Quotes About Values

For some of our most important beliefs we have no evidence at all, except that people we love and trust hold these beliefs. Considering

However, when the subjects were placed in a positive mood—induced by watching a five-minute video segment—they became three times more likely to say that they would push the man off the bridge. Whether we regard "Thou shalt not kill" as an absolute principle or are willing to kill one stranger to save five should reflect our deepest values. Yet our choice seems to depend on what video clip we have just watched.

people rely on a limited number of heuristic principles which reduce the complex tasks of assessing probabilities and predicting values to simpler judgmental operations. In general, these heuristics are quite useful, but sometimes they lead to severe and systematic errors.

people's choices are based not on dollar values but on the psychological values of outcomes, their utilities. The psychological value of a gamble is therefore not the weighted average of its possible dollar outcomes; it is the average of the utilities of these outcomes, each weighted by its probability.

Differences between experts and the public are explained in part by biases in lay judgments, but Slovic draws attention to situations in which the differences reflect a genuine conflict of values.

THE VALUES ARE UNEQUAL BECAUSE OF LOSS AVERSION

Gustavo Solivellas dice: "La alegría, la emoción o la satisfacción son más importantes en Occidente que en Oriente, donde se aprecia más la calma" (Daniel Kahneman)

Humanism: The stance that the good of humankind is of prime importance. In modern times, humanism means that pursuing this good has nothing to do with a god; doing good works for other humans is a value in itself, not the fulfillment of a duty to a god.

Meaninglessness in philosophical nihilism covers a wide spectrum, ranging from Metaphysical Nihilism, a negation of all existence, to Moral and Political Nihilism, a negation of a society's values and laws in a world that we acknowledge exists but has the potential to be better. In this last sense, it is easy to see how breaking away from the inherited truths of society, governments, and religion can make life more enjoyable in an old-fashioned, hedonistic sort of way.

First grub, then ethics." He was implying that ethical decision-making may only be a luxury reserved for those of us who do not need to struggle simply to stay alive.

Greene: "It's not reasonable to expect actual humans to put aside nearly everything they love for the sake of the greater good. Speaking for myself, I spend money on my children that would be better spent on distant starving children, and I have no intention of stopping. After all, I'm only human! But I'd rather be a human who knows that he's a hypocrite, and who tries to be less so, than one who mistakes his species-typical moral limitations for ideal values.

When the German twentieth-century playwright Bertolt Brecht was asked what he thought of ethics, he replied, "First grub, then ethics." He was implying that ethical decision-making may only be a luxury reserved for those of us who do not need to struggle simply to stay alive.

To really succeed in whatever is the business of your choice, you have to come to understand and utterly absorb into your being the fundamentally true idea that your activities in your business are virtuous and moral, provided of course that you conduct your business affairs honestly and honorably. Absorb this lesson into your heart and into your soul, and you will have overcome a major hurdle on your road to financial achievement.

Historian Daniel Boorstin once noted a shift in American values that had replaced the classic hero with the celebrity. "The hero was distinguished by his achievement; the celebrity by his image. . . . The hero created himself; the celebrity is created by the media." He added, darkly: "The very agency which first makes the celebrity in the long run inevitably destroys him. He will be destroyed, as he was made, by publicity.

By 'consumer society', I mean one in which commodities are increasingly used to express the core values of that society but also become the principal form through which people come to see, recognise and understand those values.

If you want to know what the English really think about consumption, ignore what they say, but look at what they do.

He did not consider it "the function of law to jack up the moral tone of any community." That, he said, was "the function of the home and the church.

America's innate uneasiness with death from above. It ill accords with the values of a democratic republic.

Money can't buy spirituality-and money can't make it go away. Cultivating

E poi, ti dirò una cosa: l'"onore" è tutta una questione di prospettiva storica.

Only a weak man fails to honor his parents.

People who have car collections - I never understood that. I always thought that was unnecessary. It's not beautiful, it's not creative. It's just showing how much money you've got.

Patience was not an American virtue.

who has two women loses his soul. But he who has two homes loses his mind.