Some of My Favorite Quotes on Justice, Philosophy & More
Wise words from many sources
I love a good quote. The best quotes offer the distilled essence of a philosophy, concisely offering keen insight into our world. Below, I’ve collected some of my favorite quotes on topics ranging from justice to philosophy to suffering. Enjoy!
Jump to: justice / art / cultural commentary / philosophy / suffering / love / the Bible / life / literature & TV
Overall Favorites
But was there ever any domination which did not appear natural to those who possessed it? – John Stuart Mill, Subjection of Women (Just because something feels “natural” or everyone else is doing it, doesn’t mean it’s moral. C.f. sexism for most of human history, modern meat consumption, etc. This makes it utterly essential to examine your beliefs carefully)
Just as you can look at an arid terrain and determine what shape a river will one day take by assuming water will obey gravity, so you can look at a civilization and determine what shape its institutions will one day take by assuming people will obey incentives. – Scott Alexander, Meditations on Moloch (one of my favorite essays and another keystone belief; our society tends to foreground individuals and promote individual change, but I believe individual choices are typically deeply driven by systems-level incentives. This is particularly important to keep in mind when you’re trying to change things!)
Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know — Eric Hoffer
Our lives no longer belong to us alone; they belong to all those who need us desperately. — Elie Wiesel (A key part of my moral philosophy)
Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. — Nelson Mandela
Without the economic leverage of a secure livelihood, a requirement for ensuring civil freedom, formal rights can be merely symbolic — Estelle Freedman, Redefining Rape
Categories are often useful but almost always limited — John Green
There is no them, only more us — John Green (see also Alexander’s I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup)
You become what you do not resist — Catharine MacKinnon
Justice
You didn’t make good choices. You had good choices — Attica Locke
As soon as there’s the slightest disconnect between good policymaking and electability, good policymaking has to get thrown under the bus. — Scott Alexander, “Meditations on Moloch”
The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: “What are you going through? — Simone Weil, Waiting for God
Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble. — John Lewis
Inherent in violent ideologies is an implicit contract between producer and consumer to see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. — Melanie Joy
Progress is never a result of scientific discovery alone. It also requires other forces: crusading journalism, activism, politics. Pasteurization as an idea was first developed in the mind of a chemist. But in the United States, it would finally make a difference thanks to a much wider cast of characters — Steven Johnson, Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity — Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges —Anatole France
Take your foot off our necks, then we will hear in what tongue women speak — Catharine MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified (in reference to ongoing debates about to what extent there are “natural”/biological differences between the sexes — we won’t actually know until we live in an egalitarian society)
All of these Effecting Effective Effectiveness people don’t obsess over efficiency out of bloodlessness. They obsess because the struggle is so desperate, and the resources so few. Their efficiency is military efficiency. Their cooperation is military discipline. Their unity is the unity of people facing a common enemy. And they are winning. Very slowly, WWI trench-warfare-style. But they really are. – Scott Alexander
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. – Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Art
Look, man, we’d probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid everything is? In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what’s human and magical that still live and glow despite the times’ darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it’d find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it. —David Foster Wallace (he wrote this back in 1993, which feels absurdly quaint and idyllic compared to today, at least when it comes to American politics)
Art should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed — various (basically my mission statement for my poetry & music and in many ways my life more broadly)
Humans are “the primates who tell stories” — Stephen Gould
Cultural Commentary
For all the warnings from 20th century writers like George Orwell that history would be forcibly stamped out, the graver threat may be that people, offered a choice, turn their backs on it voluntarily. – Max Fisher, In a Race to Shape the Future, History Is Under New Pressure
The other, even when not an enemy, is regarded only as someone to be seen, not someone (like us) who also sees — Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others
