Falling in love is not an extension of one's limits or boundaries; it is a partial and temporary collapse of them.
M. Scott PeckRead
The major threats to our survival no longer stem from nature without but from our own human nature within. It is our carelessness, our hostilities, our selfishness and pride and willful ignorance that endanger the world.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Our greatest dangers come from our own negative traits rather than external circumstances.
This quote emphasizes that the primary threats to humanity's survival are not natural disasters or external forces but rather the flaws inherent in human nature. Attributes such as carelessness, hostility, selfishness, pride, and ignorance can lead to destructive outcomes for society and the world as a whole.
Themes
Human NatureThreatsCarelessnessSelfishnessIgnorance
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion on environmental issues, one might quote this to highlight how human actions have contributed to climate change.
More from M. Scott Peck
All quotes βListening well is an exercise of attention and by necessity hard work. It is because they do not realize this or because they are not willing to do the work that most people do not listen well.
M. Scott PeckRead
If your goal is to avoid pain and escape suffering, I would not advise you to seek higher levels of consciousness or spiritual evolution.
M. Scott PeckRead
All my life I used to wonder what I would become when I grew up. Then, about seven years ago, I realized that I was never going to grow up--that growing is an ever ongoing process.
M. Scott PeckRead
When we love someone our love becomes demonstrable or real only through our exertion - through the fact that for that someone (or for ourself) we take an extra step or walk an extra mile. Love is not effortless. To the contrary, love is effortful.
M. Scott PeckRead
An unconscious, gentle process whereby people who want to be loving attempt to be so by telling little white lies, by withholding some of the truth about themselves and their feelings in order to avoid conflict. Pseudocommunity is conflict-avoiding; true community is conflict-resolving.
M. Scott PeckRead
Similar quotes
My hair would continue to gray, and then one day, it would fall out entirely, and then, on a day meaninglessly close to the present one, meaninglessly like the present one, I would disappear from the earth. And all these emotions, all these yearnings, all these data, if that helps to clinch the enormity of what I'm talking about, would be gone. And that's what immortality means. It means selfishness. My generations belief that each one of us matters more than you or anyone else would think.
Gary ShteyngartRead
It is terrible to die of thirst in the ocean. Do you have to salt your truth so heavily that it does not even-quench thirst any more?
Friedrich NietzscheRead
We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.
Jimmy CarterRead
A stranger to myself and to the world, armed solely with a thought that negates itself as soon as it asserts, what is this condition in which I can have peace only by refusing to know and to live, in which the appetite for conquest bumps into walls that defy its assaults?
Albert CamusRead
In thy face I see the map of honour, truth and loyalty.
William ShakespeareRead
Clean undeniable right, clear undeniable might: either of these once ascertained puts an end to battle. All battle is a confused experiment to ascertain one and both of these.
Thomas CarlyleRead