Commerce is a noble profession, and Jews should get over any self-hatred they might harbor from contemplating the capitalist spirit of diaspora Judaism.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the value of commerce and challenges negative self-perceptions among Jews related to capitalism.
Steven Pinker highlights that commerce is an honorable profession, particularly within the context of Jewish history and identity. He encourages Jews to move past any self-hatred that may arise from their association with capitalist practices, suggesting that the entrepreneurial spirit, especially as exemplified in diaspora communities, should be embraced rather than shunned.
In practice
In a speech about entrepreneurship, one might quote this to inspire confidence in Jewish business leaders.
The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.
The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.
If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false.
We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.
My idea of our civilization is that it is a shoddy, poor thing and full of cruelties, vanities, arrogances, meannesses and hypocrisies.
Talking to Yogi Berra about baseball is like talking to Homer about the Gods.
Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself.
Oh, gentlemen, perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I've never been able to start or finish anything. Granted, granted I'm a babbler, a harmless, irksome babbler, as we all are. But what's to be done if the sole and express purpose of every intelligent man is babble--that is, a deliberate pouring from empty into void.
For the majority of us, the past is a regret, the future an experiment
One must be a great man indeed to be able to hold out even against common sense." "Or else a fool.
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