You can't understand Twenty-first-Century Politics with an Eighteenth-Century Brain.
George LakoffRead
Do we really think that the United States will have the protection of innocent Afghans in mind if it rains terror down on the Afghan infrastructure? We are supposedly fighting them because they immorally killed innocent civilians. That made them evil. If we do the same, are we any less immoral?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote questions the morality of causing harm to innocents while opposing those who do the same.
George Lakoff's quote challenges the ethical implications of using violence against innocent civilians in Afghanistan, highlighting the hypocrisy of retaliating against perceived evil while engaging in similar immoral acts. It provokes thought regarding the justification of actions taken in the name of justice and raises questions about the values held by nations that justify such actions.
Themes
MoralityViolenceInnocenceHypocrisyJustice
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a debate about military ethics.
More from George Lakoff
All quotes →Moreover, metaphor is typically viewed as characteristic of language alone, a matter of words rather than thought or action. For this reason, most people think they can get along perfectly well without metaphor. We have found, on the contrary, that metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.
George LakoffRead
The mind is inherently embodied._x000D_ Thought is mostly unconscious._x000D_ Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical.
George LakoffRead
Similar quotes
Without an acquaintance with the rules of propriety, it is impossible for the character to be established
ConfuciusRead
Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be...including our perception. Of it
Anais NinRead
To be sure, the response of faith to revelation, which God grants to the creature he chooses and moves with his love, occurs in such a way that it is truly the creature that provides the response, with its own nature and its natural powers of love.
Hans Urs Von BalthasarRead
Is it true, O Christ in heaven, that the highest suffer the most? That the strongest wander furthest and most hopelessly are lost? That the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain? That the anguish of the singer makes the sweetness of the strain?
John MiltonRead
There is no single face in nature, because every eye that looks upon it, sees it from its own angle. So every man's spice-box seasons his own food.
Zora Neale HurstonRead
Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever. For what is the time of a man, except it be interwoven with that memory of ancient things of a superior age?
Marcus Tullius CiceroRead