Fred Rogers (1928–2003) American television personality
Commencement Address at Middlebury College May, 2001 http://web.archive.org/web/20030906163501/http://www.middlebury.edu/offices/pubaff/general_info/addresses/Fred_Rogers_2001.htm
Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (28 May 1934); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker
Fred Rogers (1928–2003) American television personality
Commencement Address at Middlebury College May, 2001 http://web.archive.org/web/20030906163501/http://www.middlebury.edu/offices/pubaff/general_info/addresses/Fred_Rogers_2001.htm
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian
Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.29
Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project
2000s, Thus Spake Stallman (2000)
Context: Religious people often say that religion offers absolute certainty about right and wrong; "god tells them" what it is. Even supposing that the aforementioned gods exist, and that the believers really know what the gods think, that still does not provide certainty, because any being no matter how powerful can still be wrong. Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can. Injustice is happening now; suffering is happening now. We have choices to make now. To insist on absolute certainty before starting to apply ethics to life decisions is a way of choosing to be amoral.
“We do not make up history and culture. We simply appear, not by our own choice.”
Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer
Great Jewish Short Stories, introduction to the Dell paperback edition (1963)
General sources
Context: We are all such accidents. We do not make up history and culture. We simply appear, not by our own choice. We make what we can of our condition with the means available. We must accept the mixture as we find it — the impurity of it, the tragedy of it, the hope of it.
F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead (1872–1930) British politician
"Lord Roberts and Germany", p. 78
Unionist Policy and Other Essays (1913)
“See? That's what happens when you keep people from doing what they do best: It makes them insane.”
Rene Balcer (1954) screenwriter, producer and director
Det. Robert Goren in Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Law & Order: Criminal Intent
Ernest Bevin (1881–1951) British labour leader, politician, and statesman
Hansard, House of Commons, 5th series, vol. 373, col. 1362.
Speech in the House of Commons, 29 July 1941.
John Rawls book A Theory of Justice
Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), Chapter IX, Section 84, p. 558
Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist
“Malraux and the Statues at Bamberg”, p. 191
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)