Quotes about value (3781 quotes, page 32)

“"Another situation generally exposed to ressentiment danger is the older generation's relation with the younger. The process of aging can only be fruitful and satisfactory if the important transitions are accompanied by free resignation, by the renunciation of the values proper to the preceding stage of life. Those spiritual and intellectual values which remain untouched by the process of aging, together with the values of the next stage of life, must compensate for what has been lost. Only if this happens can we cheerfully relive the values of our past in memory, without envy for the young to whom they are still accessible. If we cannot compensate, we avoid and flee the “tormenting” recollection of youth, thus blocking our possibilities of understanding younger people. At the same time we tend to negate the specific values of earlier stages. No wonder that youth always has a hard fight to sustain against the ressentiment of the older generation. Yet this source of ressentiment is also subject to an important historical variation. In the earliest stages of civilization, old age as such is so highly honored and respected for its experience that ressentiment has hardly any chance to develop. But education spreads through printing and other modern media and increasingly replaces the advantage of experience. Younger people displace the old from their positions and professions and push them into the defensive. As the pace of “progress” increases in all fields, and as the changes of fashion tend to affect even the higher domains (such as art and science), the old can no longer keep up with their juniors. “Novelty‟ becomes an ever greater value. This is doubly true when the generation as such is seized by an intense lust for life, and when the generations compete with each other instead of cooperating for the creation of works which outlast them. “Every cathedral,” Werner Sombart writes, “every monastery, every town hall, every castle of the Middle Ages bears testimony to the transcendence of the individual's span of life: its completion spans generations which thought that they lived for ever. Only when the individual cut himself loose from the community which outlasted him, did the duration of his personal life become his standard of happiness.” Therefore buildings are constructed ever more hastily—Sombart cites a number of examples. A corresponding phenomenon is the ever more rapid alternation of political regimes which goes hand in hand with the progression of the democratic movement. But every change of government, every parliamentary change of party domination leaves a remnant of absolute opposition against the values of the new ruling group. This opposition is spent in ressentiment the more the losing group feels unable to return to power. The “retired official” with his followers is a typical ressentiment figure. Even a man like Bismarck did not entirely escape from this danger."”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

Life , People , Youth , Age

“Islam knows only two kinds of societies, the Islamic and the Jahili. The Islamic society is that which follows Islam in belief and ways of worship, in law and organization, in morals and manners. The Jahili society is that which does not follow Islam and in which neither the Islamic belief and concepts, nor Islamic values and standards, Islamic laws and regulations, or Islamic morals and manners are cared for.”

Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966) Egyptian author, educator, Islamic theorist, poet, and politician

Source: Ma'alim fi'l-Tariq (Signposts on the Road, or Milestones) (1964), Ch. 7, Islam is the Real Civilization, p. 106.

Law , Way

“[A] number of points are worth making at once [that challenge Foucault’s Madness and Civilization]: (1) There is ample evidence of medieval cruelty towards the insane; (2) In the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the mad were already confined, to cells, jails or even cages; (3) ‘dialogue’ or no ‘dialogue’, even madness during those times was frequently connected with sin -- even in the Ship of Fools mythology; and, to that extent, it was regarded in a far less benevolent light than suggested by Foucault (pre-modern minds accepted the reality of madness -- ‘madness as a part of truth’ -- just as they accepted the reality of sin; but this does not mean they valued madness, any more than sin; (4) as Martin Schrenk (himself a severe critic Foucault) has shown, early modern madhouses developed from medieval hospitals and monasteries rather than as reopened leprosaria; (5) the Great Confinement was primarily aimed not at deviance but at poverty -- criminal poverty, crazy poverty or just plain poverty; the notion that it heralded (in the name of the rising bourgeoise) a moral segregation does not bear close scrutiny; (6) at any rate, as stressed by Klaus Doerner, another of critic of Foucault (Madmen and the Bourgeoisie, 1969), that there was no uniform state-controlled confinement: the English and German patterns, for example, strayed greatly from the Louis Quatorzian Grand Renfermement; (7) Foucault’s periodization seems to me amiss. By the late eighteenths century, confinement of the poor was generally deemed a failure; but it is then that confinement of the mad really went ahead, as so conclusively shown in statistics concerning England, France, and the United States; (8) Tuke and Pinel did not ‘invent’ mental illness. Rather, they owe much to prior therapies and often relied also on their methods; (9) moreover, in nineetenth-century England moral treatment was not that central in the medicalization of madness. Far from it: as shown by Andrew Scull, physicians saw Tukean moral therapy as a lay threat to their art, and strove to avoid it or adapt it to their own practice. Once more, Foucault’s epochal monoliths crumble before the contradictory wealth of the historical evidence.”

José Guilherme Merquior book Foucault

Source: Foucault (1985), pp. 28-29

Truth , Age , Fools , Art

“In figure 3 we show the money and domestic asset market equilibrium schedules for given stocks of each of the assets. Along MM the domestic money market is in equilibrium. Higher interest rates reduce money demand so that equilibrium requires a depreciation and thus a rise in the domestic currency value of foreign assets and - hence wealth. The exchange rate thus plays a balancing role by affecting the valuation of assets.”

Rudiger Dornbusch (1942–2002) German economist

Source: Open economy macroeconomics, 1980, p. 14

Money , Wealth

“We are delighted to find a person who values us as we value ourselves, and distinguishes us from the rest of mankind, with an attention not unlike that with which we distinguish ourselves.”

Adam Smith book The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Section III, Chap. I.
The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part II

Personality

“In ceasing to subordinate creative power to any supreme value, modern art has brought home to us the presence of that creative power throughout the whole history of art.”

André Malraux (1901–1976) French novelist, art theorist and politician

Part IV, Chapter VI
Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951)

Art , Home , History

“From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life: that your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise; that you treat people with respect. They taught and showed me values and morals in their daily life. That is a lesson that I continue to pass along to our son, and we need to pass those lessons on to the many generation to follow because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”

Melania Trump (1970) Slovenian model, wife of Donald Trump and First Lady of the United States

Speech at 2016 Republican National Convention http://time.com/4412175/republican-convention-melania-trump-michelle-obama/ (July 18, 2016)

Life , Children , People , Age

“As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?”

Alexis De Tocqueville (1805–1859) French political thinker and historian

Letter to Ernest de Chabrol, 9 June 1831 Selected Letters, ed. Roger Boesche, UofC Press 1985, p. 39 https://books.google.de/books?id=dwDWCAhP5EMC&pg=PA39&lpg=PA39&dq=character.
1830s

Money , World , Question

“Raymond Aron ascribes to Weber the view that ‘each man’s conscience is irrefutable.’ … while [Weber] holds that an agent may be more or less rational in acting consistently with his values, the choice of any one particular evaluative stance or commitment can be no more rational than any other. All faiths and all evaluations are equally non-rational…”

Alasdair MacIntyre book After Virtue

Source: After Virtue (1981), p. 26.

Faith

“What value is lineage to a drowning man?”

Robert Silverberg book A Time of Changes

Source: A Time of Changes (1971), Chapter 40 (p. 142)

“You need clear, energetic minds, in order to appreciate the exalted character of the truth, to value the atonement, and to place the right estimate upon eternal things.”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

Counsels On Diet and Foods (1938), Section 2, p. 47

Truth

“There is, moreover, very little sense in preventing young people from giving expression to their ideas on the pretext that they have less experience than have older persons. There are many who may live a thousand years without encountering experience of any value. It could only be in a society of persons equally gifted that such an idea could have any meaning.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 121.

