Quotes About Impact

In fact, I strongly suspect that if we saw all the difference even the tiniest of our prayers to God make, and all the people those little prayers were destined to affect, and all the consequences of those effects down through the centuries, we would be so paralyzed with awe at the power of prayer that we would be unable to get up off our knees for the rest of our lives.

Christ changed every human being he ever met. In fact, He changed history, splitting it open like a coconut and inserting eternity into the split between B.C. and A.D. If anyone claims to have met Him without being changed, he has not met Him at all. When you touch Him, you touch lightning. Socrates is puzzled because he is looking for the burn marks.

This is the essence of risk aversion—that is, how far we are willing to go in making decisions that may provoke others to make decisions that will have adverse consequences for us.

The way Dad's face changes. The darkness. The words. The news that tells me what has just happened in a place at the bottom of the world. What does "crevasse" mean? I am shouting now. Screaming. WHAT DOES "CREVASSE" MEAN? I wanted it to go away. Every part of me, every nerve in my brain, was trying to dull the image, to shove it away, make it disappear.

There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come," said Victor Hugo

If managers focus only on short-term results, they are often justified in continuing to intervene to sustain results.

When our actions have consequences beyond our learning horizon, it becomes impossible to learn from direct experience.

Today's problems come from yesterday's 'solutions'.

The past lies like a nightmare upon the present. —Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

Words do have consequences, and what one generation says but does not really believe, the next generation may believe, and even act upon.

Living a minimally acceptable ethical life involves using a substantial part of our spare resources to make the world a better place. Living a fully ethical life involves doing the most good we can.

Worldwide, the poor leave a very small carbon footprint, but they will suffer the most from climate change.

Cutting out meat would do more to help combat climate change than any other action we could feasibly take in the next 20 years.

If 10 percent of the population were to take a consciously ethical outlook on life and act accordingly, the resulting change would be more significant than any change of government

I guess basically one wants to feel that one's life has amounted to more than just consuming products and generating garbage. I think that one likes to look back and say that one's done the best one can to make this a better place for others. You can look at it from this point of view: What greater motivation can there be than doing whatever one possibly can to reduce pain and suffering?

In some parts of the world, what you are doing is already apparent. According to the World Health Organization, the warming of the planet caused an additional 140,000 deaths in 2004, as compared with the number of deaths there would have been had average global temperatures remained as they were during the period 1961 to 1990. This means that climate change is already causing, every week, as many deaths as occurred in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

have demonstrated that giving money to poor families: Does not reduce the amount that adults work, but does reduce child labor; Raises school attendance; Increases economic autonomy; Increases women's decision-making power; Leads to greater diversity in diet. Stimulates more use of health services.

Climate change is already causing, every week, as many deaths as occurred in the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

If our holding certain values had no effect at all on what we chose to do, values would lose all their importance. Now

Ben West points out that even from a selfish perspective, earning to give allows you to have things that people believe make them happy, like money and a high-status job, while still getting the fulfillment that comes from knowing you are helping to make the world a better place.

Asking people to give more than almost anyone else gives risks turning them off. It might cause some to question the point of striving to live an ethical life at all. Daunted by what it takes to do the right thing, they may ask themselves why they are bothering to try. To avoid that danger, we should advocate a level of giving that will lead to the greatest possible positive response.

Effective altruists, as we have seen, need not be utilitarians, but they share a number of moral judgments with utilitarians. In particular, they agree with utilitarians that, other things being equal, we ought to do the most good we can.

Ben West, one of the effective altruists mentioned in chapter 4, has shown that even if your goal were solely to slow down climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, you could do that more effectively by donating to organizations that are encouraging people to go vegetarian or vegan than by donating to leading carbon-offsetting organizations.

So it is worse to slap a baby than a horse, if both slaps are administered with equal force.