Belief

"I challenge the multiculturalist attack on personal autonomy as a universal ideal. This attack is often based on forms of cultural relativism. In opposition to relativism, I propose value pluralism—a view associated in particular with Isaiah Berlin—a more satisfactory ethical starting point; one that balances recognition of legitimate cultural diversity with the possibility of intercultural criticism. However, Berlinian pluralism, too, has been used recently as a platform for the multiculturalist attack on personal autonomy in the work of John Gray, Bhikhu Parekh and William Galston. ...this tendency rests on a misunderstanding. ...Berlinian pluralism is primarily about the plurality of goods, not cultures. ...Far from undermining personal autonomy as a universal value, Berlinian value pluralism generates a distinctive argument in its favour. ...cultural relativism holds that cultures are indefeasible moral authorities."

"The first of the universal factors, the purpose of teaching, has been considered to convince the teacher that in every lesson he should be conscious of the value of the experience produced in terms of the spiritual development of the child; that, for instance, in teaching a lesson in geography, the universal spiritual value of the lesson to the child should be the conscious guide in all that the teacher does; and that thus the utilitarian value of the subject will be more fully realized than if directly sought. In fact, the industrial end can furnish no guidance in the actual process of teaching. The universal value which the teacher is to feel, and by which he is to be guided, is in the experience produced, and not in something external and remote in time and application. The value is imminent in the experience itself; and is here and now and always to the pupil."

"Universal Values: ...The spirit and teaching of Jesus is ...an exposition of the purposes of His Father in Heaven. They involve a reversal of many of the world's estimates by emphasizing the infinite value of each human soul, the superiority of personal character to anything that a man may own, the greatness of power to serve as contrasted to the power to rule, the supremecy of the law of love. These reversals of standards are challenges to every age. ...Jesus accepted in His own acts the validity of all these estimates. ...Nor did he hesitate to call upon His own nation to abandon the dreams of centuries, because they were contrary to the better purposes of God. ...All of this must give pause. The perennial question is, What is the will of God? No scholastic reply will suffice. It is the most practical of all questions, for we must also ask: Are our actions in line with the eternal plan, or are we opposing our narrow human purposes to the rolling destiny of creation?"

"The true purpose of Shari'a, or divine law, can be found in one of the principle purposes of the message of Islam—namely, to set forth a universal value system for interaction among humans and, in that context, to replace brutal and reprehensible tribal laws and customs founded on the tribal bond with new, wider-ranging principles of justice, equity, and compassion founded on the bond of Islam. The Holy Qur'an sets forth, unequivocally, the true meaning and purpose of the Shari'a in Verses Q4:26 to 28. Allah wants to make clear to you [the lawful from the unlawful] and guide you to the [good] practices of those before you and to accept your repentance. And Allah is knowing and wise (26). Allah wants to accept your repentance, but those who follow [their] passions want you to digress [into] a great deviation (27). And Allah wants to lighten for you [your difficulties]; and mankind was created weak (28)."

"With a psychological insight as remarkable in Emerson as it is rare, he tells how this morality dependent upon freedom is produced. "But insight is not will, nor is affection will... There must be a fusion of these two to generate the energy of will" (VI, 33). I might well have paused over the metaphysical and psychological significance of this sentence; but I have chosen to give it only its ethical bearing, since it is not an integral part of Emerson's Transcendentalism. Of the origin of conscience, Emerson has therefore this account to offer: "I see the unity of thought and of morals running through all animated nature; there is no difference of quality, but only of more and less. ...The man down in nature occupies himself in guarding, in feeding, in warming and multiplying his body, and, as long as he knows no more, we justify him; but presently a mystic change is wrought, a new perception opens, and he is made a citizen of the world of souls; he feels what is called duty; he is aware that he owes a higher allegiance to do and live as a good member of this universe. In the measure in which he has this sense he is a man, rises to the universal life. The high intellect is absolutely at one with moral nature" (X, I78). From this account of the origin of the virtues, their classification becomes an easy matter. "There is no virtue which is final" (II, 295). "The same law of eternal procession ranges all that we call the virtues, and extinguishes each in the light of a better" (II, 293). There is, then, a hierarchy in the virtues, the lower and simpler, of course, being the earliest produced. We pass from the individual virtue of physical courage, which is the mere "affection" of love joined with the "insight" of its universal value in opposition to and triumph over the self-conserving instinct of fear; to the personal virtues of chastity and temperance, by which we improve our own natures and make them more effective to universal ends at the expense of and triumph over our natural appetites and inclinations; to the third and final type of virtue, exemplified in justice and love, which are the public virtues, and show the active operation of virtue where it exists at its fullest—in our relation to others. The public virtue, justice, will of course have its own stages of development in the history of civilization. "The civil history of men might be traced by the successive ameliorations as marked in higher moral generalizations;—virtue meaning physical courage, then chastity and temperance, then justice and love;—bargains of kings with peoples of certain rights to certain classes, then of rights to masses,—then at last came the day when, as historians rightly tell, the nerves of the world were electrified by the proclamation that all men are born free and equal" (X, 181)."