People , Idea , Sense , Personality

“Many Japanese speak English. But they do not think our thoughts. They worship at other shrines; profess another creed; observe a different code. They can no more be moved by Christian pacifism than wolves by the bleating of sheep. We have to deal with a people whose values are in many respects altogether different from our own.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The Mission of Japan, Collier's, 20 February 1937.
Reproduced in The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, Vol I, Churchill at War, Centenary Edition (1976), Library of Imperial History, p. 365. ISBN 0903988429
The 1930s

People , Thinking

“He loved his kind, but sought the love of few,
And valued old opinions more than new.”

Park Benjamin, Sr. (1809–1864) American journalist

Infatuation.

Love

“The Bush Administration do have moral values. Their moral values are very explicit: shine the boots of the rich and the powerful, kick everybody else in the face, and let your grandchildren pay for it. That simple principle predicts almost everything that's happening.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 2000s, 2005, Interview by Steve Scher on KUOW, 2004

“I think that science fiction, even the corniest of it, even the most outlandish of it, no matter how badly it's written, has a distinct therapeutic value because all of it has as its primary postulate that the world does change. I cannot overemphasize the importance of that idea.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

"The Discovery of the Future," Guest of Honor Speech, 3rd World Science Fiction Convention, Denver, Colorado (4 July 1941)

World , Idea , Thinking , Science

“In the years when he'd worked full-time, he'd never complained about frozen or takeout or preprepared dinners. To Caroline it probably seemed that he was changing the rules on her. But to Gary it seemed that the nature of family life itself was changing - that togetherness and filiality and fraternity weren't valued the way they were when he was young.”

Jonathan Franzen book The Corrections

The Corrections (2001)

Life , Family , Way , Nature

“Traditionalists value hierarchy. An infantile, immoral society deifies The Child. Kids should follow Florence King's injunction that "children have no business expressing opinions on anything except, 'Do you have enough room in the toes?'”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

2010s, 2016

Children , Business

“A company's ability to innovate, improve, and learn ties directly to the company's value.”

David P. Norton (1941) American business theorist, business executive and management consultant

David P. Norton (1992), cited in: ASQC ... Annual Quality Congress Proceedings, 1994, p. 343

Learning

“Will you suffer your soldier, captured in fighting your battles, to be in confinement for months rather than release him by giving for him that which you call a piece of property, and which we are willing to accept as a man? You certainly appear to place less value upon your soldier than you do upon your negro. I assure you, much as we of the North are accused of loving property, our citizens would have no difficulty in yielding up any piece of property they have in exchange for one of their brothers or sons languishing in your prisons.”

Benjamin Butler (politician) (1818–1893) Union Army general, lawyer, politician

As quoted in Autobiography and Personal Reminiscences of Major-General Benj. F. Butler https://books.google.com/books?id=0LIBAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA604 (1892), pp. 604–605

Love , Suffering , Appearance , Fight

“In any creative field--any creative field--you must first understand that you have no value whatsoever. Your work has no value whatsoever. You are completely worthless. Whatever potential you have is just that--potential--and when you are discussing self-publishing a comic book, you have about the same chance of success as 10 thousand others.”

Dave Sim (1956) Canadian cartoonist, creator of Cerebus

Source: Cerebus Guide to Self-Publishing (1997), p. 21

Books , Understanding , Chance , Success

“Take your children to church, don't send them. Be sure they are getting true religious values, not modernistic debunking.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Children

“When a movie is this bad, it's hard to adequately describe its awfulness in words. The temptation exists to write something along the lines of: "Something this horrible has to be seen to be believed." Of course, that kind of advice would lead to e-mail death threats and other assorted nasty comments from those who spend money on The Devil's Rejects. … Aside from its poor production values, horrendous acting, and ignoble morality, The Devil's Rejects isn't engaging cinema. Even if the simple act of sitting in a movie theater watching people get hacked up for 90 minutes doesn't bother you, the dullness and repetition is likely to.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=934 of The Devil's Rejects (2005).
Half-star reviews

Death , Money , People

“Our public interest depends on private character, on civic duty and family bonds and basic fairness, on uncounted, unhonored acts of decency which give direction to our freedom. Sometimes in life we are called to do great things. But as a saint of our times has said, every day we are called to do small things with great love. The most important tasks of a democracy are done by everyone. I will live and lead by these principles: to advance my convictions with civility, to pursue the public interest with courage, to speak for greater justice and compassion, to call for responsibility and try to live it as well. In all these ways, I will bring the values of our history to the care of our times.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2001, First inaugural address (January 2001)

Love , Life , Family , Justice

“The value of global modelling has been severely restricted by poor appreciation of the constraints under which governments and politicians operate. Equally, the value of governments and politicians has been severely restricted by largely ignoring the very real but less immediate problems tackled by modellers.”

Eduard Pestel (1914–1988) scholar

E. Pestel (1982) Modellers and politicians. In: Futures, Volume 14, Issue 2, April 1982, pp. 122–128.

Problem

“Patriarchy operates as a kind of conceptual prison, producing and reproducing organizational structures that give dominance to males and traditional male values.”

Gareth Morgan book Images of Organization

Source: Images of Organization (1986), p. 211

“[T]he litigation between Qualcomm and Apple/Intel … is weird. What makes it weird is that Intel appears to think that by helping Apple drive down Qualcomm prices, it will gain an advantage, but since its only value is as a lower cost, lower performing, alternative to Qualcomm's modems, the result would be more aggressively priced better alternatives to Intel's offerings from Qualcomm/Broadcom, wiping Intel out of the market. On paper, this is a lose/lose for Intel and even for Apple. The lower prices would flow to Apple competitors as well, lowering the price of competing phones. So, Apple would not get a lasting benefit either.”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

Broadcom/Qualcomm Merger: A Train Wreck in Slow Motion http://itbusinessedge.com/blogs/unfiltered-opinion/broadcomqualcomm-merger-a-train-wreck-in-slow-motion.html in IT Business Edge (1 March 2018)

Thinking , Appearance , Help

“As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth. They go back to the upper Paleolithic: the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. I try to hold both history and wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.”

Gary Snyder (1930) American poet

"Statement for the Paterson Society" (1961), as quoted in David Kherdian, Six Poets of the San Francisco Renaissance: Portraits and Checklists (1967), p. 52. Snyder repeated the first part of this quote (up to "… common work of the tribe.") in the introduction to the revised edition of Gary Snyder, Myths & Texts (1978), p. viii.

Love , History , Solitude , Time

“I now come to the third great obstacle to human self-knowledge, to the belief — deeply rooted in our western culture — that what can be explained in terms of natural science has no values. This belief springs from an exaggeration of Kant's values-philosophy, the consequence of the idealistic dichotomy of the world into the external world of things and the internal laws of human reason.”

Konrad Lorenz book On Aggression

Source: On Aggression (1963), Ch. XII : On the Virtue of Scientific Humility

World , Law , Spring , Nature

“If God should turn away from himself as the Source of infinite joy, he would cease to be God. He would deny the infinite worth of his own glory. He would imply that there is something more valuable outside himself. He would commit idolatry… Where will we find a Rock of integrity in the universe when the heart of God has ceased to value supremely the supremely valuable?”

John Piper (1946) American writer

Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Multnomah, 1986, ISBN 1590521196.

God , Universe , Heart , Joy

“Section 497 is based on Old Testament values. It doesn't protect the rights of women, only protects the proprietorial rights of men over their wives' bodies.”

