Daniel Goodman > Daniel's Quotes

“It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“Leap of faith – yes, but only after reflection”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“The idea of autonomy denies that we are born into a world that existed prior to us. It posits an essential aloneness; an autonomous being is free in the sense that a being severed from all others is free. To regard oneself this way is to betray the natural debts we owe to the world, and commit the moral error of ingratitude. For in fact we are basically dependent beings: one upon another, and each on a world that is of our making.”
― Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work

“Most of what makes a book 'good' is that we are reading it at the right moment for us.”
― Alain de Botton

“What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?”
― Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory

“Now, with God's help, I shall become myself.”
― Søren Kierkegaard

“The ultimate meaning of the active life is to make possible the happiness of contemplation.”
― Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956