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Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt QUOTES

Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt QUOTES

1 " We don’t have an anger problem in American politics. We have a contempt problem. . . . If you listen to how people talk to each other in political life today, you notice it is with pure contempt. When somebody around you treats you with contempt, you never quite forget it. So if we want to solve the problem of polarization today, we have to solve the contempt problem. "

― Arthur C. Brooks , Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

2 " Anyone who can’t tell the difference between an ordinary Bernie Sanders supporter and a Stalinist revolutionary, or between Donald Trump’s average voter and a Nazi, is either willfully ignorant or needs to get out of the house more. Today, our public discourse is shockingly hyperbolic in ascribing historically murderous ideologies to the tens of millions of ordinary Americans with whom we strongly disagree. Just because you disagree with something doesn’t mean it’s hate speech or the person saying it is a deviant. "

― Arthur C. Brooks , Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

3 " When I call for a standard of love, I am asking us all to listen to our hearts, of course. But also to think clearly, look at the facts, and do difficult things when necessary, so that we can truly lift people up and bring them together. "

― Arthur C. Brooks , Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

4 " But never once did he say that Jimmy Carter hated America, was a crook, or wanted to see the American dream die. He knew Jimmy Carter was a good man who loved his country—he just had, in Reagan’s opinion, the wrong ideas for how to make America great again. "

― Arthur C. Brooks , Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

5 " Almost no one is ever insulted into agreement. "

― Arthur C. Brooks , Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

6 " We don’t have an anger problem in American politics. We have a contempt problem. . . . If you listen to how people talk to each other in political life today, you notice it is with pure contempt. When somebody around you treats you with contempt, you never quite forget it. So if we want to solve the problem of polarization today, we have to solve the contempt problem. "

― Arthur C. Brooks , Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

7 " There is evidence that as we become less exposed to opposing viewpoints, we become less logically competent as people. "

― Arthur C. Brooks , Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

8 " Moral arguments beat economic arguments every time, because—whether we are liberal or conservative—we are all moral creatures who are encoded to value compassion and fairness. "

― Arthur C. Brooks , Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

9 " The righteous anger of an authoritative leader doesn’t cast anyone into outer darkness. It always promises to be forgotten when things are set right, because authoritative leaders have no permanent enemies and are capable of love for all. Authoritative leaders can get angry, but they are still nice people. "

― Arthur C. Brooks , Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

10 " For me, the last part is key to national unity: gratitude based on a recognition that we need others, even—perhaps especially—those with whom we disagree. Why? Because we are blessed to live in the greatest, freest country in the history of the world—a place where, when you have a difference of opinion, nobody’s going to knock on your door and haul you off to a forced-labor camp. We take this for granted, but in the scope of history, it is truly a miracle. "

― Arthur C. Brooks , Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

11 " If we want more unity and less contempt, however, we need to get out of our comfort zones, go where we are not welcome, and spend time talking and interacting with people with whom we disagree—not on lightweight stuff like sports and food, but on hard moral things. "

― Arthur C. Brooks , Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

12 " So when that woman in New Hampshire said that liberals are stupid and evil, she wasn’t talking about me, but she was talking about my family. Without meaning to, she was effectively presenting me with a choice: my loved ones or my ideology. Either I admit that those with whom I disagree politically—including people I love—are stupid and evil, or I renounce my ideas and my credibility as a public figure. Love or ideology: choose. "

― Arthur C. Brooks , Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

13 " That people with a different perspective hate our country and must be completely destroyed? That if you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention? That kindness to your ideological foes is tantamount to weakness? "

― Arthur C. Brooks , Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

14 " Mandela had a conviction that only goodness could win in a moral struggle. He believed that even under unjust persecution, people should treat others with kindness and respect, that anything less was a failing of his own character. "

― Arthur C. Brooks , Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

15 " We speed past the questions that would help us get to know another person’s story and instead immediately look to the places of greatest difference and disagreement. "

― Arthur C. Brooks , Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

16 " Coming face-to-face with people who hold discriminatory attitudes often breaks down their bigotry. This is consistent with a growing body of research that confirms much of what LaPiere discovered all those decades ago. "

― Arthur C. Brooks , Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

17 " when we have entrenched beliefs. Psychologists have consistently "

― Arthur C. Brooks , Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

18 " Knowing our weakness, dividing leaders on both the left and right seek power and fame by setting American against American, brother against brother, compatriot against compatriot. These leaders assert that we must choose sides, then argue that the other side is wicked—not worthy of any consideration—rather than challenging them to listen to others with kindness and respect. They foster a culture of contempt. "

― Arthur C. Brooks , Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

19 " Nothing is about honest disagreement; it is all about your interlocutor’s lack of basic human decency. "

― Arthur C. Brooks , Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt

20 " Rule 3. Say no to contempt. Treat others with love and respect, even when it’s difficult. "

― Arthur C. Brooks , Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America from the Culture of Contempt