Flavia Agnes (1947) Indian activist and lawyer

On India's adultery law, as quoted in " What The Law Says http://www.outlookindia.com/article/what-the-law-says/220011" Outlook India (5 May 2003)

Women , Men

“I remember a rusher; not on a sports team. A rusher who carried an American flag, the regimental flag of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers. It is an attack on the Confederate fort known as Battery Wagner outside of Charleston, south Carolina, in July of 1863. 54th Massachusetts was an all black regiment, one of the first to be recruited after the Emancipation Proclamation. The attack was almost a suicide mission. the regiment swept up to the walls of the fort. penetrated briefly, only to be driven out with heavy losses. the rusher I am thinking of was the color sergeant of the regiment. his name was William H. Carney. He had been born a slave. He was now a free man and a soldier. He brought the stars and stripes off the ramparts of Fort Wagner, despite being wounded in the chest and leg, staggering back under fire to a field hospital, and there, just before he collapsed, he surrendered the flag into the hands of several others there saying, "The old flag never touched the ground, boys!" Before the first of January 1863 when Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation into law, he didn't have a flag, he doesn't have a country. He was a slave; he was an unperson. But in July of 1863, he was a free man. As a free man, there was no symbol to him of greater value than that flag. So you understand that it is difficult for me to understand why people would insult it.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

"Free Speech and the First Amendment" https://www.c-span.org/video/?437511-1/free-speech-amendment&start=150 (20 November 2017), C-SPAN
2010s

People , Law , Color , Star

“If from the wilderness the righteous and honest John were actually to come who, clothed in skins and living on locusts and untouched by all the terrible mischief, were meanwhile to apply himself with a pure heart and in all seriousness to the investigation of truth and to offer the fruits thereof, what kind of reception would he have to expect from those businessmen of the chair, who are hired for State purposes and with wife and family have to live on philosophy, and whose watchword is, therefore, Primum vivere, deinde philosophari [first live and then philosophize]? These men have accordingly taken possession of the market and have already seen to it that here nothing is of value except what they allow; consequently merit exists only in so far as they and their mediocrity are pleased to acknowledge it. They thus have on a leading rein the attention of that small public, such as it is, that is concerned with philosophy. For on matters that do not promise, like the productions of poetry, amusement and entertainment but only instruction, and financially unprofitable instruction at that, that public will certainly not waste its time, effort, and energy, without first being thoroughly assured that such efforts will be richly rewarded. Now by virtue of its inherited belief that whoever lives by a business knows all about it, this public expects an assurance from the professional men who from professor’s chairs and in compendiums, journals, and literary periodicals, confidently behave as if they were the real masters of the subject. Accordingly, the public allows them to sample and select whatever is worth noting and what can be ignored. My poor John from the wilderness, how will you fare if, as is to be expected, what you bring is not drafted in accordance with the tacit convention of the gentlemen of the lucrative philosophy? They will regard you as one who has not entered in the spirit of the game and thus threatens to spoil the fun for all of them; consequently, they will regard you as their common enemy and antagonist. Now even if what you bring were the greatest masterpiece of the human mind, it could never find favor in their eyes. For it would not be drawn up ad normam conventionis [according to the current pattern]; and so it would not be such as to enable them to make it the subject of their lectures from the chair in order to make a living from it. It never occurs to a professor of philosophy to examine a new system that appears to see whether it is true; but he at once tests it merely to see whether it can be brought into harmony with the doctrines of the established religion, with government plans, and with the prevailing views of the times.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, pp. 160-161, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 148-149
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), On Philosophy in the Universities

Men , Truth , Family , Religion

“I would rather label the whole enterprise of setting a biological value upon groups for what it is: irrelevant, intellectually unsound, and highly injurious.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

Source: The Mismeasure of Man (1996), p. 139

“[Charity] conceals a stupid cruelty, because it is not courageous enough to face unpleasant facts. Aside from the question of the unfitness of many women to become mothers, aside from the very definite deterioration in the human stock that such programs would inevitably hasten, we may question its value even to the normal though unfortunate mother. For it is never the intention of such philanthropy to give the poor over-burdened and often undernourished mother of the slum the opportunity to make the choice herself, to decide whether she wishes time after time to bring children into the world. It merely says 'Increase and multiply: We are prepared to help you do this.' Whereas the great majority of mothers realize the grave responsibility they face in keeping alive and rearing the children they have already brought into the world, the maternity center would teach them how to have more. The poor woman is taught how to have her seventh child, when what she wants to know is how to avoid bringing into the world her eighth. … Such philanthropy, as Dean Inge has so unanswerably pointed out, is kind only to be cruel, and unwittingly promotes precisely the results most deprecated. It encourages the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

Source: The Pivot of Civilization, 1922, Chapter 5, "The Cruelty of Charity"

Women , Children , Stupidity , World

“Women's eyes are rapid in detecting a heart which is ill at ease with itself, and, knowing the value of sympathy, and finding their own greatest happiness not in receiving it, but in giving it, with them to be unhappy is at once to be interesting.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Arthur's commentary
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Women , Heart , Happiness

“How can you worship leeks and onions? we shall suppose a SORBONNIST to say to a priest of SAIS. If we worship them, replies the latter; at least, we do not, at the same time, eat them. But what strange object of adoration are cats and monkeys? says the learned doctor. They are at least as good as the relics or rotten bones of martyrs, answers his no less learned antagonist. Are you not mad, insists the Catholic, to cut one another's throat about the preference of a cabbage or a cucumber? Yes, says the pagan; I allow it, if you will confess, that those are still madder, who fight about the preference among volumes of sophistry, ten thousand of which are not equal in value to one cabbage or cucumber.”

David Hume The Natural History of Religion

Part XII - With regard to doubt or conviction
The Natural History of Religion (1757)

Cats , Learning , Time , Fight

“The previous chapters presented models of metal illness that were based on the biological, behavior, and the social sciences. Although in the past two centuries the scientific outlook has had a great appeal, its application to the human mind and society has encountered widespread criticism. The critics often argue that the legal and political system of out society is based on the assumption of individual freedom, moral responsibility, and mutual obligations of its citizens. They argue further that subjective meanings and value judgements are the essential features of human experience.”

Thaddus E. Weckowicz (1919–2000) Canadian psychologist

Source: Models of Mental Illness (1984), p. 245

Behavior , Freedom , Science , Past

“Why does the monstrous men of an Alauddin Khalji, a Firuz Shah Tughlaq, a Sikandar Lodi, and an Aurangzeb, to name only the most notorious, pop out so soon from the thickest coat of cosmetics?
The answer is provided by the Muslim historians of medieval India. They painted their heroes in the indelible dyes of Islamic ideology. They did not anticipate the day when Islamic imperialism in India will become only a painful memory of the past. They did not visualise that the record of Islam in India will one day be weighed on the scales of human values.”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Sita Ram Goel: The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India

Men , Pain , Memory , Past

“The value of subsidised migration was not simply in the working men it brought to Australia. Its value was also in the women it enticed to a man's land. One of Australia's sharpest social problems, and one of the problems which Edward Gibbon Wakefield lamented, was the scarcity of women of marriageable or elopable age. So long as Australia primarily served as a gaol for the British Isles, far more men than women came to the land.”

Geoffrey Blainey book The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History

The Tyranny of Distance: How Distance Shaped Australia's History (1966)

Women , Men , Marriage , Age

“Australians, like other peoples, tend to think they are highly distinctive, but the characteristics they value may be an extension or an exaggeration of what they brought from the mother country. In some respects they may be more like the peoples of other new lands settled by the British than they are willing to acknowledge. Australian soldiers and Australian nurses of World War I felt themselves to be very different from their English counterparts but the English were inclined to see all the colonials - New Zealanders, Canadians and Australians - as similar and different from themselves.”

John Hirst (1942–2016) Australian historian

The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770 (2007)

War , People , World , Thinking

“The moral elements are among the most important in war. They constitute the spirit that permeates war as a whole, and at an early stage they establish a close affinity with the will that moves and leads a whole mass of force, practically merging with it, since the will is itself a moral quantity. Unfortunately they will not yield to academic wisdom. They cannot be classified or counted. They have to be seen or felt. … It is paltry philosophy if in the old-fashioned way one lays down rules and principles in total disregard of moral values. As soon as these appear one regards them as exceptions, which gives them a certain scientific status, and thus makes them into rules. Or again one may appeal to genius, which is above all rules; which amounts to admitting that rules are not only made for idiots, but are idiotic in themselves.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

Ch 3 : Moral Factors, as translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret.
On War (1832), Book 3

Wisdom , War , Way , Fashion

“Some of these quantities refer directly to a point of time. That is true of "capital value" as also of such quantities as demand and supply prices. Other terms – as e. g. "income", "revenue", "return", "expenses", "savings", "investments" – imply, however, a time period for which they are reckoned. But in order to be unambiguous they must also refer to a point of time at which they are calculated.”

Gunnar Myrdal (1898–1987) Swedish economist

Source: Monetary Equilibrium (1939), p. 46-7

Time

“Homo-Marxian puzzles all those who try to work with him because he seems irrational and therefore unpredictable. In reality, however, the Marxist Man has reduced his thinking to the lowest common denominator of values taken from nature in the raw. He lives exclusively by the jungle law of selfish survival. In terms of these values he is rational almost to the point of mathematical precision. Through calm or crisis his responses are consistently elemental and therefore highly predictable. Because Homo-Marxian considers himself to be made entirely of the dust of the earth, he pretends to no other role. He denies himself the possibility of a soul and repudiates his capacity for immortality. He believes he had no creator and has no purpose or reason for existing except as an incidental accumulation of accidental forces in nature. Being without morals, he approaches all problems in a direct, uncomplicated manner. Self-preservation is given as the sole justification for his own behavior, and "selfish motives" or "stupidity" are his only explanations for the behavior of others. With Homo-Marxian the signing of fifty-three treaties and subsequent violation of fifty-one of them is not hypocrisy but strategy. The subordination of other men's minds to the obscuring of truth is not deceit but a necessary governmental tool. Marxist Man has convinced himself that nothing is evil which answers the call of expediency. He has released himself from all the confining restraints of honor and ethics which mankind has previously tried to use as a basis for harmonious human relations.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Men , Truth , Stupidity , Law

“Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius; selection between them is the highest science; their mass is the highest educator. Man always made, and still makes, grotesque blunders in selecting and measuring forces, taken at random from the heap, but he never made a mistake in the value he set on the whole, which he symbolized as unity and worshipped as God.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

God , Education , Science

“I believe that intelligence and rationality will always be primary no matter what shape sentient creatures take. To not think that would be to doubt the value of life itself.”

Peter F. Hamilton Commonwealth Saga

Tochee
Commonwealth Saga, Pandora's Star (2004)

Life , Intelligence , Thinking

“His ideas are informed by a painfully honest humanism, and everyone—even his enemies—agrees that he is one of the greatest theoreticians of the post-EU era. But his intellectual integrity prevents him from rising to the very top, and his fellow travelers are much ruder about him than his ideological enemies, accusing him of the ultimate political crime—valuing truth over power.”

Charles Stross book Accelerando

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 2 (“Troubadour”), p. 60

Truth , Travel , Idea

“I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 477 (6 September 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“The president whose moral values would permit him to kill his unborn grandchildren if his daughters get pregnant by mistake, that same president has now issued a formal proclamation glorifying sodomite sin!”

Fred Phelps (1929–2014) American pastor and activist

2000s, Fag-Lover Obama (2009)

Daughters

“Former arbiters of taste must have felt (as so many apostles of “traditional values” and other high-minded tags for restriction and conformity do today) that maintaining the social order required a concept of unalloyed heroism. Human beings so designated as role models had to embody all virtues of the paragon—which meant, of course, that they could not be described in their truly human and ineluctably faulted form.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

"Good Sports & Bad", p. 325; originally published in The New York Review of Books (1995-03-02)
Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville (2003)

“The prestige of the Nobel Prize is due to many causes, but in particular to its twofold idealistic and international character: idealistic in that it has been designed for works of lofty inspiration; international in that it is awarded after the production of different countries has been minutely studied and the intellectual balance sheet of the whole world has been drawn up. Free from all other considerations and ignoring any but intellectual values, the judges have deliberately taken their place in what the philosophers have called a community of the mind.”

Henri Bergson (1859–1941) French philosopher

In a letter accepting the 1927 Nobel Prize in literature http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1927/bergson-speech.html, read by the French minister, Armand Bernard.

World , Communication , Study , Country

“Solitude is greater than I anticipated. My sense of values is changing, and many things which before were in solution in my mind now seem to be crystallizing. I am better able to tell what in the world is wheat for me and what is chaff. In fact, my definition of success itself is changing.”

Richard Evelyn Byrd (1888–1957) Medal of Honor recipient and United States Navy officer

Source: Alone (1938), Ch. 6

World , Sense , Solitude , Change

“The doctor who makes a friend of his patients, the lawyer who defends death penalty cases in distant countries for no fee, the schoolteacher who opens a child's eyes to a new world of books and poetry — such people do nothing that can be measured in marketplaces. The greatest painters, composers and writers don't offer you choices, they present you with what only they can do, and you must take it or leave it. So when such subjects as the values of the marketplace are discussed, you will probably not have much to contribute. You can repeat a poem in your head and wait until the conversation is over. But if anyone starts talking about "level playing fields," get up and steal quietly from the room.”

John Mortimer (1923–2009) English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author

Source: Where There's a Will: Thoughts on the Good Life (2003), Ch. 19 : The Marketplace

Death , People , Books , World

“The truth about the world about us.' 'Truth' is a word used in many different ways - 'You’re not telling the truth.' 'The truth about conditions in Russia.' 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty.' I want to use it here in the sense of what lies behind and outward show. I. et me hasten to explain by giving an example. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. That is what we see; that is the ‘outward show'. In the past the outward show was regarded as the truth. But then a scientist came along to question it and then to announce that the truth was quite different from the appearance: the truth was that the earth revolved and the sun remained still -the outward show was telling a lie. The curious thing about scientific truths like this is that they often seem so useless. It makes no difference to the average man whether the sun moves or the earth moves. He still has to rise at dawn and stop work at dusk. But because a thing is useless it does not mean that it is valueless. Scientists still think it worthwhile to pursue truth. They do not expect that laws of gravitation and relativity are going to make much difference to everyday life, but they think it is a valuable activity to ask their eternal questions about the universe. And so we say that truth - the thing they are looking for—is a value.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, English Literature: A Survey for Students (1958, revised 1974)

Life , Truth , Lie , World

“What is chiefly needed is skill rather than machinery. The flight of the buzzard and similar sailors is a convincing demonstration of the value of skill and the partial needlessness of motors.
It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill. This I conceive to be fortunate, for man, by reason of his greater intellect, can more reasonably hope to equal birds in knowledge than to equal nature in the perfection of her machinery…”

Wilbur Wright (1867–1912) American aviation pioneer

Letter to Octave Chanute (13 May 1900)

Hope , Nature , Knowledge , Bird

“Truth is harder to bear than ignorance, and so ignorance is valued more— also because the status quo depends on it; but love depends on self-knowledge and self-knowledge depends on being able to bear the truth.”

Andrea Dworkin book Intercourse

Source: Intercourse (1987), Chapter 4

Love , Truth , Knowledge , Dependency

“Becoming aware of the intense suffering of billions of animals, and of our own participation in that suffering, can bring up painful emotions: sorrow and grief for the animals; anger at the injustice and deception of the system; despair at the enormity of the problem; fear that trusted authorities and institutions are, in fact, untrustworthy; and guilt for having contributed to the problem. Bearing witness means choosing to suffer. Indeed, empathy is literally “feeling with.” Choosing to suffer is particularly difficult in a culture that is addicted to comfort—a culture that teaches that pain should be avoided whenever possible and that ignorance is bliss. We can reduce our resistance to witnessing by valuing authenticity over personal pleasure, and integration over ignorance.”