The misplaced shock that Putin would act as so many past leaders acted, that he would try to take what he wants just because he can, reflects liberalism’s long work remaking not just what we believe to be moral but what we believe to be normal. At its best and sometimes at its worst, liberalism makes the past into a truly foreign land, and that can turn those who still inhabit it into anachronisms in their own time. But liberals deceive themselves when they believe that that happens only to liberalism’s enemies. It also happens to liberalism’s would-be friends. —Ezra Klein
I’m a pretty big believer in the theory of an American civil religion. For me, the important part of religion isn’t the part with gods, prophets, or an afterlife – Buddhism lacks gods, traditional Judaism doesn’t have much of an afterlife, and both get along just fine. It’s about a symbiosis between a society and an ideology. On the most basic level, it’s the answer to a series of questions. What is our group? Why are we better than the outgroup? Why is our social system legitimate? — Scott Alexander, Gay Rites are Civil Rites
Philosophy
The moral is clear: the choice is never between objectivity and interpretation but between an interpretation that is unacknowledged as such and an interpretation that is at least aware of itself —Fish, “Interpreting the Variorum”
When a well-clothed philosopher on a bitter winter's night sits in a warm room well lighted for his purpose and writes on paper with pen and ink, in the arbitrary characters of a highly developed language, the statement that civilization is the result of natural laws and that man's duty is to let nature alone so that untrammeled it may work out a higher civilization, he simply ignores every circumstance of his existence and deliberately closes his eyes to every fact within the range of his faculties. —Lester Frank Ward, Mind as a Social Factor
Suffering
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
At such limits of thinking, speaking, and acting, resistance is more than negation and revolt. It is a way of surviving. Or better, it is a way of living, of pursuing the aims of life, to use Primo Levi’s formulation. —Vulnerability and Glory, Culp
When I tell you all shall be well, I don’t mean that life won’t bring you tragedy. Life will be life. I only mean you will be well in spite of it. All shall be well, no matter what. […] There’s a place in you that is inviolate – it’s the surest part of you, a piece of Sophia herself. You’ll find your way there, when you need to. And you’ll know then what I speak of. – Sue Monk Kidd, The Book of Longings
To have great pain is to have certainty; to hear that another person has pain is to have doubt […] physical pain does not simply resist language but actively destroys it ― Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (this is my absolute favorite book about making meaning from physical illness and injury)
I told her it was not okay, that it was unacceptable, that it was illegal and that I would call and report this latest, horrible thing. But I did not tell her it would stop. I did not promise that anyone would intervene. I told her it would likely go on and she’d have to survive it. That she’d have to find a way within herself to not only escape the shit, but to transcend it, and if she wasn’t able to do that, then her whole life would be shit, forever and ever and ever. I told her that escaping the shit would be hard, but that if she wanted to not make her mother’s life her destiny, she had to be the one to make it happen. She had to do more than hold on. She had to reach. She had to want it more than she’d ever wanted anything. She had to grab like a drowning girl for every good thing that came her way and she had to swim like fuck away from every bad thing. She had to count the years and let them roll by, to grow up and then run as far as she could in the direction of her best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by her own desire to heal. [...]
You will never stop loving your daughter. You will never forget her. You will always know her name. But she will always be dead. Nobody can intervene and make that right and nobody will. Nobody can take it back with silence or push it away with words. Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can’t cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It’s just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal. Therapists and friends and other people who live on Planet My Baby Died can help you along the way, but the healing—the genuine healing, the actual real deal down-on-your-knees-in-the-mud change—is entirely and absolutely up to you. – Cheryl Strayed, “How You Get Unstuck”
Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'. ― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Several from Anne Carson’s brilliant translation of Sophocles’ Elektra:
On the necessity of grief:
Never
Will I leave off lamenting,
Never. No.
As long as the stars sweep through heaven.
As long as I look on this daylight.
No. (138-143)
Evil is a pressure that shapes us to itself.
On her overwhelming need to adhere to her values:
You can have your rich table
and life overflowing over the cup.
I need one food:
I must not violate Elektra
She continues:
By dread things I am compelled.
I see the trap closing.
I know what I am.
But while life is in me
I will not stop this violence. No.
Elsewhere:
How could I nestle myself
In a life of ease
While my father lies out in the cold,
Outside honor?
