All Quotes By Tag: Examples
“I think we place the wrong emphasis upon examples, that we’re treading on very weak ground when we set ourselves up as examples for others to become religious. If people are going to look at me for religious guidance, then I think they’re looking in the wrong place.”
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“Kant in fact offers four distinct arguments in defence of the necessity and importance of examples in the moral life of human beings. First, examples play a necessary role in the moral education of young people, for the immature human mind is not yet able to apply abstract moral principles effectively. Secondly, moral examples remain epistemologically necessary even for adult human beings. Human beings are saddled with a ‘discursive, image dependent understanding’, and because of this they need to represent abstract moral concepts symbolically and analogically. Thirdly, examples provide us with hope and inspiration that what morality demands is humanly feasible. And fourthly, examples give us something concrete on which we can focus our own efforts – a mark to emulate and perhaps even to surpass.”
“Never annoy an inspirational author or you will become the poison in her pen and the villian in every one of her books.”
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“Many of our problems are broadly similar to those that undermined … Norse Greenland, and that many other past societies also struggled to solve. Some of those past societies failed (like the Greenland Norse) and others succeeded … The past offers us a rich database from which we can learn in order that we may keep on succeeding.”
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