"Every inspirational leader defines and, most importantly, lives by the values he holds dearest. It is in our nature to live by universal values, and generally speaking, we try and uphold them."

"I maintain that Congress is bound to take care, by some proper means, to secure a good currency for the people; and that, while this duty remains unperformed, one great object of the Constitution is not attained. If we are to have as many different currencies as there are States, and these currencies are to be liable to perpetual fluctuation, it would be folly to say that we had reached that security and uniformity in commercial regulations, which we know it was the purpose of the Constitution to establish. The banks may all of them resume to-morrow—I hope they will; but how much will this resumption accomplish? It will doubtless afford good local currencies; but will it give the country any proper and safe paper currency, of equal and universal value? Certainly it cannot, and will not. Will it bring back, for any length of time, exchanges to the state they were in, where there was a National currency in existence? ...it will not. We may heap gold bags upon gold bags, we may create what securities, in the constitution of local banks, we please, but we cannot give to any such bank a character that shall insure the receipt of its notes, with equal readiness, everywhere throughout the valley of the Mississippi, and from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico to the St. Lawrence. Nothing can accomplish this, but an institution which is National in its character. The people desire to see, in their currency, the marks of this nationality. They like to see the spread eagle, and where they see that, they have confidence."

"The common but erroneous belief is that military discipline only has a military value. The fallacy of this belief was strikingly demonstrated a short time since when the steamer Plymouth was run down by the City of Taunton. Seventy-five soldiers [Marines] were on board the Plymouth and they were the heroes of the accident. They behaved splendidly and rendered valuable assistance in preventing the loss of life. It is not however as an exhibition of the courage of individuals that the performance of the soldiers appeals to the reflecting mind. These men responded not to any daring impulse of the occasion, but to the prompting of what has become a constant, every-moment factor in their lives—the habit of discipline. The Plymouth incident, then, so far as the soldiers are concerned becomes one of the many illustrations of the universal value of that habit. Courage is a quality that makes men ready to do any dare. Discipline imparts unity, method and strength to the doing and daring. In such an emergency as that on the Plymouth not the least of the strength lies in the example of coolness and precision set by the disciplined."

"Universal values are... more acutely needed, in this age of globalization, than ever before. ...In the Universal Declaration, we proclaimed that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services”. ...in the Millennium Declaration, all States reaffirmed certain fundamental values... freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature, and shared responsibility. They adopted practical, achievable targets–-the Millennium Development Goals –- for relieving the blight of extreme poverty and making such rights as education, basic health care and clean water a reality for all. We have seen what disastrous consequences... particularist value systems can have: ethnic cleansing, genocide, terrorism, and the spread of fear, hatred and discrimination. ...this is a time to reassert our universal values. ...we must not allow ...a “clash of civilisations”, in which millions of flesh-and-blood human beings fall victim to a battle between two abstractions –- “Islam” and “the West” –- as if Islamic and Western values were incompatible. ...the validity of universal values does not depend on their being universally obeyed or applied. Ethical codes are always the expression of an ideal and an aspiration, a standard by which moral failings can be judged rather than a prescription for ensuring that they never occur. ...We need to be able to say that certain actions and beliefs... should be rejected by all humanity. ...The function of universal values is not to eliminate all... differences, but rather to help us manage them with mutual respect, and without resorting to mutual destruction. ...traditions survive best, not when they are rigid and immutable, but when they are living and open to new ideas, from within and from without. ...We need to do everything we can to improve the United Nations... to make it more useful to the world’s peoples... and more exemplary in applying the universal values that all its members claim to accept. ...we need to be more effective ...especially in what we do to promote and protect human rights. ...Do we still have universal values? Yes... They need to be carefully thought through. They need to be defended. They need to be strengthened. And we need to find within ourselves the will to live by the values we proclaim –- in our private lives, in our local and national societies, and in the world."

