My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have... an ambition of transcendence.
Richard RortyRead
National pride is to countries what self-respect is to individuals: a necessary condition for self-improvement.
Interpretation
What this quote means
National pride is essential for a country's growth, just as self-respect is vital for individual development.
Richard Rorty's quote emphasizes the importance of national pride as a fundamental aspect that contributes to a nation's progress and self-improvement. Just as self-respect motivates individuals to better themselves and strive for greater achievements, a sense of national pride can inspire citizens to work collectively toward the betterment of their country, fostering unity, ambition, and a desire for growth.
Themes
National PrideSelf-RespectSelf-ImprovementGrowthDevelopment
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about national unity, one might quote Rorty to inspire citizens to take pride in their countryβs achievements.
More from Richard Rorty
All quotes βTo say that truth is not out there is simply to say that where there are no sentences there is no truth, that sentences are elements of human languages, and that languages are human creations.~ The suggestion that truth~ is out there is a legacy of an age in which the world was seen as the creation of a being who had a language his own.
Richard RortyRead
The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it cannot propose a language for us to speak. Only other human beings can do that.
Richard RortyRead
Philosophy makes progress not by becoming more rigorous but by becoming more imaginative.
Richard RortyRead
A talent for speaking differently, rather than for arguing well is the chief instrument of cultural change.
Richard RortyRead
There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves.
Richard RortyRead
Similar quotes
The human soul, provided it is pure and strong enough, can contact the unseen in waking life as well as in dreams: all that is required is withdrawal of the soul from the tumult of sensory life.
Seyyed Hossein NasrRead
You never know the palette of the one you kill until the mind disgorges its finest colours.
Anne RiceRead
Speech is the mirror of the soul.
Publilius SyrusRead
I recently spoke at a university where a student told me it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had recently read a novel called American Psycho,and that it was a shame that young Americans were serial murderers.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieRead
If God is the Creator of all things and evil is a thing, then God is the Creator of evil and He is to be blamed for its existence. No, evil is not a thing but a wrong choice, or the damage done by a wrong choice. Evil is no more a positive thing than blindness is, but it is just as real.
Peter KreeftRead
RICH, adj. Holding in trust and subject to an accounting the property of the indolent, the incompetent, the unthrifty, the envious and the luckless.
Ambrose BierceRead