p. 13
“

Man can be the most affectionate and altruistic of creatures, yet he's potentially more vicious than any other. He is the only one who can be persuaded to hate millions of his own kind whom he has never seen and to kill as many as he can lay his hands on in the name of his tribe or his God.

— Benjamin Spock

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Man can be the most affectionate and altruistic of creatures, yet he's potentially more vicious than any other. He is the only one who can be persuaded to hate millions of his own kind whom he has never seen and to kill as many as he can lay his hands on in the name of his tribe or his God." in the context of "p. 13" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Benjamin Spock" (Quotes, Decent and Indecent: Our Personal and Political Behavior (1970): Quotations from Decent and Indecent: Our Personal and Political Behavior, New York: McCall Publishing Company, 1970. ) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Benjamin Spock

About Benjamin Spock

Benjamin McLane Spock (2 May 1903 – 15 March 1998) was an American pediatrician and author.