Trust is a social good to be protected just as much as the air we breathe or the water we drink. When it is damaged, the community as a whole suffers; and when it is destroyed, societies falter and collapse
Interpretation
Trust is essential for social cohesion and must be safeguarded.
Sissela Bok's quote highlights the vital role of trust in society, likening it to fundamental resources like air and water. When trust is breached or lost, the interconnectedness of the community deteriorates, leading to broader societal issues and potential collapse, emphasizing the need for vigilance in maintaining trust among individuals and institutions.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a speech about the importance of community values.
I believe that a guarantee of public access to government information is indispensable in the long run for any democratic society.... if officials make public only what they want citizens to know, then publicity becomes a sham and accountability meaningless.
To mature is in part to realize that while complete intimacy and omniscience and power cannot be had, self-transcendence, growth, and closeness to others are nevertheless within one's reach.
Liars share with those they deceive the desire not to be deceived.
Are people the best judges of their own happiness, or outsiders? In defining happiness, should we think of entire lives or of shorter periods such as moments, days, or years? And to what extent are virtue and happiness linked?
We are all, in a sense, experts on secrecy. From earliest childhood we feel its mystery and attraction. We know both the power it confers and the burden it imposes. We learn how it can delight, give breathing space and protect.
Secrecy is as indispensable to human beings as fire, and as greatly feared.
Yes. We both have a bad feeling. Tonight we shall take our bad feelings and share them, and face them. We shall mourn. We shall drain the bitter dregs of mortality. Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled, but halved. No man is an island.
A hundred suspicions don't make a proof.
'T is heaven alone that is given away; 'T is only God may be had for the asking.
War is too serious a matter to leave to soldiers.
...the life which is best for men, both separately, as individuals, and in the mass, as states, is the life which has virtue sufficiently supported by material resources to facilitate participation in the actions that virtue calls for.
I feel like I could be likened to an old hound circling on a rug for the last five years.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.