For discipline is imposed not just on oneself but on those in one's orbit.
Interpretation
Discipline affects not only oneself but also influences the people around them.
Philip Roth conveys the idea that personal discipline is a responsibility that extends beyond the individual, impacting the behavior and attitudes of those in their immediate environment. This interconnectedness suggests that practicing self-discipline can foster a culture of discipline among peers, family, or colleagues, ultimately shaping the community positively.
In practice
During a workshop on leadership, one might use this quote to illustrate the broader impact of personal habits on team dynamics.
American society [...] not only sanctions gross and unfair relations among men, but it encourages them. Now, can that be denied? No. Rivalry, competition, envy, jealousy, all that is malignant in human character is nourished by the system. Possession, money, property--on such corrupt standards as these do you people measure happiness and success.
I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which happens quite a bit: ‘the ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.
Everybody who flashed the signs of loyalty he took to be loyal. Everybody who flashed the signs of intelligence he took to be intelligent. And so he had failed to see into his daughter, failed to see into his wife, failed to see into his one and only mistress—probably had never even begun to see into himself
When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.
It isn't that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts with a persuasive hypothesis that unravels your history's meaning.
That's what you're looking for as a writer when you're working. You're looking for your own freedom. To lose your inhibition to delve deep into your memory and experiences and life and then to find the prose that will persuade the reader.
Where is the indignation about the fact that the US and USSR have thirty thousand pounds of destructive force for every human being in the world?
Tell her this And more,— That the king of the seas Weeps too, old, helpless man. The bustling fates Heap his hands with corpses Until he stands like a child With surplus of toys.
When we see the world through our thoughts, we stop experiencing life as it really is and others as they really are. When I have a thought about you, that’s something I’ve created. I’ve turned you into an idea. In a certain sense, if I have an idea about you that I believe, I’ve degraded you. I’ve made you into something very small. This is the way of human beings, this is what we do to each other.
The longest-lived and the shortest-lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.
I believe the moral losses of expediency always far outweigh the temporary gains.
The fact is, when men carry the same ideals in their hearts, nothing can isolate them - neither prison walls nor the sod of cemeteries. For a single memory, a single spirit, a single idea, a single conscience, a single dignity will sustain them all.
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