We cannot think of a legitimate argument why ... whites and blacks need be affected by the knowledge that an aggregate difference ...in measured intelligence is genetic instead of environmental.... Given a chance, each clan ... will encounter the world with confidence in its own worth and, most importantly, will be unconcerned about comparing its accomplishments line-by-line with those of any other clan. This is wise ethnocentricism.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
During medieval times, all those emotions were missing which have made us cautious and tentative in matters of justice: the insigh...t into diminished capacity, the concept of judicial fallibility, the awareness that society has to share in the blame for the guilt of individuals, the question whether an individual ought not be rehabilitated rather than made to suffer. Or, perhaps, better stated: a vague sense of all this is not lacking, but rather concentrates itself, unverbalized, in instant impulses of charity and forgiveness, unconcerned with the issue of guilt, which could suddenly break through the cruel satisfaction over the administration of justice. While we administer a hesitant, toned down justice, partially filled with a guilty conscience, the Middle Ages knew only two extremes: the full measure of cruel punishment or mercy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most liberals never lost sight of the potential for evil in big government. They have consistently opposed government power in mat...ters of personal and political belief. Liberals are not unconcerned with economic liberty, but they have come to believe that the common good requires that social justice be given a higher priority than absolute economic freedom. Conservatives are--and always have been--on the other side of both questions. They are much more prone than liberals to limiting personal and political liberties, but they place the freedom of an individual to do as he pleases in the economic realm at the top of their concerns. Social justice has held a lower priority for conservatives, from the days of Alexander Hamilton when they favored strong government as a means of protecting their economic privileges to the days of Ronald Reagan when they see government as an instrument of social justice and therefore a threat to their economic position.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. To be... damned is for one's ordinary everyday mode of consciousness to be unremitting agonising preoccupation with self.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is an inexpressible Pleasure to know a little of the World, and be of no Character or Significancy in it. To be ever unconcerne...d, and ever looking on new Objects with an endless Curiosity, is a Delight known only to those who are turned for Speculation: Nay, they who enjoy it, must value things only as they are the Objects of Speculation, without drawing any worldly Advantage to themselves from them, but just as they are what contribute to their Amusement, or the Improvement of the Mind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Though I am not much acquainted with the works of Goethe, I should say that it was one of his chief excellences as a writer, that ...he was satisfied with giving an exact description of things as they appeared to him, and their effect upon him. Most travelers have not self-respect enough to do this simply, and make objects and events stand around them as the centre, but still imagine more favorable positions and relations than the actual ones, and so we get no valuable report from them at all. In his "Italian Travels" Goethe jogs along at a snail's pace, but always mindful that the earth is beneath and the heavens are above him. His Italy is not merely the fatherland of lazzaroni and virtuosi, and scene of splendid ruins, but a solid turf-clad soil, daily shined on by the sun, and nightly by the moon. Even the few showers are faithfully recorded. He speaks as an unconcerned spectator, whose object is faithfully to describe what he sees, and that, for the most part, in the order in which he sees it. Even his reflections do not interfere with his descriptions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The poet will maintain serenity in spite of all disappointments. He is expected to preserve an unconcerned and healthy outlook ove...r the world, while he lives.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Just as a person who is always asserting that he is too good-natured is the very one from whom to expect, on some occasion, the co...ldest and most unconcerned cruelty, so when any group sees itself as the bearer of civilization this very belief will betray it into behaving barbarously at the first opportunity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »