Fråga: Vad tror det är som driver människan framåt? Själv är jag böjd till att tro att girigheten är den ultima drivkraften. Då menar jag girighet i både psykiskt och fysiskt plan. D.v.s en girighet i mental och materiell åtrå. Jag tror då följdaktligen att girighet är det som formar vårt samhälle. Inte så direkt upplyftande eller hur? (Samuel Sannsell)
Svar: Borgare brukar säga att människan drivs av egennyttan. Gunnar Adler Karlsson skrev att vi drivs framåt av vår lathet (därav alla tids och människobesparande uppfinningar). En del tror att de kan hitta den genetiska koden som förklarar artens vilja att växa och utvecklas, andra att det är svårt att se nån utveckling överhuvudtaget. Själv tror jag at vi drivs framåt av vår kultur. Vårt sociala vara. Poängen med den tesen är att en kultur kan fyllas med olika gemensamma drivkrafter. I ett samhälle som premierar egennyttan, får den större betydelse. I ett samhälle som premierar samarbete får det beteendet större betydelse. Visst föder din tanke deppiga dagar. Men jag läste en gång några rader om mänsklighetens märkliga förmåga att sätta sig själv inför hotet om utplåning (genom kärnvapenkriget). Det märkliga stod det, är inte att människan har detta terrorvapen i sin hand. Det fantastiska är att man trots fingrarna på knappen under femtio år, ännu inte tryckt av.
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The family is the school of duties... founded on love.
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The hero is one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by.
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Aristotle uses a mother's love for her child as the prime example of love or friendship.
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Habits are formed by the repetition of particular acts. They are strengthened by an increase in the number of repeated acts. Habits are also weakened or broken, and contrary habits are formed by the repetition of contrary acts.
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It is the patriotic duty of every man to lie for his country.
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The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.
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I thank God, Jesus, and my Grandmother for being able to support myself and my family.
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The conception of worth, that each person is an end per se, is not a mere abstraction. Our interest in it is not merely academic. Every outcry against the oppression of some people by other people, or against what is morally hideous is the affirmation of the principle that a human being as such is not to be violated. A human being is not to be handled as a tool but is to be respected and revered.
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The unique personality which is the real life in me, I can not gain unless I search for the real life, the spiritual quality, in others. I am myself spiritually dead unless I reach out to the fine quality dormant in others. For it is only with the god enthroned in the innermost shrine of the other, that the god hidden in me, will consent to appear.
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Nothing defines the quality of life in a community more clearly than people who regard themselves, or whom the consensus chooses to regard, as mentally unwell.
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Admitting the force of these contentions, nevertheless, the custom of meeting together in public assembly for the consideration of the most serious, the most exalted topics of human interest is too vitally precious to be lost.
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What it comes down to is this: the grocer, the butcher, the baker, the merchant, the landlord, the druggist, the liquor dealer, the policeman, the doctor, the city father and the politician -- these are the people who make money out of prostitution, these are the real reapers of the wages of sin.
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Ethical religion can be real only to those who are engaged in ceaseless efforts at moral improvement. By moving upward we acquire faith in an upward movement, without limit.
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The writer has a grudge against society, which he documents with accounts of unsatisfying sex, unrealized ambition, unmitigated loneliness, and a sense of local and global distress. The square, overpopulation, the bourgeois, the bomb and the cocktail party are variously identified as sources of the grudge. There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born.
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Ethical religion can be real only to those who are engaged in ceaseless efforts at moral improvementmoving upward we acquire faith in an upward movement, without limit
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It's a morbid observation, but if every one on earth just stopped breathing for an hour, the greenhouse effect would no longer be a problem.
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The greater the feeling of inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge to conquest and the more violent the emotional agitation.
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The women who take husbands not out of love but out of greed, to get their bills paid, to get a fine house and clothes and jewels; the women who marry to get out of a tiresome job, or to get away from disagreeable relatives, or to avoid being called an old maid -- these are whores in everything but name. The only difference between them and my girls is that my girls gave a man his money's worth.
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One of the aims of sexual union is procreation - the creation by reproduction of an image of itself, of the union.
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Major social movements eventually fade into the landscape not because they have diminished but because they have become a permanent part of our perceptions and experience.
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Love of country is like love of woman -- he loves her best who seeks to bestow on her the highest good.
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There is another side to chivalry. If it dispenses leniency, it may with equal justification invoke control.
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The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even murder with the truth.
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Friendship is a very taxing and arduous form of leisure activity.
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Exaggerated sensitiveness is an expression of the feeling of inferiority.
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In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.
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Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions, a crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit.
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Freedom is the emancipation from the arbitrary rule of other men.
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The feeling of inferiority rules the mental life and can be clearly recognized in the sense of incompleteness and unfulfillment, and in the uninterrupted struggle both of individuals and humanity.
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