Quotes About Givens

In acting class, teachers talk about how the 'givens' of a situation help define a character.

Dr. Malcolm," Hammond explained, "is a man of strong opinions." "And mad as a hatter," Malcolm said cheerfully. "But you must admit, these are nontrivial issues. We live in a world of frightful givens. It is given that you will behave like this, given that you will care about that. No one thinks about the givens. Isn't it amazing? In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.

We live in a world of frightful givens. It is given that you will behave like this, given that you care about that. No one thinks about the givens. Isn't it amazing? In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.

There's only two givens with choosing acting as a profession: one is you will always be unemployed, always, and it doesn't matter how much money you make, you're still always going to be unemployed; and that you have no power.

It is all too easy to accept emotions as primitive "givens" and proceed toward a superficial understanding based on words, arbitrary definitions, and the quiddities of logic rather than biology.

Freudians argue that the psychological structure is the cause of civilization. Malinowski replaces a psychological causality with a sociological causality and takes the Oedipus complex as a product of civilization. But it is evident that the one thesis and the other are both inseparable and contradictory. We must construct a psychoanalysis and a sociology...which overtakes and synthesizes classical givens.