In fact, our need to feel like big shots keeps us wedded to inadequate perspectives on the world, keeps us from exploring and dealing with what doesn't fit into those perspectives. We should be trying to formulate a bigger, richer perspective to accommodate what doesn't fit, but no matter how beautiful and true that new perspective looks to us, we should always be prepared to acknowledge that it doesn't accommodate something we haven't yet confronted.

War is about remaking the world to suit the whims of some powerful group over the whims of some other powerful group. The dead are just the sparks that fly from the metal as they grind it down.

You know if you walked around the world, your hat would travel thirty-one feet farther than your shoes?

In a morally healthy family the good of each member of a family includes and overlaps with the good of other members. When one family member flourishes, so typically do the others.

I am sympathetic to the general form of Aristotle's view: the exercise of complex and more inclusive abilities is not anything in itself that is or necessarily should be valued over simple and less inclusive abilities. Rather, value depends on what the abilities are and the ends to which they are put.

Tried to escape, to block out the fact that I was being eaten alive by arachnids. For some reason the only thing I could replace it with was the image of being eaten by tiny clowns.

The Confucians paid a great deal attention to ritual, highlighting the ones that expressed the sorts of affective attitudes one wants to cultivate, engaging in them with keen awareness of their value for shaping and reshaping the self, and insisting on the need to be emotionally present to their significance for one's relationship to others. If we Americans want to rebuild our capacities for a shared life, we would do well to pay attention to all this.