A Quote by Elihu Root
Prejudice and passion and suspicion are more dangerous than the incitement of self-interest or the most stubborn adherence to real differences of opinion regarding rights.
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We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or even of self-interest. Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of a teacup puts us out of temper for the day; and a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only with our lives.
What is passion? It is surely the becoming of a person. Are we not, for most of our lives, marking time? Most of our being is at rest, unlived. In passion, the body and the spirit seek expression outside of self. Passion is all that is other from self. Sex is only interesting when it releases passion. The more extreme and the more expressed that passion is, the more unbearable does life seem without it. It reminds us that if passion dies or is denied, we are partly dead and that soon, come what may, we will be wholly so.
There is more respect to be won in the opinion of this world by a resolute and courageous liquidation of unsound positions than by the most stubborn pursuit of extravagant or unpromising objectives.
Nothing is more dangerous in practice, than an obstinate, unbending adherence to a system, particularly in its application to the wants and errors of mankind.
We know that the most dangerous places in the world are more often than not the most dangerous places for women, where women are denied their rights and oppressed. These are the places that are unstable and where extremism often takes hold.
Upsi is definitely the more romantic of the two. I am more laid back. We do have our differences of opinion sometimes. Upsi is always the first one to break the ice after an argument or a difference of opinion. That's what I love most about her.
Every idea is an incitement. It offers itself for belief, and if believed it is acted on unless some other belief outweighs it or some failure of energy stifles the movement at its birth. The only difference between the expression of an opinion and an incitement is the speaker's enthusiasm for the result.
Self-interest is the most ingenious and persuasive of all the agents that deceive our consciences, while by means of it our unhappy and stubborn prejudices operate in their greatest force.
You know, we have our differences, everybody does, honest, real differences, but I do believe strongly that we as neighbors are drawn together far more than we're driven apart.
THERE is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blameable, than, in philosophical disputes, to endeavour the refutation of any hypothesis, by a pretence of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality. When any opinion leads to absurdities, it is certainly false; but it is not certain that an opinion is false, because it is of dangerous consequence. Such topics, therefore, ought entirely to be forborne; as serving nothing to the discovery of truth, but only to make the person of an antagonist odious.
There are differences of opinion that come up naturally within parties. And certainly Israel and Palestine is one that has demonstrated the differences of opinion.
A man will fight harder for his interests than for his rights. Men are moved by only two mechanisms: fear and self-interest. Victory belongs to the most persevering.
Self-interest, to be sure, is one of the most important, but we have many other motives - honesty, self-respect, altruism, love, sympathy, faith, sense of duty, solidarity, loyalty, public-spiritedness, patriotism, and so on - that are sometimes even more important than self-seeking as the driver of our behaviors.
I was an older brother. So I had to do a lot of things first. My father was a self-made man, and he would beat me senseless. But he was a Scotsman, and stubborn. I'm his son, and I'm stubborn, too. I go on being stubborn.
Of course, there are dangers in religious freedom and freedom of opinion. But to deny these rights is worse than dangerous, it is absolutely fatal to liberty.
When hard times come, the greatest danger does not necessarily lie in the circumstances we face, but rather in the way we treat ourselves at the time. Nothing is more dangerous than self-hate. Nothing makes it more difficult to heal or to find the grace of peace than self-attack and the agony of self-doubt.
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