A Quote by David Foster Wallace

Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per se.

David Foster Wallace

Quote Topics

Becomes End Itself More Per Pleasure Than Value Western

Quote Author

David Foster Wallace
American - Writer
February 21, 1962 - December 12, 2008

Innocent pleasures in moderation can provide relaxation for the body and mind and can foster family and other relationships. But pleasure, per se, offers no deep, lasting satisfaction or sense of fulfillment. The pleasure-centered person, too soon bored with each succeeding level of "fun," constantly cries for more and more. So the next new pleasure has to be bigger and better, more exciting, with a bigger "high." A person in this state becomes almost entirely narcissistic, interpreting all of life in terms of the pleasure it provides to the self here and now.

Stephen Covey

I collect objects I fall in love with more than antiques per se. Value is not a criteria that attracts me to something.

Dries van Noten

We proclaim human intelligence to be morally valuable per se because we are human. If we were birds, we would proclaim the ability to fly as morally valuable per se. If we were fish, we would proclaim the ability to live underwater as morally valuable per se. But apart from our obviously self-interested proclamations, there is nothing morally valuable per se about human intelligence.

Gary L. Francione

Eventually I realized that for contemporary philosophers conceptual analysis per se was an end in itself. For some, it was somehow supposed to lead to the truth about these phenomena, not just to tidy things up a bit.

Patricia Churchland

How can anyone love someone who is less than a full person, unless love itself is domination per se?

Andrea Dworkin

Good deeds shun the light as anxiously as evil deeds: the latter fear that disclosure will bring on pain (as punishment), while the former fear that disclosure will take away pleasure (that pure pleasure, that pleasure per se, which immediately ceases once the vanity's satisfaction is added).

Friedrich Nietzsche

Hannah Arendt in her study of totalitarianism borrowed from Immanuel Kant the concept of radical evil, of evil that's so evil that in the end it destroys itself, it's so committed to evil and it's so committed to hatred and cruelty that it becomes suicidal. My definition of it is the surplus value that's generated by totalitarianism. It means you do more violence, more cruelty than you absolutely have to to stay in power.

Christopher Hitchens

Pity aims just as little at the pleasure of others as malice at the pain of others Per-Se.

Friedrich Nietzsche

What an economy really wants, after all, is not more investment per se but better investment. It wants capital to flow to companies that will create value - not in the form of a rising stock price but in the form of more goods for less cost, more jobs, and rising wages - by enhancing productivity.

James Surowiecki

We are compelled to work more hours per day, receive less pay per hour, pay more for what we buy, and recieve less for what we sell. The consequence is that we must work harder and more hours per day than we should, and in the end have less than what is due to us as our part of the advantages, conveniences and opportunities resulting from advancing civilization.

Charles Lindbergh

I'm more interested in the writing than in the content per se (good writing can be about wallpaper and I'll devour it).

Katy Lederer

I don't really tell a joke per se, I build up an attitude and it becomes a joke.

Don Rickles

Our royalty statement has been minimal and menial. Really. We don't collect more than a per cent of a per cent of a per cent of a per cent of a per cent of a per cent of a per cent. We get maybe the seventh of 1 percent.

Liz Mitchell

The mere holding of slaves, therefore, is a condition having per se nothing of moral character in it, any more than the being a parent, or employer, or ruler.

Samuel Morse

The mere holding of slaves, therefore, is a condition having per se nothing of moral character in it, any more than the being a parent, or employer, or ruler

Samuel Morse

The act of not discussing or confiding the event with another may be more damaging than having experienced the event per se.