If we assume the best in people, we can radically redesign our democracy and welfare states.
Interpretation
Believing in the goodness of people can transform society's systems.
This quote suggests that by starting from a position of trust and optimism about human nature, we can fundamentally improve our democratic systems and social welfare programs. It emphasizes the potential for positive change when we believe in the best of what people can offer, rather than focusing on their shortcomings or weaknesses.
In practice
During a discussion on social policy, this quote can inspire a more hopeful approach to reforms.
Since long workdays lead to more errors, shorter workdays could reduce accidents. Overtime is deadly. Tired surgeons have been found to be more prone to slip'ups, and soldiers who get too little shuteye are more prone to miss targets.
My hope is that the corona crisis will help bring us into a new age of cooperation and solidarity and a realization that we're in this together.
This is what a crisis does: It makes you question the status quo. That doesn't mean that after a crisis we move into some kind of utopia. But it is an opportunity for political change.
While it won't solve all the world's ills - and ideas such as a rent cap and more social housing are necessary in places where housing is scarce - a basic income would work like venture capital for the people.
Believing in the good of humanity is a revolutionary act - it means that we don't need all those managers and CEO's, kings and generals. That we can trust people to govern themselves and make their own decisions.
We so often tend to think our democracies are ruled by procedures and laws, but they are also governed by implicit rules and assumptions and one of them is the ability to feel shame - that you can be shamed.
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. --as quoted in THE RIVER OF WINGED DREAMS
We must challenge this statement and this sentiment that the news media is the enemy of the American people. This sentiment may be the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.
The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most - for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?
When a truth is necessary, the reason for it can be found by analysis, that is, by resolving it into simpler ideas and truths until the primary ones are reached. It is this way that in mathematics speculative theorems and practical canons are reduced by analysis to definitions, axioms and postulates.
I bold it impossible, that the great monarchies of Europe can subsist much longer; they all affect magnificence and splendor.
If when you say 'whiskey' you mean the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster that defiles innocence, dethrones reason... then I am certainly against it. But, if when you say 'whiskey' you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine... the drink that enables a man to magnify his joy... then I am certainly for it. This is my stand. I will not retreat from it. I will not compromise.
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