3 ideas
| 7536 | If you hope to improve the world, all you can do is improve yourself [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: When Wittgenstein was once asked what one can do to improve the world, he replied: 'Improve yourself; that is the only thing you can do to improve the world'. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (talk [1935]), quoted by Ray Monk - Bertrand Russell: Ghost of Madness Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: This is rather startlingly pessimistic about politics, and I don't really believe it. If anything has ever improved me, it has usually come from the world, and been created by other people. |
| 7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
| Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
| From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
| A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |
| 23834 | Friendship is partly universal - the love of a person is like the ideal of loving everyone [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Friendship has something universal about it. It consists in loving a human being as we should like to be able to love each soul in particular of all those who go to make up the human race. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Friendship [1940], p.288) | |
| A reaction: Hm. Would you like your lover to dream of loving the human race, rather than just loving you? Perhaps only a Christian could see friendship in this way? |