To have a liberal temperament is a kind of psychological boon, To be able to understand that someone you disagree with is not just a terrible creature but somebody with whom you disagree

I am not comfortable with the life-against-death generalization that Freud makes; it strikes me as too convenient.

To have a liberal temperament is a kind of psychological boon, To be able to understand that someone you disagree with is not just a terrible creature but somebody with whom you disagree.

My assumption is that fundamentally the picture of the human animal, as developed by Freud, is largely right.

Every historian has informally an anthropology, without ever using the word.

There is something very intriguing about, for example, the sense of accomplishment that a small child has, which you might be able to reduce to aggression and libido, but which might also have some independent existence.