Melanie Joy book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows

Source: Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows (2010), pp. 142-143

Pain , Pleasure , Fear , Feeling

“From our vantage, materialism is not a neutral, value-free, minimalist position from which to pursue inquiry. Rather, it is itself an ideology with an agenda. What’s more, it requires an evolutionary creation story to keep it afloat. On scientific grounds, we regard that creation story to be false. What’s more, we regard the ideological agenda that has flowed from it to be destructive to rational discourse. Our concerns are therefore entirely parallel to the evolutionists’. Indeed, all the evolutionists’ worst fears about what the world would be like if we succeed have, in our view, already been realized through the success of materialism and evolution. Hence, as a strategy for unseating materialism and evolution, the term "Wedge" has come to denote an intellectual and cultural movement that many find congenial.”

William A. Dembski (1960) American intelligent design advocate

Dealing with the backlash against intelligent design
2004-04-14
http://www.designinference.com/documents/2004.04.Backlash.htm
2011-10-23, also published in [William A. (ed.), Dembski, Darwin's nemesis: Phillip Johnson and the intelligent design movement, 2006, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Ill., 9780830828364, [BT1220.D28, 2006], 2005033144]
2000s

World , Fear , Success , Falseness

“The emphasis of study upon a particular aspect of music is in itself ideological because it contains implications about the music's value.”

Lucy Green

from (1999). Ideology. Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture. Malden, Massachusetts. ISBN 0631212639.

Music , Study

“The capitalist era is passing... not quickly, but inevitably. A new economic paradigm—the Collaborative Commons—is rising in its wake that will transform our way of life. We are already witnessing the emergence of a hybrid economy, part capitalist market and part Collaborative Commons. The two economic systems often work in tandem and sometimes compete. They are finding synergies along each other’s perimeters, where they can add value to one another, while benefiting themselves. At other times, they are deeply adversarial, each attempting to absorb or replace the other.”

Jeremy Rifkin (1945) American economist

The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (2014)

Life , Way , Time , Parting

“A silly society is a youth-obsessed society: To the Chinese, who appreciate the value of experience, the greater the ratio in a team of grey ‘hairs and no-hairs’ to ‘black hairs’—the faster and better a task will be completed. The opposite assumption obtains in the youth-obsessed U. S.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Hollywood: The No-Good, The Bad And The Beastly" http://www.quarterly-review.org/?p=2432 Quarterly Review, March 16, 2014.
2010s, 2014

Youth

“A pre-emptive war in 'defense' of freedom would surely destroy freedom, because one simply cannot engage in barbarous action without becoming a barbarian, because one cannot defend human values by calculated and unprovoked violence without doing mortal damage to the values one is trying to defend.”

J. William Fulbright (1905–1995) American politician

Source: The Arrogance of Power (1966), p. 154

War , Freedom

“A numinous experience lacking further significance quickly degenerates into mere superstition, easily rationalized or forgotten over time. What prevented this particular experience from such a fate was its connection with something of urgent significance to this diverse group of escaped slaves: a covenant. The covenant revealed at Mount Sinai directly addressed their wilderness predicament by proposing a framework on which this heterogeneous collection of individuals could see beyond their differences and together build a future, no longer as a “mixed rabble” but as “one people.” The thunderstorm at the mountain powerfully reinforced the sacred quality and value of the covenant delivered there by Moses, and the value of this covenant, in turn, powerfully reinforced the escaped slaves’ belief that, in this particular thunderstorm, they had indeed witnessed the presence and voice of a god.In antiquity, the revelation of a new religious insight or system was not described in terms of human inspiration or innovation but rather as a divine revelation associated with a theophany. The theophany was the typical motif used to explain the origin of something new and meaningful. But something new can only become meaningful if it is also expressed and described in terms and analogies that are already well-known to everyone concerned. Despite its religious novelty, the Sinai covenant Moses delivered was readily intelligible to these ex-slaves because it employed well-known concepts and images, in this case concepts and images drawn from the familiar world of Late Bronze Age international politics. Naturally, they were adapted so that they now served religious as opposed to political ends, providing a basis for a community whose cohesion did not require any political enforcement mechanism or monopoly of force.”

George E. Mendenhall (1916–2016) American academic

Ancient Israel’s Faith and History: An Introduction the Bible in Context (2001)

Fate , People , Age , World

“In planning the idea of decentralization must be connected with routines of linking plans of rather autonomous parts of the whole system. Here one can use a conditional separation of the system by means of fixing values of flows and parameters transmitted from one part to another. One can use an idea of sequential recomputation of the parameters, which was successfully developed by many authors for the scheme of Dantzig-Wolfe and for aggregative linear models.”

Leonid Kantorovich (1912–1986) Russian mathematician

"Mathematics in Economics: Achievements, Difficulties, Perspectives," 1975

Idea , Wolf , Parting

“Chaos is ugly, nihilistic, and cruel -- a film I regret having seen. I urge you to avoid it. Don't make the mistake of thinking it's 'only' a horror film, or a slasher film. It is an exercise in heartless cruelty and it ends with careless brutality. The movie denies not only the value of life, but the possibility of hope.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/chaos-2005 of Chaos (11 August 2005)
Reviews, Zero star reviews

Life , Hope , Exercises , Thinking

“"Value added" is a meaningless concept for a retail business, for a bank, for a life insurance company, and for any other business which is not primarily engaged in manufacturing.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 3, p. 647

Life , Business

“When conservatives and reactionaries refer to “Nature” to justify their assertions about the inferiority of woman, the lesser capacities of dark races, the innate intelligence of children from the upper social strata, and the sickness of homosexuality, they have usurped naturalism. It remains the task of critique to refute this. Ultimately critique must at least be able to show that what “Nature” gives us has to be recognized as neutral and nontendentious so that every value judgment and every tendency can without doubt be understood as a cultural phenomenon. Even if Rousseau’s “good Nature” has been discredited, he has at least taught us not to accept “bad Nature” as an excuse for social oppression.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 57

Children , Intelligence , Nature

“A work of art is not valued because it changes itself for each person who views it, it retains its own integrity and thus means something unique and marvelous to those who see it.”

Charles A. Reich book The Greening of America

Source: The Greening of America (1970), Chapter IX : The New Generation, p. 228

Art , Change , Personality

“Mr. Malthus says, " It has been justly observed by Adam Smith that no equal quantity of productive labour employed in manufactures can ever occasion so great a reproduction as in agriculture. " If Adam Smith speaks of value, he is correct; but if he speaks of riches, which is the important point, he is mistaken; for he has himself defined riches to consist of the necessaries, conveniences, and enjoyments of human life. One set of necessaries and conveniences admits of no comparison with another set; value in use cannot be measured by any known standard; it is differently estimated by different persons.”

David Ricardo (1772–1823) British political economist, broker and politician

Source: The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1821) (Third Edition), Chapter XXXII, Malthus on Rent, p. 292

Life , Personality

“It is the business of the preacher, not only to state moral truths, but to inspire his hearers with a realising sense of their value, and to awaken in them the desire to act accordingly.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: It is the business of the preacher, not only to state moral truths, but to inspire his hearers with a realising sense of their value, and to awaken in them the desire to act accordingly. He can do this only by putting his own purpose as a yeast into their hearts. The influence of the right sort of preachers cannot be spared. The human race is not yet so far advanced that it can dispense with the impulses that come from men of more than average intensity of moral energy.
Let us produce, through the efficacy of a better moral life and of a deeper moral experience, a surer faith in the ultimate victory of the good.
Let us found religion upon a basis of perfect intellectual honesty. Religion, if it is to mean anything at all, must stand for the highest truth. How then can the cause of truth be served by the sacrifice, more or less disguised, of one's intellectual convictions?

