If we assume the best in people, we can radically redesign our democracy and welfare states.
Rutger BregmanRead
Believing in the good of humanity is a revolutionary act - it means that we don't need all those managers and CEO's, kings and generals. That we can trust people to govern themselves and make their own decisions.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Believing in humanity's goodness can empower individuals and reduce the need for hierarchical authority.
Rutger Bregman's quote emphasizes the revolutionary idea that trust in the inherent goodness of people can lead to a more egalitarian and self-governed society. By believing that individuals are capable of making their own decisions, we challenge the need for authoritarian figures such as managers, CEOs, and political leaders, promoting a vision of collective autonomy and mutual respect.
Themes
HumanityTrustAutonomySocietyGoodness
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about community leadership, one might quote Bregman to inspire trust among citizens.
More from Rutger Bregman
All quotes →Since long workdays lead to more errors, shorter workdays could reduce accidents. Overtime is deadly. Tired surgeons have been found to be more prone to slip'ups, and soldiers who get too little shuteye are more prone to miss targets.
Rutger BregmanRead
My hope is that the corona crisis will help bring us into a new age of cooperation and solidarity and a realization that we're in this together.
Rutger BregmanRead
This is what a crisis does: It makes you question the status quo. That doesn't mean that after a crisis we move into some kind of utopia. But it is an opportunity for political change.
Rutger BregmanRead
While it won't solve all the world's ills - and ideas such as a rent cap and more social housing are necessary in places where housing is scarce - a basic income would work like venture capital for the people.
Rutger BregmanRead
We so often tend to think our democracies are ruled by procedures and laws, but they are also governed by implicit rules and assumptions and one of them is the ability to feel shame - that you can be shamed.
Rutger BregmanRead
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An attack upon our ability to tell stories is not just censorship - it is a crime against our nature as human beings.
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Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together," Pulitzer wrote. "An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations.
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God has not bowed to our nervous haste nor embraced the methods of our machine age. The man who would know God must give time to Him.
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We cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself.
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Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit.
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I'm sitting in my home office wearing a bathrobe. The same way I'm not going to start wearing ties, I'm also not going to buy into the fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords.
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