the politics of the Right. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | Robert Pool, U.S. science journalist. Eve’s Rib: The Biological Roots of Sex Differences, ch. 9, Crown Publishers, Inc. (1994). |
| |
| | | The Columbia World of Quotations. Copyright © 1996 Columbia University Press. |
|
|