Truth , Business , Sense

“Philosophy is the science of estimating values.”

Manly P. Hall (1901–1990) Canadian writer and mystic

Introduction, p. 4
The Secret Teachings of All Ages (1928)
Context: Philosophy is the science of estimating values. The superiority of any state or substance over another is determined by philosophy. By assigning a position of primary importance to what remains when all that is secondary has been removed, philosophy thus becomes the true index of priority or emphasis in the realm of speculative thought.

Science

“Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms. Real change can only come about through nonviolent action, and anything else runs against our most deeply held American values.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Remarks regarding the shooting at practice for a congressional baseball game in Alexandria, Virginia (14 June 2017) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcH2i7um5sw
2010s, 2017
Context: I have just been informed that the alleged shooter at the Republican baseball practice is someone who apparently volunteered on my presidential campaign. I am sickened by this despicable act, and let me be as clear as I can be: Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms. Real change can only come about through nonviolent action, and anything else runs against our most deeply held American values.
My hopes and prayers are that Representative Scalise, congressional staff and the Capitol Police Officers who were wounded make a quick and full recovery. I also want to thank the Capitol Police for their heroic actions to prevent further harm.

Change

“The hijab has nothing to do with moral values.”

Nawal El-Saadawi (1931) Egyptian feminist writer, activist, physician and psychiatrist

Statement on Al-Arabiya TV (3 March 2007), as quoted in "The Hijab: Is it Religiously mandated?" by Farzana Hassan and Tarek Fatah at Islamic Research Foundation International, Inc. http://www.irfi.org/articles3/articles_4801_4900/the%20hijab-%20is%20it%20religiously%20mandatedhtml.htm
Context: The hijab has nothing to do with moral values. A woman's moral values are reflected in her eyes, in the way she talks, and in the way she walks. They put on a hijab and go dancing, wearing high heels and lipstick. They wear tight jeans that show their bellies.

“Here, for the first time, I felt an unshakable conviction that no momentary military advantage — even if such could have been calculated to exist — could have justified this stupendous, careless destruction of civilian life and of material values, built up laboriously by human hands over the course of centuries for purposes having nothing to do with war.”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

Written in regard to the Allied destruction of Hamburg and other German cities, p. 437
Memoirs 1925 - 1950 (1967), Germany
Context: Here, for the first time, I felt an unshakable conviction that no momentary military advantage — even if such could have been calculated to exist — could have justified this stupendous, careless destruction of civilian life and of material values, built up laboriously by human hands over the course of centuries for purposes having nothing to do with war. Least of all could it have been justified by the screaming non sequitur: "They did it to us." And it suddenly appeared to me that in these ruins there was an unanswerable symbolism which we in the West could not afford to ignore. If the Western world was really going to make a pretense of a higher moral departure point — of greater sympathy and understanding for the human being as God made him, as expressed not only in himself but in the things he had wrought and cared about — then it had to learn to fight its wars morally as well as militarily, or not fight them at all; for moral principles were a part of its strength. Shorn of this strength, it was no longer itself; its victories were not real victories; and the best it would accomplish in the long run would be to pull down the temple over its own head. The military would stamp this as naïve; they would say that war is war, that when you're in it you fight with every means you have, or go down in defeat. But if that is the case, then there rests upon Western civilization, bitter as this may be, the obligation to be militarily stronger than its adversaries by a margin sufficient to enable it to dispense with those means which can stave off defeat only at the cost of undermining victory.

Life , War , Time

“But beyond the personal tragedy, the terrible agony of Othello, the irretrievability of his world, the complete destruction of all his trusted and sacred values — all these suggest the shattering of a universe.”

Paul Robeson (1898–1976) American singer and actor

"Some Reflections on Othello and the Nature of Our Time." in The American Scholar (Autumn 1945); also quoted in Paul Robeson : The Whole World in His Hands (1981) by Susan Robeson, p. 150
Context: It was deeply fascinating to watch how strikingly contemporary American audiences from coast to coast found Shakespeare's Othello — painfully immediate in its unfolding of evil, innocence, passion, dignity and nobility, and contemporary in its overtones of a clash of cultures, of the partial acceptance of and consequent effect upon one of a minority group. Against this background, the jealousy of the protagonist becomes more credible, the blows to his pride more understandable, the final collapse of his personal, individual world more inevitable. But beyond the personal tragedy, the terrible agony of Othello, the irretrievability of his world, the complete destruction of all his trusted and sacred values — all these suggest the shattering of a universe.

World , Universe , Personality

“It is as his own mind comes into contact with others that truth will begin to acquire value in the child's eyes and will consequently become a moral demand that can be made upon him.”

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher & academic

Source: The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932), Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism 
Context: !-- Every thought that enters the head of a child of 2-3 does so from the first in the form of a belief and not in the form of a hypothesis to be verified. Hence the very young child's almost systematic romancing as with others and to which one cannot yet give the name of pseudo-lie, so close is the connection between primitive romancing and assertive belief.
Hence finally, the pseudo-lie, which is a sort of romancing used for other people, and serving to pull the child out of any straight due to circumstances, from which he deems it perfectly natural to extricate himself by inventing a story. Just as, from the intellectual point of view the child will elude a difficult question by means of an improvised myth to which he will give momentary credence, so from the moral point of view, an embarrassing situation will give rise to a pseudo-lie. Nor does this involve anything more than an application of the general laws of primitive child thought, which is directed towards its own satisfaction rather than to objective truth. -->It is as his own mind comes into contact with others that truth will begin to acquire value in the child's eyes and will consequently become a moral demand that can be made upon him. As long as the child remains egocentric, truth as such will fail to interest him and he will see no harm in transposing facts in accordance with his desires.

Truth

“I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem—the most important of all human problems.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and Religion (1999)
Context: It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropomorphic concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near to those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order and harmony which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem—the most important of all human problems.

From a letter to Murray W. Gross (26 April 1947), p. 138

Understanding , Knowledge , Problem

“Which does not mean that it must deny the value of rich accretions drawn from the right kind of immigration. Any such restriction, except as a necessary and momentary expediency, would assuredly paralyze our national vitality.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)
Context: It would not be unjust to ask of every alien: What will you contribute to the common good, once you are admitted through the gates of liberty? Our history is full of answers of which we might be justly proud. But of late, the answers have not been so readily or so eloquently given. Our country must cease to be regarded as a dumping ground. Which does not mean that it must deny the value of rich accretions drawn from the right kind of immigration. Any such restriction, except as a necessary and momentary expediency, would assuredly paralyze our national vitality. But measured practically, it would be suicidal for us to let down the bars for the inflowing of cheap manhood, just as, commercially, it would be unsound for this country to allow her markets to be overflooded with cheap goods, the product of a cheap labor. There is no room either for the cheap man or the cheap goods.

“A fundamental value in the scientific outlook is concern with the best available map of reality.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Anatol Rapoport Science and the goals of man: a study in semantic orientation. Greenwood Press, 1950/1971. p. 224; Partly cited in: Book review http://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2040&context=lalrev by Harold G. Wren, in Louisiana Law Review, Vol 13, nr 4, May 1953
1950s
Context: A fundamental value in the scientific outlook is concern with the best available map of reality. The scientist will always seek a description of events which enables him to predict most by assuming least. He thus already prefers a particular form of behavior. If moralities are systems of preferences, here is at least one point at which science cannot be said to be completely without preferences. Science prefers good maps.

