The best way to deal with that is to live in a fully conscious, compassionate, loving way. Don't wait until you're on your deathbed to recognize that this is the only way to live.
Morrie SchwartzRead
People are only mean when they're threatened… and that's what our culture does. That's what our economy does. Even people who have jobs in our economy are threatened, because they worry about losing them. And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself. You start making money a god. It is all part of this culture.
Interpretation
What this quote means
People often act selfishly and meanly when they feel threatened by external circumstances.
This quote by Morrie Schwartz reflects the idea that fear and insecurity, particularly within a competitive culture and economy, can lead individuals to prioritize their own interests over the well-being of others. It suggests that the pressures of society can corrode compassion and provoke selfish behavior, as individuals become preoccupied with self-preservation and financial security, often at the expense of community and connection.
Themes
FearSelfishnessSocietyEconomyThreatCompassion
In practice
Example use cases
A speaker might use this quote to discuss the impact of economic insecurity on social behavior in a community meeting.
More from Morrie Schwartz
All quotes →Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer more than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims....and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But - how can I put this? I'm almost......drawn to them.
Morrie SchwartzRead
Do the kind of things that come from the heart, When you do, you won't be dissatisfied, you won't be envious, you won't be longing for somebody else's things. On the contrary, you'll be overhelmed with what comes back
Morrie SchwartzRead
It’s natural to die. The fact that we make such a big hullabaloo over it is all because we don’t see ourselves as part of nature. We think because we’re human we’re something above nature.
Morrie SchwartzRead
When you look at it that way, you can see how absurd it is that we individualize ourselves with our fences and hoarded possessions.
Morrie SchwartzRead
Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward.
Morrie SchwartzRead
Similar quotes
Unlike the twisters he famously chased in the movies, Bill Paxton was the kind of force of nature you ran toward and never away from.
Ron HowardRead
One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true - they were successful because they imposed chaos on order. They tore up the commandments, they denied the super-ego, what you will. They said, "You may persecute the minority, you may kill, you may torture, you may couple and breed without love." They offered humanity all its great temptations. Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
John FowlesRead
As a nuclear power - as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon - the United States has a moral responsibility to act.
Barack ObamaRead
Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical.
Blaise PascalRead
A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government.
Cass SunsteinRead
Those who live to live forever, never fear dying.
William PennRead