One always pulls the trigger out of self-interest and quotes history to avoid responsibility or pangs of conscience.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that actions are often driven by self-interest, with individuals using historical references to evade accountability.
Joseph Brodsky's quote reflects the notion that human behavior is frequently motivated by personal gain, and individuals may reference past events to justify their actions and escape moral or ethical responsibility. This idea highlights the complexities of conscience and the often self-serving rationalizations that accompany decisions, emphasizing the struggle between personal interests and ethical considerations.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about ethics in business.
Basically, it's hard for me to assess myself, a hardship not only prompted by the immodesty of the enterprise, but because one is not capable of assessing himself, let alone his work. However, if I were to summarize, my main interest is the nature of time. That's what interests me most of all. What time can do to a man.
On the whole, infinity is a fairly palpable aspect of this business of publishing, if only because it extends a dead author's existence beyond the limits he envisioned, or provides a living author with a future he cannot measure. In other words, this business deals with the future which we all prefer to regard as unending.
The invention of ethical and political doctrines, which blossomed into our own social sciences, is a product of times when things appeared manageable. The same goes for the criticism of those doctrines, though as a voice from the past, this criticism proved prophetic.
Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those - in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed.
To put it in plain language, Russia is that country where the name of a writer appears not on the cover of his book, but on the door of his prison cell.
I remember myself, age five, sitting on a porch overlooking a very muddy road. The day was rainy. I was wearing rubber boots, yellow - no, not yellow, green - and for all I know, I'm still there.
It is time, therefore, to abandon the superstition that natural science cannot be regarded as logically respectable until philosophers have solved the problem of induction. The problem of induction is, roughly speaking, the problem of finding a way to prove that certain empirical generalizations which are derived from past experience will hold good also in the future.
One does what one is; one becomes what one does.
Life is waiting everywhere, the future is flowering everywhere, but we only see a small part of it and step on much of it with our feet
The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.
There's only one day at a time here, then it's tonight and then tomorrow will be today again.
Has God decreed all things that come to pass? Then there is nothing that falls out by chance, nor are we to ascribe what we meet with either to good or ill luck and fortune. There are many events in the world which men look upon as mere accidents, yet all these come by the counsel and appointment of Heaven.
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