We should never rush into folly just because other nations are practicing it.
Leon KassRead
There's an ancient tension between wanting to savor the world as it is and wanting to improve on the world as given.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote expresses the conflict between appreciating the world as it currently exists and the desire to make it better.
Leon Kass highlights a fundamental human dilemma: the balance between acceptance of reality and the ambition for improvement. This tension reflects the dual nature of our relationship with the world, where we often find ourselves caught between cherishing our experiences and striving for progress, pushing us to navigate both contentment and aspiration simultaneously.
Themes
TensionSavorImproveWorldAcceptanceAspiration
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a motivational speech to inspire individuals to appreciate both their current situations and their potential for personal growth.
More from Leon Kass
All quotes βOne should proceed with caution. We may simply not be wise enough to do some of the kinds of engineering things that people are talking about doing.
Leon KassRead
As bad as it might be to destroy a creature made in God's image, it might be very much worse to be creating them after images of one's own.
Leon KassRead
It's a short step from the belief that every child should be wanted to the belief that a child exists to satisfy our wants.
Leon KassRead
Sexuality itself means mortality - equally for both man and woman.
Leon KassRead
Human life without death would be something other than human; consciousness of mortality gives rise to out deepest longings and greatest accomplishments.
Leon KassRead
Similar quotes
I think women are very complicated human beings, and I think there's an oversimplification of women when you see them on screen.
Viola DavisRead
When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
I have been brought up open-minded. If I didn't know any people from other countries, I'd think everyone was evil based on news stories. But I know a lot of people, and know that there is no such thing as stark good and evil. Isn't it possible there is the same amount of evil everywhere?
Marjane SatrapiRead
In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
Karl MarxRead
As so often before, liberty has been wounded in the house of its friends.
Otto Hermann KahnRead
There's nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.
Thornton WilderRead