“Our moral and economic system is based on individual responsibility. It’s based on the idea that people have to live with the consequences of their decisions. This makes them more careful deciders. This means that society tends toward justice — people get what they deserve as much as possible.”

— David Brooks

David Brooks. "Money for Idiots," http://archive.li/EzXTi The New York Times, 19 February 2009.
2000s

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David Brooks 17

American journalist, commentator and editor 1961

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“We live in a system described in obsolete terms. We have come to believe our own repeated declarations that our society is based on individual initiative – whereas, in fact, most of it is no more individual than an infantry division. We assume that our economic system is based on “private property.” Yet most industrial property is is no more private than a seat in a subway train, and indeed it is questionable whether much of it can be called “property” at all. We indignantly deny that we are collectivist, yet it is demonstrable that more than two-thirds of our enterprise is possible only because it is collectivist: what is really meant is that the State did not do the collectivizing.”

Adolf A. Berle (1895–1971) American diplomat

Source: Power Without Property, 1959, p. 27; Cited in asociologist.com http://asociologist.com/2009/12/07/retrosociology-quotes-of-the-day-berle-power-without-property/, 2009/12/07.

“I agree that it's very difficult to come to an absolute definition of what's moral and what is not. We are on our own, without a god, and we have to get together, sit down together and decide what kind of society do we want to live in. Do we want to live in a society where people steal, where people kill, where people don't pull their weight paying their taxes, doing that kind of thing? Do we want to live in a kind of society where everybody is out for themselves in a dog-eat-dog world? And we decide in conclave together that that's not the kind of world in which we want to live. It's difficult. There is no absolute reason why we should believe that that's true - it's a moral decision which we take as individuals - and we take it collectively as a collection of individuals. If you want to get that sort of value system from religion I want you to ask yourself - whereabouts in religion do you get it? Which religion do you get it from? They're all different. If you get it from the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition then I beg you - don't get it from your holy book! Because the morality you will get from reading your holy book is hideous. Don't get it from your holy book. Don't get it from sucking up to your god. Don't get it from saying “oh, I'm terrified of going to hell so I'd better be good” - that's a very ignoble reason to be good. Instead - be good for good reasons. Be good for the reason that's you've decided together with other people the society we want to live in: a decent humane society. Not one based on absolutism, not one based on holy books and not one based on sucking up to.. looking over your shoulder to the divine spy camera in the sky.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roFdPHdhgKQ&t=59m29s
Richard Dawkins vs. Jonathan Sacks - BBC's RE:Think Festival (2012)

“An idea which arises in the field, based on the direct experience of the people doing the job, cannot get going in a centrally controlled system… The not invented here (NIH) syndrome is one of the major curses of our society…”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

“All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly.”

Albert Camus book The Myth of Sisyphus

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), The Absurd Man
Context: All systems of morality are based on the idea that an action has consequences that legitimize or cancel it. A mind imbued with the absurd merely judges that those consequences must be considered calmly. It is ready to pay up. In other words, there may be responsible persons, but there are no guilty ones, in its opinion. At very most, such a mind will consent to use past experience as a basis for its future actions.

“We should put out a clarion call to the government of the people of Israel, to the Palestinian people and say: peace is possible, peace based on justice is possible.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Speech in Boston (2002)
Context: Injustice and oppression will never prevail. Those who are powerful have to remember the litmus test that God gives to the powerful: what is your treatment of the poor, the hungry, the voiceless? And on the basis of that, God passes judgment.
We should put out a clarion call to the government of the people of Israel, to the Palestinian people and say: peace is possible, peace based on justice is possible. We will do all we can to assist you to achieve this peace, because it is God's dream, and you will be able to live amicably together as sisters and brothers.

“A more individual approach to society must be taken. That is an incentive based system which will ensure that given the appropriate training, guidance and advice they will progress through such are system as other communities have.”

Mahendra Chaudhry (1942) Fijian politician

Interview with Fiji Live, 22 August 2005

“Political ideals must be based upon ideals for the individual life. The aim of politics should be to make the lives of individuals as good as possible.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1910s, Political Ideals (1917)

“It is because nations tend towards stupidity and baseness that mankind moves so slowly; it is because individuals have a capacity for better things that it moves at all.”

George Gissing (1857–1903) English novelist

As quoted in Quote Junkie Funny Edition (2008) by the Hagopian Institute, p. 47

“I absolutely have made mistakes, and some of them are very grave. I think people are owed that story and should make a decision based on the complete story.”

Beto O'Rourke (1972) American politician

[Tilove, Jonathan, Beto Effin’ O’Rourke: On running for Senate with the expletive undeleted First Reading, http://politics.blog.mystatesman.com/2017/09/25/beto-effin-orourke-on-running-for-senate-with-the-expletive-undeleted/, My Statesman, 12 November 2018, en, September 25, 2017] When asked about his "youthful indiscretions"
2017

“Most of our decisions are based on experience. More experience on something equals quick decisions. Less knowledge means fearful judgements.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

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