# Quote — John Derbyshire, We Are Doomed

> The ordinary modes of human thinking are magical, religious, social, and personal. We want our wishes to come true; we want the universe to care about us; we want the approval of those around us; we want to get even with that s.o.b. who insulted us at the last tribal council. For most people, wanting to know the cold truth about the world is way, way down the list.

- Author: [John Derbyshire](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-derbyshire.md)
- Book: [We Are Doomed](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-derbyshire/we-are-doomed.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Derbyshire#We_Are_Doomed:_Reclaiming_Conservative_Pessimism_(2009)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-derbyshire/we-are-doomed/the-ordinary-modes

## More from this book

> Unbelievers may think - all right, we do think - Christianity is only slightly less nutty than Islam; but Christianity is ours. We've got along with it for several centuries; and the relationship between Western unbelievers and Western Christians, if not always polite, is stable and comfortable. Can we fit Islam in like that?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-derbyshire/we-are-doomed/unbelievers-may-think.md)

> All good ideas are of their time... and are liable to turn from blessings into blights if persisted in too long. The justifiable right of workers to organize in protection of their interests turned at last into featherbedding, the Teamster rackets, auto companies made uncompetitive by extravagant benefits agreements, and government-worker unions voting themselves ever-bigger shares of the public fisc. The campaign for full civil rights and racial justice turned into affirmative action, race quotas, grievance lawsuits, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and everlasting racial rancor.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-derbyshire/we-are-doomed/all-good-ideas.md)

> After the many hundreds of generations that Australian, East Asian, African, European and indigenous American populations of Homo sapians developed in isolation from each other, in different environments, there ought to be divergence aplenty, though nowhere near to speciation. And so there is. That is why a roomful of Australian aborigines looks nothing like a roomful of Hungarians, and neither looks anything like a roomful of Quechua-speaking South American indigenes.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/john-derbyshire/we-are-doomed/after-the-many.md)