"An ideal founded wholly on worldly ambitions and passions necessarily partakes of their transitory, material nature, and is devoted to presenting them in every possible variety as the ultimate of human desire. Its forms may be legitimate and wholesome. They are apt to be selfish, sensual, or foolish; but the moment human aspirations rise above a mundane level into an ideal atmosphere of the godlike, be it of Olympus or Paradise, it lifts Art bodily into a more elevated sphere. However greatly the virtue of Pagan may differ from the virtue of Christian Art proper, both seek to exalt humanity by presenting to it examples of an ideal perfection, and eliminating whatever corrupts and makes a lie. We may have an agreeable Art speaking to the sensations, or an intellectual one to the mind, on the plane of the ideal; but no Art can be profoundly great, beautiful, and good, unless its aspirations are stimulated by hopes and visions that have not their exact counterpart and fruition in our earthly being. In its largest sense, religion is that state of the soul which ardently craves ideal goodness, beauty, and felicity. Art that ignores it has no permanent, universal value."

"No doubt every scientific application assumes certain philosophic postulates which criticism has readily discovered: for instance, that there are laws of nature; that the principle of causality is of universal value, and of necessary application to phenomena, etc. This is used to prove—poor victory—that every philosopher and moralist alike does the same without hesitation, so that neither science nor ethics is independent of philosophic criticism."

"There are other contentions which are more vital, and these Mr. Bradley himself urges. The State of to-day may not be reconcilable with the morality of to-day. The State may be in a confused or decadent condition; short of that, it may, being as it is in a state of development, retain unresolved elements of its past, which are opposed to ideal morality. Again, we have to reckon with cosmopolitan morality in the individual, who may seek to transcend the function allotted to his station in a particular community; we must recognise, for instance, the desire to produce philosophic truth or artistic beauty of a universal value, which can hardly be connected with the duty of a station. Such recognition may serve to drive us, or to lift us, to the conception of a higher organism than that of the State. By faith we may come to believe in the realisation of a society of all humanity as a divine organic whole; or as St. Paul wrote, we may come to see that we are organs, diversely endowed, "unto the building up of the body of Christ," which is "fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth.""

"Universal values are the values of the people of the world. Hence they should not be confused with imperial values or Western values. The state of diversity recognizes the uniqueness of communities, warning against unnecessary standardization of global life. The state of conflict arises when community practices violate universal values."

"President George W. Bush viewed freedom as a universal value, with religious freedom as the preeminent characteristic of free, robust societies. With this assumption, he viewed the post-9/11 conflict with the Taliban and al-Qaeda as a battle over freedom. He believed that repressed Iraqis and Afghans would welcome the U.S. military as liberators bringing greater freedom, to include freedom of religion. President Bush's assumptions were only partially validated. Part of the problem was the dissonance between a Western concept of freedom to choose and worship God over against an Islamic concept to submit to God. Bush's construct of Religion as Freedom did not offer the optimal framework."

"I do not believe the fashionable dogma. Here is my argument to show that group selection is important. Imagine Alice and Bob to be two dodoes on the island of Mauritius before the arrival of human predators. Alice has superior individual fitness and has produced many grandchildren. Bob is individually unfit and unfertile. Then the predators arrive with their guns and massacre the progeny indiscriminately. The fitness of Alice and Bob is reduced to zero because their species made a bad choice long ago, putting on weight and forgetting how to fly. I do not take the Prisoner’s Dilemma seriously as a model of evolution of cooperation, because I consider it likely that groups lacking cooperation are like dodoes, losing the battle for survival collectively rather than individually."

