The most basic inherent constraint is that neither time nor wisdom are free goods available in unlimited quantity. This means read more

The most basic inherent constraint is that neither time nor wisdom are free goods available in unlimited quantity. This means that in social processes, as in economic processes, it is not only impossible to attain perfection but irrational to seek perfection- or even to seek the "best possible" result in each separate instance.

Violence and smut are of course everywhere on the airwaves. You cannot turn on your television without seeing them, although read more

Violence and smut are of course everywhere on the airwaves. You cannot turn on your television without seeing them, although sometimes you have to hunt around.

You have to show violence the way it is. If you don't show it realistically, then that's immoral and harmful. read more

You have to show violence the way it is. If you don't show it realistically, then that's immoral and harmful. If you don't upset people, then that's obscenity.

Nonviolence doesn't always work -- but violence never does.

Nonviolence doesn't always work -- but violence never does.

There is a violence that liberates, and a violence that enslaves; there is a violence that is moral and a read more

There is a violence that liberates, and a violence that enslaves; there is a violence that is moral and a violence that is immoral.

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

I would rather have five energetic and competent enemies than one fool friend.

I would rather have five energetic and competent enemies than one fool friend.

It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing, but the read more

It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.

It is perhaps not entirely so, though it has often been said, that man makes his God in his own read more

It is perhaps not entirely so, though it has often been said, that man makes his God in his own image. Rather does he create Him in the image of his cravings and dreams- in the image of what man wants to be. God making could be part of the process by which a society realizes its aspirations: it first embodies them in the conception of a particular God, and then proceeds to imitate that God. The confidence requisite for attempting the unprecedented is most effectively generated by the fiction that in realizing the new we are imitating rather than originating. Our preoccupation with heaven can be part of an effort to find precedents for the unprecedented.