Men are most powerfully affected by those evils which themselves feel, or which appear before their own eyes.
Interpretation
People are more impacted by issues that directly affect them or are visible in their environment.
Samuel Johnson's quote highlights the tendency of individuals to be more concerned about problems that they personally experience or witness firsthand. It suggests that people may overlook broader evils if they don't see or feel their effects directly, emphasizing a human inclination towards self-interest and personal relevance in our understanding of moral and social issues.
In practice
In discussing social justice issues, this quote can be used to highlight the importance of personal experience in shaping opinions.
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood.
To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.
Fly-fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.
A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
The gospel is like a caged lion,' said the great baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon. 'It does not need to be defended, it simply needs to be let out of it's cage' Today, the cage is our accommodation to the secular/sacred split that reduces Christianity to a matter of personal belief. To unlock the cage, we need to become utterly convinced that, as Francis Schaeffer said, Christianity is not merely religious truth, it is total truth- truth about the whole of reality.
It may be that the human race is not ready for freedom. The air of liberty may be too rarefied for us to breathe... The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.
Man adapts himself to everything, to the best and the worst.
States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.
TV's 'real' agenda is to be 'liked,' because if you like what you're seeing, you'll stay tuned. TV is completely unabashed about this; it's its sole raison.
If it weren't for the message of mercy and pity in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, I wouldn't want to be a human being. I would just as soon be a rattlesnake.
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