The highest stage in moral culture at which we can arrive is when we recognize that we ought to control read more

The highest stage in moral culture at which we can arrive is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts.

To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.

To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible.

To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of read more

To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.

Veracity is the heart of morality.

Veracity is the heart of morality.

What are we when we are alone? Some, when they are alone, cease to exist.

What are we when we are alone? Some, when they are alone, cease to exist.

There is nothing so awkward as courting a woman whilst she is making sausages.

There is nothing so awkward as courting a woman whilst she is making sausages.

Evaluation and judgment are responses to what exists, sorting the things that pass before us into categories of good, bad, read more

Evaluation and judgment are responses to what exists, sorting the things that pass before us into categories of good, bad, and indifferent. But a rational life, the life of a valuer, does not consist essentially in reaction. It consists in action. Man does not find his values, like the other animals; he creates them. The primary focus of a valuer is not to take the world as it comes and pass judgment. His primary focus is to identify what might and ought to exist, to uncover potentialities that he can exploit, to find ways of reshaping the world in the image of his values.

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.

Implicit in the activist conception of government is the assumption that you can take the good things in a complex read more

Implicit in the activist conception of government is the assumption that you can take the good things in a complex system for granted, and just improve the things that are not so good. What is lacking in this conception is any sense that a society, an institution, or even a single human being, is an intricate system of fragile inter-relationships, whose complexities are little understood and easily destabilized.