“We do not see it because we can not afford to-because the truth is too explosive.”

— Charles A. Reich , book The Greening of America

Source: The Greening of America (1970), Chapter X : Beyond Youth: Recovery Of Self, p. 287

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We do not see it because we can not afford to-because the truth is too explosive." by Charles A. Reich?

Charles A. Reich 55

American lawyer 1928–2019

Related quotes

“God pity us indeed, for we are human,
And do not always see
The vision when it comes, the shining change,
Or, if we see it, do not follow it,
Because it is too hard, too strange, too new,
Too unbelievable, too difficult,
Warring too much with common, easy ways”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Innkeeper's wife
Source: A Child is Born (1942)
Context: God pity us indeed, for we are human,
And do not always see
The vision when it comes, the shining change,
Or, if we see it, do not follow it,
Because it is too hard, too strange, too new,
Too unbelievable, too difficult,
Warring too much with common, easy ways,
And now I know this, standing in this light,
Who have been half alive these many years,
Brooding on my own sorrow, my own pain,
Saying "I am a barren bough. Expect
Nor fruit nor blossom from a barren bough."

“I say this to you because we Spaniards are a forgetful people, because we are used to living for the moment, because we do not look back, because we do not know how to see the chain of heroes, because we do not contemplate the sum of sacrifices.”

Francisco Franco (1892–1975) Spanish general and dictator

1940s, 1940, Laureate Cross acceptance speech (July 1940)

“It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes. It may even lie on the surface; but we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions — especially selfish ones.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

"Peace and Violence" (1973).

“Anything we can actually do we can afford.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

1942. Published in Collected Writings Volume 27, Page 270. Quoted in Bruce Littleboy: "On Interpreting Keynes: A Study in Reconciliation" (1990), Pg 100. ISBN 0-415-04475-8
1940s

“Here is a conceptual truth about reasons: If it is impossible for us to do otherwise, that can never be because there is a reason to act as we do.”

Allen W. Wood (1942) academic

Kantian Ethics (2008)

“Teachers do not care…It is not because teachers are badly paid and the teachers are organized but they do not teach. If we don’t respect them it is because we see them doing other business than teaching.”

Ela Bhatt (1933) founder of the Self-Employed Women's Association of India (SEWA)

On the low social regard for teachers.[Ghate, Chetan title=The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Economy, http://books.google.com/books?id=kPYXpHSVbywC&pg=PA373, 13 March 2012, Oxford University Press, 978-0-19-973458-0, 373–]

“We must dissent, because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.”

Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993) Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

Speech delivered on September 6, 1990, before the Annual Judicial Conference of the Second Circuit, quoted in Supreme Justice Speeches and Writings Thurgood Marshall. Edited by J. Clay Smith, Jr., 2002
Context: America must get to work. In the chilled climate in which we live, we must go against the prevailing winds. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred, and the mistrust. We must dissent from a nation that buried its head in the sand waiting in vain for the needs of its poor, its elderly, and its sick to disappear and just blow away. We must dissent from a government that has left its young without jobs, education, or hope. We must dissent from the poverty of vision and timeless absence of moral leadership. We must dissent, because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, Rice University speech

“We do not have an ideal world, such as we would like, where morality is easy because cognition is easy. Where one can do right with no effort because he can detect the obvious.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

Source: The Man in the High Castle (1962)

“We're not doing what we do because of sanctions. We're doing what we do because we believe it is right.”

F. W. de Klerk (1936) South African politician

As quoted in Freedom in the World: Political Rights & Civil Liberties, 1990-1991 https://web.archive.org/web/20180917224837/https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/Freedom_in_the_World_1990-1991_complete_book.pdf (1991), New York: Freedom House, p. 16
1990s

“We do not see it because we can not afford to-because the truth is too explosive.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Charles A. Reich 55

Related quotes

Related topics