The meaning of good and bad, of better and worse, is simply helping or hurting.
Interpretation
Good and bad are defined by their effects on others, either helping or hurting them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson suggests that the concepts of good and bad are fundamentally about their impact on people. To discern whether an action is virtuous or harmful, we should evaluate whether it promotes well-being and assistance or causes pain and suffering.
In practice
In a debate on ethics, this quote can illustrate the importance of the consequences of actions.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
The way I measure my life is 'Am I better than I was last year?'
The freedom to criticize judges and other public officials is necessary to a vibrant democracy. The problem comes when healthy criticism is replaced with more destructive intimidation and sanctions.
I'm writing this book because we're all going to die.
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest...and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war
Sanity is only that which is within the frame of reference of conventional thought.
Most people catch their presuppositions from their family and surrounding society the way a child catches measles. But people with more understanding realize that their presuppositions should be chosen after a careful consideration of what world-view is true.
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