Quotes from Charles Taylor

Objectification of the world gives a sense of power, and control, which is intensified by every victory of instrumental reason. And

Modern "secularization" can be seen from one angle as the rejection of higher times, and the positing of time as purely profane. Events now exist only in this one dimension, in which they stand at greater and lesser temporal distance, and in relations of causality with other events of the same kind. The

An age or society would then be secular or not, in virtue of the conditions of experience of and search for the spiritual.

And then the colossal success of modern natural science and the associated technology can lead us to feel that it unlocks all mysteries, that it will ultimately explain everything, that human science must be developed on the same basic plan, or even ultimately reduced to physics, or at least organic chemistry. And

We define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the things our significant others want to see in us. Even after we outgrow some of these others—our parents, for instance—and they disappear from our lives, the conversation with them continues within us as long as we live.

There is a certain way of being human that is my way. I am called upon to live my life in this way, and not in imitation of anyone else's life. But this notion gives a new importance to being true to myself. If I am not, I miss the point of my life; I miss what being human is for me .

To know who I am is a species of knowing where I stand. My identity is defined by the commitments and identifications which provide the frame or horizon within which I can try to determine from case to case what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done, or what I endorse or oppose. In other words, it is the horizon within which I am capable of taking a stand.

We become full human agents, capable of understanding ourselves, and hence of defining our identity, through our acquisition of rich human languages of expression.

It's not just that people sacrifice their love relationships, and the care of their children, to pursue their careers. Something like this has perhaps always existed. The point is that today many people feel called to do this, feel they ought to do this, feel their lives would be somehow wasted or unfulfilled if they didn't do it.

There is a widespread sense of loss here, if not always of God, then at least of meaning.

What should have died along with communism is the belief that modern societies can be run on a single principle, whether that of planning under the general will or that of free-market allocations.

Herder put forward the idea that each of us has an original way of being human. Each person has his or her own "measure" is his way of putting it. This idea has entered very deep into modern consciousness. It is also new. Before the late eighteenth century no one thought that the differences between human beings had this kind of moral significance.

But an important point is that, once again as with "scientific" proofs of atheism, it is not the cast-iron intellectual reasoning which convinces, but the relief of revolt.

liberalism can't and shouldn't claim complete cultural neutrality. Liberalism is also a fighting creed.

dominant groups tend to entrench their hegemony by inculcating an image of inferiority in the subjugated.

Many felt a profound malaise at the idea that the sources of benevolence should be just enlightened self-interest, or simply feelings of sympathy. This seemed to neglect altogether the human power of self-transcendence, the capacity to go beyond self-related desire altogether and follow a higher aspiration. This

Experience is that wherein our previous sense of reality is undone, refuted, and shows itself as needing to be reconstituted. It occurs precisely in those moments where the object 'talks back'.

The only meaningful life is that which is deepened by carrying through these commitments, living through the dead periods in order to lay the foundations for the creative ones.

Spontaneity at all levels is guided by the goal of getting it right; being clearly "forced" to come to some conclusion is not its negation, but its highest fulfillment.

the change I want to define and trace is one which takes us from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one human

The notion developed that the breach of reason with nature was a necessary one; that man had to make it in order to develop his powers of reason and abstraction. Schiller makes this point in his Letters on the Aestethic education of Man, as does Hölderin in his Hyperion Fragment. The belief was that the human destiny was to return to nature at a higher level, having made a synthesis of reason and desire.

Following one good to the end may be catastrophic, not because it isn't a good, but because there are others which can't be sacrificed without evil.

The ideally free Ego would be a lucid calculator of payoffs.

the dark side of individualism is a centering on the self, which both flattens and narrows our lives, makes them poorer in meaning, and less concerned with others or society.