“My larger point is that since each of us struggles daily with good and bad impulses, we might want to restructure our social institutions in order to make it a little easier to be good.”
“Life is strange sometimes. It throws things at us that, at the moment the events are happening, we can’t possibly believe or understand they could be good in any way, we can’t believe it’s what’s supposed to happen to us. But sometimes really hard things that make us hurt, that make us struggle, that make us fight for what we want, are blessings in disguise. Sometimes we have to live through them in order to have a better appreciation of our lives and the good things that happen.”
“There are kinds of action, for good or ill, that lie so far outside the boundaries of normal behavior that they force us, in acknowledging that they have occurred, to restructure our own understanding of reality. We have to make room for them.”
“If we make every attempt to increase out knowledge in order to use it for human good, it will make a difference in us and in our world.”
“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.”
“A social order bent on producing wealth as an end in itself cannot avoid the creation of a people whose souls are superficial and whose daily life is captured by sentimentalities. They will ask questions like “why does a good God let bad things happen to good people ” such people cannot imagine that a people once existed who produced and sang the psalms. If we learn to say “God ” we will do so with the prayer “My God my God why have you forsaken me?”