Reality

“Interpretation is not (as most people assume) an absolute value, a gesture of mind situated in some timeless realm of capabilities.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966), p. 6
Context: Interpretation is not (as most people assume) an absolute value, a gesture of mind situated in some timeless realm of capabilities. Interpretation must itself be evaluated, within a historical view of human consciousness. In some cultural contexts, interpretation is a liberating act. It is a means of revising, of transvaluing, of escaping the dead past. In other cultural contexts, it is reactionary, impertinent, cowardly, stifling.

People

“There are also the majority of followers of Qur’an who don’t have a problem with music and who do not consider it as unlawful, thus I felt it was important to share something of value with them as well through some newer music and songs.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

The Sounds of Taqwa (2006)
Context: The Qur’an has been around for over 1500 years and has been embraced by individuals from countries all over the world. This has resulted in many opinions about how it should be interpreted. A small number of people who follow the Qur’an — primarily in places like North America, The United Kingdom, Arabia and South Africa — hold the view that musical instruments are “unlawful”.
Living in North America, I thought it was best to keep instruments out of my CDs so families would feel comfortable listening to the songs.
10 years and almost 12 albums later, I felt it was important to be more honest with myself about my own personal opinions of music and its usefulness. There are also the majority of followers of Qur’an who don’t have a problem with music and who do not consider it as unlawful, thus I felt it was important to share something of value with them as well through some newer music and songs.

Music , Problem

“In regard, then, to the sacred tradition of humanity, we learn that it consists, not in propositions or statements which are to be accepted and believed on the authority of the tradition, but in questions rightly asked, in conceptions which enable us to ask further questions, and in methods of answering questions. The value of all these things depends on their being tested day by day.”

William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher

The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Weight Of Authority
Context: In regard, then, to the sacred tradition of humanity, we learn that it consists, not in propositions or statements which are to be accepted and believed on the authority of the tradition, but in questions rightly asked, in conceptions which enable us to ask further questions, and in methods of answering questions. The value of all these things depends on their being tested day by day. The very sacredness of the precious deposit imposes upon us the duty and the responsibility of testing it, of purifying and enlarging it to the utmost of our power. He who makes use of its results to stifle his own doubts, or to hamper the inquiry of others, is guilty of a sacrilege which centuries shall never be able to blot out. When the labours and questionings of honest and brave men shall have built up the fabric of known truth to a glory which we in this generation can neither hope for nor imagine, in that pure and holy temple he shall have no part nor lot, but his name and his works shall be cast out into the darkness of oblivion for ever.

Question , Learning , Dependency

“The social revolution means much more than the reorganization of conditions only: it means the establishment of new human values and social relationships, a changed attitude of man to man, as of one free and independent to his equal; it means a different spirit in individual and collective life, and that spirit cannot be born overnight. It is a spirit to be cultivated, to be nurtured and reared, as the most delicate flower it is, for indeed it is the flower of a new and beautiful existence.”

Alexander Berkman (1870–1936) anarchist and writer

What Is Anarchism? (1929), Ch. 26: "Preparation" http://libcom.org/library/what-is-anarchism-alexander-berkman-26
Context: If your object is to secure liberty, you must learn to do without authority and compulsion. If you intend to live in peace and harmony with your fellow-men, you and they should cultivate brotherhood and respect for each other. If you want to work together with them for your mutual benefit, you must practice cooperation. The social revolution means much more than the reorganization of conditions only: it means the establishment of new human values and social relationships, a changed attitude of man to man, as of one free and independent to his equal; it means a different spirit in individual and collective life, and that spirit cannot be born overnight. It is a spirit to be cultivated, to be nurtured and reared, as the most delicate flower it is, for indeed it is the flower of a new and beautiful existence.

Life , Beauty , Flowers , Change

“Tolstoy teaches us that compassion is of value and enriches our life only when compassion is severe, which is to say when we can perceive everything that is good and bad about a character but are still able to feel that the sum of us as human beings is probably a little more good than awful”

Norman Mailer book The Naked and the Dead

Mailer's Introduction to the 50th Anniversary Edition (1998)
The Naked and the Dead (1948)
Context: For that is the genius of the old man — Tolstoy teaches us that compassion is of value and enriches our life only when compassion is severe, which is to say when we can perceive everything that is good and bad about a character but are still able to feel that the sum of us as human beings is probably a little more good than awful … That fine edge in Tolstoy, the knowledge that compassion is valueless without severity (for otherwise it cannot defend itself against sentimentality), gave The Naked and the Dead whatever enduring virtue it may possess and catapulted the amateur who wrote it into the grim ranks of those successful literary men and women who are obliged to become professional in order to survive …

Life , Feeling

“It seems important that the social value factor be more generally recognized as a powerful causal agent in its own right and something to be dealt with directly as such.”

Roger Wolcott Sperry (1913–1994) American neuroscientist

Source: Science and the Problem of Values (1972), p. 119
Context: It seems important that the social value factor be more generally recognized as a powerful causal agent in its own right and something to be dealt with directly as such. No more critical task can be projected for the 1970s than that of seeking for civilized society a new, elevated set of value guidelines more suited to man's expanded numbers and new powers over nature, a frame of reference for value priorities that will act to secure and conserve our world instead of destroying it.

“Players that learn the value of hard work, commitment, teamwork, and sacrifice are the ones that make their teams great.”

Tom Crean (basketball coach) (1966) American college basketball coach

Foreword to Winning Basketball : Techniques and Drills for Playing Better Offensive Basketball (2004) by Ralph L. Pim
Context: I am a firm believer that you can't have people in your program who just want to win; you must have people who are committed to winning. Players that learn the value of hard work, commitment, teamwork, and sacrifice are the ones that make their teams great.

Learning

“Though his philosophy finds nothing to support it, at least from the standpoint of Terence the scientific student should be ready to acknowledge the value of a belief in a hereafter as an asset in human life. In the presence of so many mysteries which have been unveiled, in the presence of so many yet unsolved, he cannot be dogmatic and deny the possibility of a future state”

William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian pathologist, physician, educator, bibliophile, historian, author, cofounder of Johns Hopkins Hospi…

Science and Immortality (1904)
Context: Though his philosophy finds nothing to support it, at least from the standpoint of Terence the scientific student should be ready to acknowledge the value of a belief in a hereafter as an asset in human life. In the presence of so many mysteries which have been unveiled, in the presence of so many yet unsolved, he cannot be dogmatic and deny the possibility of a future state; and however distressing such a negative attitude of mind to the Teresian, like Pyrrho, he will ask to be left, reserving his judgement, but still inquiring. He will recognize that amid the turbid ebb and flow of human misery, a belief in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come is the rock of safety to which many of the noblest of his fellows have clung; he will gratefully accept the incalculable comfort of such a belief to those sorrowing for precious friends hid in death's dateless night; he will acknowledge with gratitude and reverence the service to humanity of the great souls who have departed this life in a sure and certain hope but this is all. Whether across death's threshold we step from life to life, or whether we go whence we shall not return, even to the land of darkness, as darkness itself, he cannot tell.

Life , Support , Future

“I wanted to find another order, another value for man in nature. He should no longer be the measure of all things”

Hans Arp (1886–1966) Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist

Source: 1960s, Jours effeuillés: Poèmes, essaies, souvenirs (1966), p. 183
Context: I wanted to find another order, another value for man in nature. He should no longer be the measure of all things, nor should everything be compared with him, but, on the contrary, all things, and man as well, should be like nature, without measure. I wanted to create new appearances, to extract new forms from man. This is made clear in my objects from 1917.

Nature

“Now this problem of the adjustment of man to his natural resources, and the problem of how such things as industrialization and urbanization can be accepted without destroying the traditional values of a civilization and corrupting the inner vitality of its life — these things are not only the problems of America; they are the problems of men everywhere.”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

Lecture at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey (March 1954); published in “The Unifying Factor” in Realities of American Foreign Policy (1954), p. 116
Context: Now this problem of the adjustment of man to his natural resources, and the problem of how such things as industrialization and urbanization can be accepted without destroying the traditional values of a civilization and corrupting the inner vitality of its life — these things are not only the problems of America; they are the problems of men everywhere. To the extent that we Americans become able to show that we are aware of these problems, and that we are approaching them with coherent and effective ideas of our own which we have the courage to put into effect in our own lives, to that extent a new dimension will come into our relations with the peoples beyond our borders, to that extent, in fact, the dreams of these earlier generations of Americans who saw us as leaders and helpers to the peoples of the world at large will begin to take on flesh and reality.

Life , Men , Nature , Problem

“According to my principles, every master has his true and certain value. Praise and criticism cannot change any of that.”

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714–1788) German harpsichordist and composer

Response to a story in the European Magazine which had accused him of harshly criticizing Joseph Haydn (14 September 1785), as quoted in Haydn, A Documentary Study (1981) by Howard Chandler Robbins Landon, p. 88
Context: According to my principles, every master has his true and certain value. Praise and criticism cannot change any of that. Only the work itself praises and criticizes the master, and therefore I leave to everyone his own value.

Change

“The art of science is as important as so-called technical science. You need both. It's this combination that must be recognized and acknowledged and valued.”

Jonas Salk (1914–1995) Inventor of polio vaccine

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)
Context: Reason alone will not serve. Intuition alone can be improved by reason, but reason alone without intuition can easily lead the wrong way. They both are necessary. The way I like to put it is that when I have an intuition about something, I send it over to the reason department. Then after I've checked it out in the reason department, I send it back to the intuition department to make sure that it's still all right. That's how my mind works, and that's how I work. That's why I think that there is both an art and a science to what we do. The art of science is as important as so-called technical science. You need both. It's this combination that must be recognized and acknowledged and valued.

Art , Science

“A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence (1967)
Context: A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

Justice , Question , Past

“The thought system that dominates our culture is laced with selfish values, and relinquishing those values is a lot easier said than done. The journey to a pure heart can be highly disorienting. For years we may have worked for power, money and prestige. Now all of a sudden we’ve learned that those are just the values of a dying world.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles" (1992), Ch. 7 : Work, §9 : Sales to Service
Context: The thought system that dominates our culture is laced with selfish values, and relinquishing those values is a lot easier said than done. The journey to a pure heart can be highly disorienting. For years we may have worked for power, money and prestige. Now all of a sudden we’ve learned that those are just the values of a dying world. We don’t know where to search for motivation anymore. If we’re not working in order to get rich, then why are we working at all? What are we supposed to do all day? Just sit home and watch TV?
Not at all, but thinking so is a temporary phase many people go through — when the values of the old world no longer have a hold on us, but the values of the new don’t yet grab your soul. They will. There comes a time, not too long into the journey to God, when the realization that the world could work beautifully if we would give it the chance, begins to excite us. It becomes our new motivation. The news isn’t how bad things are. The news is how good they could be. And our own activity could be part of the unfolding of Heaven on earth. There is no more powerful motivation than to feel we’re being used in the creation of a world where love has healed all wounds.
We are no longer ambitious for ourselves, but are rather inspired by the vision of a healed world. Inspiration rearranges our energies. It sources within us a new power and direction. We no longer feel like we’re trying to carry a football to the finish line, clutching it to our chest and surrounded by hostile forces. We feel instead as though angels are pushing us from behind and making straight our path as we go.

Money , World , Learning , Heart

“Nine-tenths of the value of a sense of humor in writing is not in the things it makes one write but in the things it keeps one from writing.”

Robert Benchley (1889–1945) American comedian

LIFE magazine (8 March 1929)
Context: Nine-tenths of the value of a sense of humor in writing is not in the things it makes one write but in the things it keeps one from writing. It is especially valuable in this respect in serious writing, and no one without a sense of humor should ever write seriously. For without knowing what is funny, one is constantly in danger of being funny without knowing it.

Sense

“To give liberty to a slave before he understands its value is, perhaps, rather to impose a penalty than to bestow a blessing; but it is not clear to me that the southern planters are duly exerting themselves to prepare the way for that change in the condition of their black populations which they profess to think not only desirable but inevitable.”

Frances Wright (1795–1852) American activist

Letter XXVIII (April 1820) Views of Society and Manners in America (1821)
Context: The Virginians are said to pride themselves upon the peculiar tenderness with which they visit the sceptre of authority on their African vassals. As all those acquainted with the character of the Virginia planters, whether American or foreigners, appear to concur in bearing testimony of their humanity, it is probable that they are entitled to the praise which they claim. But in their position, justice should be held superior to humanity; to break the chains would be more generous than to gild them; and whether we consider the interests of the master or the slave, decidedly more useful. To give liberty to a slave before he understands its value is, perhaps, rather to impose a penalty than to bestow a blessing; but it is not clear to me that the southern planters are duly exerting themselves to prepare the way for that change in the condition of their black populations which they profess to think not only desirable but inevitable.

Penalty , Way , Understanding , Thinking

“This is a great country. It's a great country because we share the same values of respect and dignity and human worth, and it is my honor to be meeting with leaders who feel just the same way I do. They're outraged, they're sad. They love America just as much as I do.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

I want to thank you all for giving me a chance to come by, and may God bless us all.
2000s, 2001, Islam is Peace (September 2001)

Love , Sadness , Way , Feeling

“Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

As quoted in Busted : Stone Cowboys, Narco-lords, and Washington's War on Drugs (2002) edited by Mike Gray

People , Marijuana , Madness , Night

“Even today, there persists… a feeling that the creation of the Universe out of nothing must violate some basic conservation law that stops one from getting something for nothing. Nevertheless, there is actually no evidence that the Universe as a whole possesses a non-zero value of any such conserved quantity. The total mass-energy of all the constituents of a finite Universe appears to be always equal in magnitude but opposite in sign to the total gravitational potential energies of those particles. …Similarly, there is no evidence that the Universe possesses any overall net rotation or electric charge.”

John D. Barrow (1952–2020) British scientist

New Theories of Everything (2007)

Law , Feeling , Universe , Appearance

“You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Interview with Christian Salmon (Fall 1983), Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Series Seven [Viking, 1988, ], pp. 217-218
Context: Do you realize that people don't know how to read Kafka simply because they want to decipher him? Instead of letting themselves be carried away by his unequaled imagination, they look for allegories — and come up with nothing but clichés: life is absurd (or it is not absurd), God is beyond reach (or within reach), etc. You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.

Art , Imagination , Understanding

“At the beginning of this century a self-destructive democratic principle was advanced in mathematics (especially by Hilbert), according to which all axiom systems have equal right to be analyzed, and the value of a mathematical achievement is determined, not by its significance and usefulness as in other sciences, but by its difficulty alone, as in mountaineering.”

Vladimir I. Arnold (1937–2010) Russian mathematician

"Will Mathematics Survive? Report on the Zurich Congress" in The Mathematical Intelligencer, Vol. 17, no. 3 (1995), pp. 6–10.
Context: At the beginning of this century a self-destructive democratic principle was advanced in mathematics (especially by Hilbert), according to which all axiom systems have equal right to be analyzed, and the value of a mathematical achievement is determined, not by its significance and usefulness as in other sciences, but by its difficulty alone, as in mountaineering. This principle quickly led mathematicians to break from physics and to separate from all other sciences. In the eyes of all normal people, they were transformed into a sinister priestly caste... Bizarre questions like Fermat's problem or problems on sums of prime numbers were elevated to supposedly central problems of mathematics.

Mountain , Mathematics , Science

Quotes about value page 32

Quotes about value
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