Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens. That needs another kind of change agent.
Interpretation
Governments cannot create successful marriages or make irresponsible people responsible; real change requires a different approach.
This quote emphasizes that while governments can provide structures and regulations, they cannot directly influence the personal relationships or moral character of individuals. True transformation in relationships and personal responsibility requires inner change facilitated by different agents, such as community, family, or personal growth initiatives.
In practice
In a discussion about social issues, one might say, 'As Jonathan Sacks noted, governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens.'
Stabilizing the euro is one thing, healing the culture that surrounds it is another. A world in which material values are everything and spiritual values nothing is neither a stable state nor a good society. The time has come for us to recover the Judeo-Christian ethic of human dignity in the image of God.
Jews read the books of Moses not just as history but as divine command. The question to which they are an answer is not, 'What happened?' but rather, 'How then shall I live?' And it's only with the exodus that the life of the commands really begins.
Why did God create mankind? Because God likes stories.
Find people not to envy but to admire. Do not the profitable but the admirable deed. Live by ideals.
Some years ago there was a study to discover the most stressful occupation. It turned out not to be the head of a large business, football manager or prime minister, but rather: bus driver.
The Holocaust survivors are among the most inspiring people I have had the privilege to meet.
The Master said of Gong Yechang, βHe is marriageable. Although he was once imprisoned and branded as a criminal, he was in fact innocent of any crime.β The Master gave him his daughter in marriage. (Analects 5.1)
The less you demand total fulfillment from relationships, the more you can appreciate them for the beautiful tapestries they are, in which absolute and relative, perfect and imperfect, infinite and finite are marvelously interwoven. You can stop fighting the shifting tides of relative love and learn to ride them instead. And you come to appreciate more fully the simple, ordinary heroism involved in opening to another person and forging real intimacy.
In the beginning of life, when we are infants, we need others to survive, right? And at the end of life, when you get like me, you need others to survive, right?β His voice dropped to a whisper. βBut hereβs the secret: in between, we need others as well.
Her dignity consists in being unknown to the world; her glory is in the esteem of her husband; her pleasures in the happiness of her family.
The language of violence that many whites use to describe anti-racist endeavors is not without significance, as it is another example of how white fragility distorts reality.
When I look around the world, I don't see too many damsels in distress. If they're a damsel in distress, they're manipulating some guy to help them.
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