Quotes About Values

Without careful attention, culture itself tilts toward corruption.

What shall I do when greed consumes me? Remember that it is truly better to give than to receive.

We are always and simultaneously at point "a" (which is less desirable than it could be), moving towards point "b" (which we deem better, in accordance with our explicit and implicit values).

For Jung, whatever was at the top of an individual's moral hierarchy was, for all intents and purposes, that person's ultimate value, that person's god. It was what the person acted out. It was what the person believed most deeply. Something enacted is not a fact, or even a set of facts. Instead, it's a personality—or, more precisely, a choice between two opposing personalities.

It is not vision as such, and not a plan devised to achieve a vision, that is at fault under such circumstances. A vision of the future, the desirable future, is necessary. Such a vision links action taken now with important, long-term, foundational values. It lends actions in the present significance and importance. It provides a frame limiting uncertainty and anxiety.

Necesitamos reglas, patrones y valores, tanto en soledad como en compañía.

Nietzsche, for his part, posited that individual human beings would have to invent their own values in the aftermath of God's death. But this is the element of his thinking that appears weakest, psychologically:

He decided to be a good person, and then did the impossible things required to live that way.

Thus, we must become conscious of our desires, and articulate them, and prioritize them, and arrange them into hierarchies. That makes them sophisticated. That makes them work with each other, and with the desires of other people, and with the world. It is in that manner that our desires elevate themselves. It is in that manner that they organize themselves into values and become moral. Our values, our morality—they are indicators of our sophistication.

The first idea or teaching is that morality is relative, at best a personal "value judgment." Relative means that there is no absolute right or wrong in anything; instead, morality and the rules associated with it are just a matter of personal opinion or happenstance, "relative to" or "related to" a particular framework, such as one's ethnicity, one's upbringing, or the culture or historical moment one is born into. It's nothing but an accident of birth.

Ne dopuštajte svojoj djeci da rade bilo što zbog ?ega vam se ne?e svi?ati.

Nietzsche, for his part, posited that individual human beings would have to invent their own values in the aftermath of God's death. But this is the element of his thinking that appears weakest, psychologically: we cannot invent our own values, because we cannot merely impose what we believe on our souls. This was Carl Jung's great discovery—made in no little part because of his intense study of the problems posed by Nietzsche.

An idea begins to take shape: "I am going to live my life properly. I am going to aim at the good. I am going to aim at the highest good I can possible manage.

Materialist social science implied that we could divide the world into facts (which all could observe, and were objective and "real") and values (which were subjective and personal). Then we could first agree on the facts, and, maybe, one day, develop a scientific code of ethics (which has yet to arrive).

Maybe following the dictates of conscience is in fact the best possible plan that you have—at minimum, otherwise you have to live with your sense of self-betrayal and the knowledge that you put up with what you truly could not tolerate. Nothing about that is good.

In the West at least, millennials are living through a unique historical situation. They are, I believe, the first generation to have been so thoroughly taught two seemingly contradictory ideas about morality, simultaneously—at their schools, colleges and universities, by many in my own generation. This contradiction has left them at times disoriented and uncertain, without guidance and, more tragically, deprived of riches they don't even know exist.

Moreover, by implying that values had a lesser reality than facts, science contributed in yet another way to moral relativism, for it treated "value" as secondary. (But the idea that we can easily separate facts and values was and remains naive; to some extent, one's values determine what one will pay attention to, and what will count as a fact.)

This left him with a single remaining escape from nihilism and totalitarianism: the emergence of the individual strong enough to create his own values, project them onto valueless reality, and then abide by them.

Individuals who take this route, this alternative to nihilism and totalitarianism, must therefore produce their own cosmology of values.

The better ambitions have to do with the development of character and ability, rather than status and power.

There's almost nothing better than character development. And aiming at having a good character is the highest aim, and it's the aim that will provide the most meaning in your life.

When you live your life by poor standards, you inflict damage on everyone who crosses your path, especially those you love.

Starker [Leopold] had an adage for people in public service: 'If you're ashamed of it, don't do it. If you're not, publicize it.' " -David Graber, wildlife biologist at Yosemite National Park

Because the world is revealed, to an indeterminate degree, through the template of your values. If the world you are seeing is not the world you want, therefore, it's time to examine your values. It's time to rid yourself of your current presuppositions. It's time to let go. It might even be time to sacrifice what you love best, so that you can become who you might become, instead of statiny who you are.