Civilization depends on, and civility often requires, the willingness to say, 'What you are doing is none of my business' and 'What I am doing is none of your business.'
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of respecting personal boundaries and the distinction between individual privacy.
George Will's quote reflects a fundamental aspect of civilized society: the necessity of mutual respect for one another's personal affairs. By acknowledging that what each person does is their own concern, individuals foster an environment of civility that allows for personal freedom and reduces unnecessary conflict. It is a reminder that understanding our limits in engaging with others' lives is crucial for harmonious relationships.
In practice
In a speech about community living, one might say this quote to emphasize the need for personal boundaries.
The problem with intelligent-design theory, is not that it is false but that it is not falsifiable. Not being susceptible to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is not a scientific but a creedal tenet - a matter of faith, unsuited to a public school's science curriculum.
The cultivation - even celebration - of victimhood by intellectuals, tort lawyers, politicians and the media is both cause and effect of today's culture of complaint.
Correct thinkers think that 'baseball trivia' is an oxymoron: nothing about baseball is trivial.
Constitutional arguments that seem as dry as dust can have momentous consequences.
The civil forfeiture law - if something so devoid of due process can be dignified as law - is an incentive for perverse behavior: Predatory government agencies get to pocket the proceeds from property they seize from Americans without even charging them with, let alone convicting them of, crimes. Criminals are treated better than this because they lose the fruits of their criminality only after being convicted.
Actually, there is only one first question of government, and it is How should we live? or What kind of people do we want our citizens to be?
O Lord! You are the guide of those who are passing through the Valley of Bewilderment. If I am a heretic, enlarge my heresy.
Hardly a pure science, history is closer to animal husbandry than it is to mathematics in that it involves selective breeding. The principal difference between the husbandryman and the historian is that the former breeds sheep or cows or such and the latter breeds (assumed) facts. The husbandryman uses his skills to enrich the future, the historian uses his to enrich the past. Both are usually up to their ankles in bullshit.
It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.
Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that's all. So we direct our values to material things.
Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.
He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.