"The two-person iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma is the E. coli of the social sciences, allowing a very large variety of studies to be undertaken in a common framework."

"I will argue that group selection is important, contrary to the prevailing dogma among biologists. If group selection is important, Prisoner's Dilemma is not a good model for evolution. It is still an amusing toy for mathematicians and game-theorists to play with."

"Paranoia is infectious. It’s also an incredibly useful tool. If you can make people afraid enough, uncertain enough, they will simply stop moving."

"In a captive environment, paranoia is unavoidable. Only the prison authorities call it paranoia; prisoners call it sensible precautions... Most prisoners are perfectly mentally healthy compared with the paranoia of prison officials."

"A paranoid man is a man who knows a little about what's going on."

"In a world full of threat, it may be kind of beneficial for people to be on guard. It's good to be looking around and see who's following you and what's happening. Not everybody is trying to get you, but some people may be."

"Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men’s vices or men’s stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment’s or a penny’s worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you’ll scream that money is evil."

"There are a precious few whose studies are sound and honest and whose goal is truth and virtue. This is the knowledge of things and the improvement of moral conduct. ... As for the others, of whom there is an enormous mass, some seek glory, an insipid, yet gleaming prize. But the majority aims only at the gleam of money, which is not only a rather poor reward, but dirty, and neither equal to the trouble involved, nor worthy of efforts of the mind."

"It is not in the nature of man—nor of any living entity—to start out by giving up, by spitting in one’s own face and damning existence; that requires a process of corruption, whose rapidity differs from man to man. Some give up at the first touch of pressure; some sell out; some run down by imperceptible degrees and lose their fire, never knowing when or how they lost it. Then all of these vanish in the vast swamp of their elders who tell them persistently that maturity consists of abandoning one’s mind; security, of abandoning one’s values; practicality, of losing self-esteem."

"Teenage angst has paid off well Now I'm bored and old Self-appointed judges judge More than they have sold."

"Why have I sold out? You think I'm supposed to grow old, beating some trite old protest drum that people don't hear anymore? Please; protest is now just a backdrop for a Diesel clothing ad in a slick fashion magazine. My goal is to create a metaphor that changes our reality by charming people into considering their world in a different way. It's time—for me, at least—to be clever and seduce people by entertaining them. I'll never be heard if I'm always ranting and griping."

"Towards this fine honor of a trade converged all the finest, all the most noble sentiments—dignity, pride. Never ask anything of anyone, they used to say. … In those days a workman did not know what it was to solicit. It is the bourgeoisie who, turning the workmen into bourgeois, have taught them to solicit."

"You get paranoid in this business. But maybe paranoids get that way because of all the people out to get them."

"We know something about billionaire consumption, but it is hard to measure some of it. Some billionaires are consuming politicians, others consume reporters, and some consume academics."

"Knaves, who in full assemblies have the knack"

"Ein Mensch, der um anderer willen, ohne dass es seine eigene Leidenschaft, sein eigenes Bedürfnis ist, sich um Geld oder Ehre oder sonst etwas abarbeitet, ist immer ein Tor."

"Men accept servility in order to acquire wealth; as if they could acquire anything of their own when they cannot even assert that they belong to themselves."

"I was not, thank heaven, in a condition which compelled me to make merchandise of Science for the bettering of my fortune."

"During those years I taught the art of rhetoric. Conquered by the desire for gain, I offered for sale speaking skills with which to conquer others."

"All paid jobs … absorb and degrade the mind."

"It is a strange desire which men have, to seek power and lose liberty."

"The only difference as compared with the old, outspoken slavery is this, that the worker of today seems to be free because he is not sold once for all, but piecemeal by the day, the week, the year, and because no one owner sells him to another, but he is forced to sell himself in this way instead, being the slave of no particular person, but of the whole property-holding class."

