Home > Author > Susan Neiman
1 " As long as your ideas of what's possible are limited by what's actual, no other idea has a chance. "
― Susan Neiman , Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-up Idealists
2 " One great function of the arts is to keep ideals alive in a culture that does not yet realize them. "
3 " In the most general terms, the Enlightenment goes back to Plato's belief that truth and beauty and goodness are connected; that truth and beauty, disseminated widely, will sooner or later lead to goodness. (While we're making at effort at truth and goodness, beauty reminds us what we're hold out for.) "
4 " You may substitute knowledge for superstition without satisfying the needs that drive people into superstition's arms. "
5 " Philosophy's greatest task is to enlarge our sense of possibility. "
― Susan Neiman
6 " Everything short of an explanation of the world as a whole is frustratingly partial. An explanation of the world must include an answer to why the world as a whole is just that way. And the only truly satisfying answer would be: because it’s the best of all possible ones. "
― Susan Neiman , Why Grow Up?: Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age
7 " There are pragmatic as well as moral grounds for the United States to follow Germany's lead [in dealing with it's past human rights crimes]. American media may have largely ignored the reasons we decided to destroy Hiroshima or oust the democratically elected governments in Iran or the Congo. Other nations' media has not. Few Americans are quite aware of how little credibility we retain in other parts of the world. "
― Susan Neiman , Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil
8 " It’s an embarrassing fact that we are more afraid of embarrassment than a host of other discomforts, but it isn’t less true for all that. How often have you refrained from voicing hope or indignation for fear of being dismissed as childish? Oddly enough, that fear is adolescent, born of a time when few things feel worse than being regarded as a less grown-up than your peers. "
9 " And we have seen how Rousseau’s insistence on creating a world that makes sense ultimately vitiates his attempt to educate a child for a world that does not. "
10 " Golden ages have no shade of grey. "
11 " Van de geschiedenis van de filosofie leren betekent niet haar zonder bedenkingen accepteren. Met behulp van haar inzichten kunnen we enig licht werpen op de onze. We kunnen niet op dezelfde stellingen terugvallen die eerder door de denkers van de Verlichting werden verdedigd, zelfs niet op die van haar modernste vertegenwoordigers. Misschien ligt de hoop niet in het beantwoorden van de vraag naar de zin van het leven, maar juist in het verwerpen van die vraag. "
12 " Freedom cannot simply mean doing whatever strikes you at the moment: that way you're a slave to any whim or passing fancy. Real freedom involves control over your life as a whole, learning to make plans and promises and decisions, to take responsibility for your actions' consequences. "
13 " ...most of us no longer have the luxury of asking whether a job is genuinely productive, but only whether it pays well and has tolerable conditions. "
14 " When consuming goods rather than satisfying work becomes the focus of our culture, we have created (or acquieced in) a society of permanent adolescents. "
15 " Rousseau introduced the idea of false needs, and showed how the systems we live in work against our growing up: they dazzle us with toys and bewilder us with so many trivial products that we are too busy making silly choices to remember that the adult ones are made by others. "
16 " Given all the forces arrayed against it, no wonder Kant thought growing up to be more a matter of courage than knowledge: all the information in the world is no substitute for the guts to use your own judgement. And judgement can be learned — principally through the experience of watching others use it well —but it cannot be taught. "
17 " Doing what you can to move your part of the world closer to the way it should be, while never losing sight of the way it is, is what being a grown-upmcomes to. "
18 " We want to make an impact on the world, but we end up making or selling playthings that are developed to keep us distracted and designed to deconstruct. We have turned the activities that were meant to be the stuff of life into mere means of subsisting in it. "
19 " Growing up means realizing that no time of one's life is the best one, and resolving to savor every second of joy within reach. You know each will pass, and you no longer experience that as betrayal. "
20 " Whatever else you may need to get clarity, you must start with open eyes. "
