
“[A] wrong attitude towards nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude towards God.”
Source: The Idea of a Christian Society (1939), Ch. IV, p. 62
"A Defence of Baby-Worship"
The Defendant (1901)
Context: The truth is that it is our attitude towards children that is right, and our attitude towards grown-up people that is wrong. Our attitude towards our equals in age consists in a servile solemnity, overlying a considerable degree of indifference or disdain. Our attitude towards children consists in a condescending indulgence, overlying an unfathomable respect.
“[A] wrong attitude towards nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude towards God.”
Source: The Idea of a Christian Society (1939), Ch. IV, p. 62
“Our attitude toward life determines life's attitude towards us”
Source: Father and Child Reunion (2001), p. 239.
“Life will always be sorrowful. We can't change it, but we can change our attitude toward it.”
Source: A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People
Original: (zh-CN) 学习有两种态度。一种是教条主义的态度,不管我国情况,适用的和不适用的,一起搬来。这种态度不好。另一种态度,学习的时候用脑筋想一下,学那些和我国情况相适合的东西,即吸取对我们有益的经验,我们需要的是这样一种态度
But with animal agriculture as the leading cause of species extinction, water pollution, ocean dead zones and habitat destruction, and with the death spiral of the ecosystem ever more pronounced, becoming vegan is the most important and direct change we can immediately make to save the planet and its species. It is one that my wife — who was the engine behind our family’s shift — and I have made.
"Saving the Planet, One Meal at a Time", Truthdig https://www.truthdig.com/articles/saving-the-planet-one-meal-at-a-time/ (10 November 2014)
2010s
"Personality Problems and Personality Growth", an essay in, The Self : Explorations in Personal Growth (1956) by Clark E. Moustakas, p. 237, later published in Notes Toward A Psychology of Being (1962).
1940s-1960s
Context: I am deliberately rejecting our present easy distinction between sickness and health, at least as far as surface symptoms are concerned. Does sickness mean having symptoms? I maintain now that sickness might consist of not having symptoms when you should. Does health mean being symptom-free? I deny it. Which of the Nazis at Auschwitz or Dachau were healthy? Those with a stricken conscience or those with a nice, clear, happy conscience? Was it possible for a profoundly human person not to feel conflict, suffering, depression, rage, etc.?
In a word if you tell me you have a personality problem, I am not certain until I know you better whether to say "Good" or "I'm sorry". It depends on the reasons. And these, it seems, may be bad reasons, or they may be good reasons.
An example is the changing attitude of psychologists toward popularity, toward adjustment, even toward delinquency. Popular with whom? Perhaps it is better for a youngster to be unpopular with the neighboring snobs or with the local country club set. Adjusted to what? To a bad culture? To a dominating parent? What shall we think of a well-adjusted slave? A well-adjusted prisoner? Even the behavior problem boy is being looked upon with new tolerance. Why is he delinquent? Most often it is for sick reasons. But occasionally it is for good reasons and the boy is simply resisting exploitation, domination, neglect, contempt, and trampling upon. Clearly what will be called personality problems depends on who is doing the calling. The slave owner? The dictator? The patriarchal father? The husband who wants his wife to remain a child? It seems quite clear that personality problems may sometimes be loud protests against the crushing of one's psychological bones, of one's true inner nature.
Quotations from Gurudev’s teachings, Chinmya Mission Chicago
“Japanese attitudes toward work seem to be critically different from American attitudes.”
Source: Made in Japan (1986), p. 184.
"Nihilism On A Religious Soil" (6 May 1907); it should be noted here that Berdyaev is here defining "theocracy" not in the sense as it is often used, of people ruling over other people, in claims of doing so by the commands of God, but rather defining it in terms of Christian anarchism — as a vigorous assertion of the right of no-one to rule over humans, save God.
Context: The new religious consciousness rises up against the nihilistic attitude towards the world and mankind. If a religious rebirth be possible, only then on this soil will there be the revealing of the religious meaning of secular culture and earthly liberation, the revealing of the truth about mankind. For the new religious consciousness the declaration of the will of God is together with this a declaration of the rights of man, a revealing of the Divine within mankind. We believe in the objective, the cosmic might of the truth of God, in the possibility according to God to guide the earthly destiny of mankind. This will be the victory of the true theocracy, whether over a false democratism, — the apotheosis of the quantitative collectivity of human wills, or so also over the false theocraticism, — all that apotheosis of the human will within Caesaropapism or Papocaesarism. Christ cannot have human vicarage in the person of the tsar or high-priest. He — is Himself the Tsar and High-Priest, and He will reign in the world. “Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven.”