Never underestimate the power of intrinsic values. They inspire every struggle for a better world.
Interpretation
Intrinsic values drive us to improve the world around us.
This quote emphasizes the significance of intrinsic values, such as compassion, integrity, and justice, arguing that these ideals motivate individuals to strive for a better society. It suggests that when we recognize and embrace these values, they empower us to overcome challenges and inspire positive change in the world.
In practice
During a keynote speech at a conference on social change.
The notions that nature exists to serve us; that its value consists of the instrumental benefits we can extract; that this value can be measured in cash terms; and that what can't be measured does not matter, have proved lethal to the rest of life on Earth.
I believe that anyone who wants to stand in a national election should receive a course of psychotherapy. Completing the course should be a qualification for office. This wouldn't change the behaviour of psychopaths, but it might prevent some people who exercise power from imposing their own deep wounds on others.
I became an environmentalist because I love the living world, but I spend much of my life thinking about electricity, industrial processes and civil engineering.
Places that have become agricultural deserts, trashed by giant corporations, could be reforested, drawing carbon dioxide from the air on a vast scale. The ecosystems of land and sea could recover, not just in pockets but across great tracts of the planet.
Why is it so easy to save the banks - but so hard to save the biosphere?
It is a campaign not for abundance but for austerity. It is a campaign not for more freedom but for less. Strangest of all, it is a campaign not just against other people, but against ourselves.
You are invited to the festival of this world and your life is blessed.
Because there is a force that wants you to realize your Personal Legend; it whets your appetite with a taste of success
I was hooked on aviation, made model airplanes, and never thought I would be able to fly myself. It cost too much. But then World War II came along and changed all that.
When I walk up on that shore in Florida, I want millions of those AARP sisters and brothers to look at me and say, 'I'm going to go write that novel I thought it was too late to do. I'm going to go work in Africa on that farm that those people need help at. I'm going to adopt a child. It's not too late, I can still live my dreams.'
We all get intimidated by showing ourselves, for whatever reason, we think, If I really show who I am, and someone goes [pfftt] then it's gonna crush me. Well, it's not gonna crush me. It doesn't crush you if somebody does that- somebody will do that. Many times. And once you accept that that's not why you're doing it, you're doing it because that's your form of expression.
The most important thing for aspiring writers is for them to give themselves permission to be brave on the page, to write in the presence of fear, to go to those places that you think you canβt write - really thatβs exactly what you need to write.
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