Love
To love another person is to see the face of God —Victor Hugo
We have to be careful about what we love, of course, but we also have to be careful about how we love it. For me, it’s not mostly about whether you love a K-pop band or a sports team, it’s about whether that love sustains you and connects you deeply to others. And it’s also about whether that love needs to create outsiders in order to survive. Can you be a Christian without damning those who aren’t? Can you be a Liverpool fan without hating Manchester United? Can the “us” survive without a “them” to fuel it? [...] I often wonder what the point of it all is, but in that moment, I knew the point. The point is to gather, the verb that gave us “together.” — John Green (What to Love and How, 2019)
Bible
There are so many I could share here, but just a brief selection.
I love the moral clarity of the prophetic books. For example, in Amos:
I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them; […]
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:21-22, 24)
Isaiah puts forth similar themes:
Wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
stop doing wrong.
Learn to do right; seek justice.
Defend the oppressed.
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
plead the case of the widow. (Isaiah 1: 16-17)
And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age. (Matthew 28:20, KJV)
Rise up my love, my fair one,
and come away.
For, lo, the winter is past
the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing of birds is come. (Song of Songs 2: 10-13, KJV)
Another from Song of Songs:
Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm;
for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame.
Many waters cannot quench love,
neither can floods drown it.
If one offered for love
all the wealth of his house,
it would be utterly scorned. (Song of Songs)
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)
Life
If we want to survive, we’ve got to find a way to live together and work together across our differences. — Michelle Obama
Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it — Howard Thurman
The Brothers Green
I think this might be an even better metaphor for hope than the thing with feathers... that even in the ancient, unfathomable darkness of interstellar space, far beyond the reach of any star, that even there there might be light, if there is life to make it. —Jon Molnar, on a John Green video
It’s very easy to believe things that make you feel good. It’s extremely hard to abandon ideas you are appreciated and loved for. — Hank Green (A keystone belief for me — and a key component of why denial endures)
Even when we feel alone, we never are. Our job as human beings is to make ourselves and others feel less alone, and to know that they are accompanied through everything that they will go through—John Green (“Hard Week,” March 1, 2022)
You will always struggle with not feeling productive until you accept that your own joy can be something you produce. It is not the only thing you will make, nor should it be, but it is something valuable and beautiful. A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor
You are a story that you tell yourself, and even if it is not always accurate, it is who you are, and that is very important to you. A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor
Any good story is a mind-altering substance. A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor
Literature & TV
I can promise you that I am spiritually and emotionally and ethically and morally behind whoever wins. — Succession
“Please do not go in, Lady,” he said.
“I must.”
“You do not want this in your memory.”
“Then it is exactly the thing that I must never forget.” — Shadow of the Giant
What is honor compared to a woman's love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms, or the memory of a brother's smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy. —Game of Thrones
“The common people pray for rain, healthy children, and a summer that never ends,” Ser Jorah told her. “It is no matter to them if the high lords play their game of thrones, so long as they are left in peace.” He gave a shrug. “They never are.” —Game of Thrones
Avatar
If you look for the light, you can often find it. But if you look for the dark, that is all you will ever see.
Failure is only the opportunity to begin again. Only this time, more wisely.
Good times become good memories, but bad times become good lessons.
Pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source. True humility is the only antidote to shame.
In the darkest times, hope is something you give yourself. That is the meaning of inner strength.
Understanding others, the other elements, the other nations, will help you become whole.
Harry Potter
‘Lucky you.’ (Ginny dryly responds to Harry with this hefty zinger when he sheepishly admits he’d forgotten that she’d been possessed by Voldemort. It’s so much harder for survivors to forget what they’ve suffered)
I have form only when I can share another's body... but there have always been those willing to let me into their hearts and minds.
Humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them.
To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.
Nevertheless, Harry, while you may only have delayed his return to power, it will merely take someone else who is prepared to fight what seems a losing battle next time — and if he is delayed again, and again, why, he may never return to power.
It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends
Always the innocent are the first victims.
Children’s Literature
What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are. — C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew
“‘Why did you do all this for me?’ he asked. ‘I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.’ 'You have been my friend,’ replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing.’” — Charlotte’s Webb
And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. — The Little Prince
Several from the lovely Winnie the Pooh:
Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.
If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever.
After all, one can’t complain. I have my friends.
Rivers know this: There is no hurry. We shall get there some day.