A Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson
The moral sense is always supported by the permanent interest of the parties. Else, I know not how, in our world, any good would ever get done.
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Anyone who has ever accomplished anything of any consequence, didn't know how to get what they want, they only knew that they were going to get it. You don't know how to do something, until after you've done it. Our problem is, we set goals to do what we think we can do or what we've already done. There's no inspiration in that.
It's in no way my interest (according to the common acceptance of that word) to convince the world of their errors; that is, I shall get nothing from it but the private satisfaction of having done good to mankind, and I know nobody that reckons that satisfaction any part of their interest.
True stories are always good because they're so odd, and so unlikely. It's always good to have a world that people don't know about - a world that hasn't yet been done. It's like treading on fresh snow. You're the first one there. It always feels good to be dealing with a period of history or a world that no one else has dealt with.
Other than hitting the ball...there's nothing else I have ever done or know how to do. How to live on the outside, how to earn a living, how to take of my family, I'm a stupid idiot who doesn't know how to do any of that. Therefore...Please let me play baseball.
Be undeniably good. When people ask me how do you make it in show business or whatever, what I always tell them & nobody ever takes note of it 'cause it's not the answer they wanted to hear-what they want to hear is here's how you get an agent, here's how you write a script, here's how you do this-but I always say, “Be so good they can't ignore you.” If somebody's thinking, “How can I be really good?” people are going to come to you. It's much easier doing it that way than going to cocktail parties.
In this world laws are written for the lofty aim of "the common good" and then acted out in life on the basis of the common greed. In this world irrationality clings to man like his shadow so that the right things get done for the wrong reasons - afterwards, we dredge up the right reasons for justification. It is a world not of angels but of angles, where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles; a world where we are always moral and our enemies always immoral; a world where "reconciliation" means that when one side gets the power and the other side gets reconciled to it.
Lastly, our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits.... Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.
My dad's a musician, and he taught me how to play when I was three, I think, so I've been playing ever since. It's something I've always done. And when you're really young, and you play music for people, people get really excited, so you get this inner sense that you are good at it, even though I've always been really not good at it.
In North America, people get a sense that something is really wrong in government and in our culture. There is a corruption, not only in politics, but of spirit as well, when people are so quick to be violent with one another. I think everybody would like to be able to find a solution to make things better. We have the desire to reform inside of us, and we get frustrated because we don't know how to change things, even if it comes to our own behavior. Sometimes you get frustrated because you don't know how to stop that thing that you know is either hurtful to yourself or someone else.
Yes, we know more than ever before, and it's a wonder that we get to inhabit a world full of driverless cars and 3D printers. But that doesn't mean that we know any more about the essential things in life - love, faith, death - and it would be dangerous to assume we did. The only thing that gets us through sometimes is a proper, humbled sense that we don't have a clue, we can't be sure what's going to happen next and life will always be much larger than our ideas of it.
My uncommon sense told me to write this book [Turn and blossom], even though I was in the middle of making final revisions to my dissertation! Common sense would have said, finish the dissertation and get a good, solid academic position. But instead, I got to do something that no one else has done, because I don't think anyone has written a book quite like this one. And look at how beautiful it is!
Diseases don't respect borders. You know, just at the edge of the American border, that isn't the edge of diseases. We need to be sure that we're looking worldwide. And it is in our security interest, as well as our moral interest, to pay attention to the rest of the world.
The American people are not ready for the idea that everyone has at least a moral right to good, timely health care. They do agree they have a moral right, in critical cases, to have anything done to save their life, but they don't believe that anyone has a right not to fall that sick to begin with. So if you ask me, "Are we ever succumbing to some notions of solidarity as a nation?," I would say, "Not at all." I would describe us as a group of people who share a geography. That's a better description of Americans than that we're a real nation with a sense of solidarity.
They always say 'Is there going to be a sequel to Bad Santa?' and you know, I mean, a long time ago they would talk about, you know, we're going to do a sequel to that but it was never serious. And they said 'Would you do it?' and I said out of all the movies I've done, that was a lot of fun, and maybe I would do a sequel if it ever came up and it made sense, but I said I don't think that's ever going to happen.
You can't just think that you will get a job for no good reason... And I think that the other part is you have to work your way up, you know I did a lot of Xeroxing and getting coffee...I always did what I was asked to do. I delivered. People knew that I would get things done and get them done well. And that is a big part of our resumes, are based on being responsible and being willing to do what needed to be done.
I think moral philosophy is speculation on how we ought to live together done by people who have very little clue how people work. So I think most moral philosophy is disconnected from the species that we happen to be. In fact, they like it that way. Many moral philosophers insist that morality grows out of our rationality, that it applies to any rational being anywhere in the universe, and that it is not based on contingent or coincidental facts about our evolution.
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