What persuades men and women to mistake each other from time to time for gods or vermin is ideology. One can understand well enough how human beings may struggle and murder for good material reasons -- reasons connected, for instance, with their physical survival. It is much harder to grasp how they may come to do so in the name of something as apparently abstract as ideas. Yet ideas are what men and women live by, and will occasionally die for.

Summary

This quote by Terry Eagleton asserts that the reason behind the tendency of people to either idolize or debase each other is ideology. Eagleton explains that while one can comprehend how individuals may engage in conflict for tangible reasons like self-preservation, it is more perplexing to understand how they can do so in the name of intangible concepts like ideas. However, Eagleton emphasizes that ideas are central to human existence and decision making, and at times people are willing to sacrifice their lives in the pursuit or defense of these abstract notions.

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