"An intellectual who accommodates the ruling caste betrays the spirit. For the spirit is not conservative and grants no privileges. It dissolves; it equalizes; and it pushes through the ruins of hundreds of castles toward the final fulfillment of truth and justice, and their completion, even if it is the completion of death."

"Whoever gives his labor for money sells himself and puts himself in the rank of slaves."

"Robert G. Ingersoll and Wendell Phillips were the two greatest orators of their time, and probably of all time. Their power sprang from their passion for freedom, for truth, for justice, for a world filled with light and with happy human beings. But for this divine passion neither would have scaled the sublime heights of immortal achievement. The sacred fire burned within them and when they were aroused it flashed from their eyes and rolled from their inspired lips in torrents of eloquence. ... Had Ingersoll and Phillips devoted their lives to the practice of law for pay the divine fire within them would have burned to ashes and they would have died in mediocrity."

"Those who are placed in positions which demand the surrender of personality, which insist on strict conformity to definite political policies and opinions, must deteriorate, must become mechanical, must lose all capacity to give anything really vital. The world is full of such unfortunate cripples. Their dream is to “arrive,” no matter at what cost. If only we would stop to consider what it means to “arrive,” we would pity the unfortunate victim. Instead of that, we look to the artist, the poet, the writer, the dramatist and thinker who have “arrived,” as the final authority on all matters, whereas in reality their “arrival” is synonymous with mediocrity, with the denial and betrayal of what might in the beginning have meant something real and ideal. The “arrived” artists are dead souls upon the intellectual horizon. The uncompromising and daring spirits never “arrive.” Their life represents an endless battle with the stupidity and the dullness of their time. They must remain what Nietzsche calls “untimely,” because everything that strives for new form, new expression or new values, is always doomed to be untimely."

"Más preciosa es la libertad que la dádiva, porque se pierde."

"The professional man lives off ideas, not for them. ... He has acquired a stock of mental skills that are for sale. The skills are highly developed, but we do not think of him as being an intellectual if certain qualities are missing from his work—disinterested intelligence, generalizing power, free speculation, fresh observation, creative novelty, radical criticism. At home he may happen to be an intellectual, but at his job he is a hired mental technician who uses his mind for the pursuit of externally determined ends. It is this element—the fact that ends are set from some interest or vantage point outside the intellectual process itself—which characterizes both the zealot, who lives obsessively for a single idea, and the mental technician, whose mind is used not for free speculation but for a salable end. The goal here is external and not self-determined, whereas the intellectual life has a certain spontaneous character and inner determination. It has also a peculiar poise of its own, which I believe is established by a balance between two basic qualities in the intellectual’s attitude toward ideas—qualities that may be designated as playfulness and piety."

"But, scarce observ'd, the knowing and the bold Fall in the gen'ral massacre of gold."

"We are bombarded with information about our alert status and we're told to report suspicious-looking characters. That primes people to be more paranoid."

"Just because you're paranoid Don't mean they're not after you"

"Paranoia ain't the way to live your life from day to day, so leave your doubts and your fears behind."

"I wanted that work to carry the most important message ... that a person mustn't sell himself. I made a chocolate bar that can't be bought, using a giant panel of concrete."

"I think in the paranoid spectrum it's quite clear that you're more likely to have paranoid thoughts if you're younger and if you live in cities or were raised in cities, for example. It also links to taking illicit substances such as cannabis. But as a psychologist what I'm particularly interested in is that people who tend to worry more, people who aren't sleeping so well, people who feel more miserable about themselves, are also more vulnerable to paranoid thoughts."

"There is no sort of 'them and us', it is not that most people don't have paranoid thoughts and a few people have many, it seems that they are evenly distributed across the population, or many of us have them, much more than was previously thought. And actually there is also evidence that societies that are perhaps more unequal, have less social cohesion, are all societies where there is a bit more suspicion in the general population. So paranoia certainly can be a problem for the individual, and I work in hospitals and see people who have severe experiences, but also it's perhaps the mark of the health of a society, the levels of mistrust within it."