The wrong people will do everything in their power to guarantee that the wrong political climate will continue. It seems, then, that the wrong people ensure the wrong political climate and the wrong political climate ensures the wrong people. How then to break free of this vicious circle?
I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or it they try, they will shortly be out of office.
When you can make it this simple, though, just do the right thing. Even if you could get away with less. Even when other people are doing the wrong thing. Even though the wrong thing seems like no big deal.
As long as the wrong people hold power, how can the right political climate even arise?
Even if you tell yourself "Today I'm going to drink coffee the wrong way ... from a dirty boot." Even that would be right, because you chose to drink coffee from that boot. Because you can do nothing wrong. You are always right. Even when you say, "I'm such an idiot, I'm so wrong..." you're right. You're right about being wrong. You're right even when you're an idiot. No matter how stupid your idea, you're doomed to be right because it's yours.
I was born with the wrong sign
In the wrong house
With the wrong ascendancy
I took the wrong road
That led to
The wrong tendencies
I was in the wrong place
At the wrong time
For the wrong reason
And the wrong rhyme
On the wrong day
Of the wrong week
Used the wrong method
With the wrong technique
Wrong
Wrong.
The more efficient you are at doing the wrong thing, the wronger you become. It is much better to do the right thing wronger than the wrong thing righter. If you do the right thing wrong and correct it, you get better.
I like to be the right thing in the wrong space and the wrong thing in the right space. But usually being the right thing in the wrong space and the wrong thing in the right space is worth it, because something funny always happens.
The hardest thing is trying not to correct everything on the Internet. It'd be night and day - wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. So you just have to say, 'All right, I'll take it, bring it on.'
The hardest thing is trying not to correct everything on the Internet. It'd be night and day - wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. So you just have to say, All right, I'll take it, bring it on.
Moral principles do not depend on a majority vote. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong. Right is right, even if nobody is right.
Every time I think I know what's right and wrong, I end up being wrong. All I want to do is explore. I want to see what people would do. I say, 'What would this person do in this situation?' and I write it down. I'm not writing manifestos of my political views.
There can be as many wrong reasons to do the right thing as there are stars in the sky. There might even be more than one legitimate right reason. But there is never a right reason to do the wrong thing. Not ever.
In my religion it's actually better to know you're doing wrong and try to improve that wrong than to think philosophically that what you're doing is right and in fact it is wrong.
But it's not enough to know right from wrong. You need the strength to do what's right, even when what you want most in the world is the wrong thing.
Don’t do what you know on a gut level to be the wrong thing to doI don’t think there’s a single dumbass thing I’ve done in my adult life that I didn’t know was a dumbass thing to do while I was doing it. Even when I justified it to myself—as I did every damn time—the truest part of me knew I was doing the wrong thing. Always. As the years pass, I’m learning how to better trust my gut and not do the wrong thing, but every so often I get a harsh reminder that I’ve still got work to do.