What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
George Bernard ShawRead
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that individuals often justify their shameful actions by claiming they are fulfilling a duty.
George Bernard Shaw highlights a common human behavior where individuals, particularly those who may lack insight or wisdom, rationalize their wrongful actions by framing them as responsibilities or obligations. This reflects a tendency to evade accountability by appealing to a sense of duty, often masking the true nature of their actions and the shame associated with them.
In practice
During a discussion on morality, one might use this quote to illustrate how people often rationalize unethical decisions.
What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.
Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.
Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?
Treat a friend as a person who may someday become your enemy; an enemy as a person who may someday become your friend.
The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.
This is what I know. I look like my father. My father disappeared when he was seventeen years old. Hannah once told me that there is something unnatural about being older than your father ever got to be. When you can say that at the age of seventeen, it's a different kind of devastating.
I have done my fiddling so long under Vesuvius that I have almost forgotten to play, and can only wait for the eruption and think it long of coming. Literally no man has more wholly outlived life than I. And still it's good fun.
Bent out of shape from society's pliers, cares not to come up any higher, but rather get you down in the hole that he's in.
In social policy, when we provide a safety net, it should be designed to help people take more entrepreneurial risks, not to turn them into dependents. This doesn't mean that we should be callous to the underprivileged.
One day, it was suddenly revealed to me that everything is pure spirit.
Police departments are always a reflection of the society that they serve. Is there such a thing as 'police culture?' Absolutely. Is that culture isolated form the surrounding society? Absolutely not.
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