Real freedom is the ability to pause between stimulus and response, and in that pause, choose.
Care is a state in which something does matter; care is the opposite of apathy. Care is the necessary source of eros, the source of human tenderness.
Evil, in this system of ethics, is that which tears apart, shuts out the other person, raises barriers, sets people against each other.
Whatever sphere we may be in, there is a profound joy in the realization that we are helping to form the structure of the new world. This is creative courage, however minor or fortuitous our creations may be.
The ultimate error is the refusal to look evil in the face.
Humor is the healthy way of feeling "distance" between one's self and the problem, a way of standing off and looking at one's problem with perspective.
When people feel their insignificance as individual persons, they also suffer an undermining of their sense of human responsibility.
Indeed, compulsive and rigid moralism arises in given persons precisely as the result of a lack of sense of being. Rigid moralism is a compensatory mechanism by which the individual persuades himself to take over the external sanctions because he has no fundamental assurance that his own choices have any sanction of their own
The most effective way to ensure the value of the future is to confront the present courageously and constructively.
We must always base our commitment in the center of our own being, or else no commitment will be ultimately authentic.
The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one's own convictions - not obstinately or defiantly
However it may be confounded or covered up or counterfeited, this elemental capacity to fight against injustice remains the distinguishing characteristic of human beings.
Deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their self-esteem, to defend their self-image, and to demonstrate that they, too, are significant.
It is highly significant and indeed almost a rule, that moral courage has its source in such identification through one's own sensitivity with suffering of one's fellow human beings." (p. 16-17)
Joy is the effect which comes when we use our powers.
Vanity and narcissism — the compulsive need to be admired and praised — undermine one's courage, for one then fights on someone else's conviction rather than one's own.
The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.
If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.
Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.
Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don't find themselves at all.
People only change when it becomes too dangerous to stay the way they are.
Whereas moral courage is the righting of wrongs, creative courage, in contrast, is the discovering of new forms, new symbols, new patterns on which a new society can be built.
One does not become fully human painlessly.
Creativity is the process of bringing something new into being.
Finding the center of strength within ourselves is in the long run the best contribution we can make to our fellow men. ... One person with indigenous inner strength exercises a great calming effect on panic among people around him. This is what our society needs - not new ideas and inventions; important as these are, and not geniuses and supermen, but persons who can be, that is, persons who have a center of strength within themselves.
Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends
or simply: