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Regrettably, we live at a time when some persons do not value all human life. They want to pick and choose which individuals have value.

 

Ronald Reagan

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Is not the minimal state, the framework for utopia, an inspiring vision?
The minimal state treats us as inviolate individuals, who may not be used in certain ways by others as means or tools or instruments or resources; it treats us as persons having individual right with the dignity this constitutes. Treating us with respect by respecting our rights, it allows us, individually or with whom we please, to choose our life and to realize our ends and our conception of ourselves, insofar as we can, aided by the voluntary cooperation of other individuals possessing the same dignity. How dare any state or group of individuals do more? Or less?

 

Robert Nozick

 

The success of communism in the world today is due to the failure of democracy to live up to the noble ideals and principles inherent in its system. And this is what Jesus means when he said: "How is it that you can see the mote in your brother’s eye and not see the beam in your own eye?" Or to put it in Moffatt’s translation: "How is it that you see the splinter in your brother’s eye and fail to see the plank in your own eye?" And this is one of the tragedies of human nature. So we begin to love our enemies and love those persons that hate us whether in collective life or individual life by looking at ourselves. And this is one of the tragedies of human nature. So we begin to love our enemies and love those persons that hate us whether in collective life or individual life by looking at ourselves.

 

Martin Luther King

 

“One must work for a living in order to live-that’s just the way life is-it’s the shabby side of existence. We sleep seven hours out of twenty-four; its wasted time, but it has to be that way. We work five hours out of the twenty-four; it is wasted time, but it has to be that way. By working five hours, a person has his livelihood, and when he has that he begins to live. Now, a person’s work should preferably be as boring and meaningless as possible, just so he has his livelihood from it. If he has a special talent, he should never commit the sin against it of making it his source of income. No, he coddles his talent; he possesses it for its own sake; he has even greater joy from it than a mother from her child. He cultivates it; he develops it for twelve hours of the day, sleeps for seven hours, is a nonhuman for five, and thus life becomes quite bearable, even quite beautiful, because working five hours is not so bad, inasmuch as, since a person’s thoughts are never on the work, he hoards his energies for the pursuit of his delight.” Our hero is making no headway. For one thing, he has no special talent with which to fill the twelve hours at home; for another, he has already gained a more beautiful view of working, a view he is unwilling to give up. So he probably will decide to seek help from the ethicist again. The latter is very brief. “It is every human being’s duty to have a calling.” More he cannot say, because the ethical as such is always abstract, and there’s no abstract calling for all human beings. On the contrary, he presupposes that each person has a particular calling. Which calling our hero should choose, the ethicist cannot tell him, because for that a detailed knowledge of the esthetic aspects of his whole personality is required, and even if the ethicist did have this knowledge, he would still refrain from choosing for him, because in that case he would indeed deny his own view of life. What the ethicist can teach him is that there is a calling for every human being and, when our hero has found this, that he is to choose it ethically.

 

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard

 

My theory is that for those of us who are too weak to remain single, God gives us a spouse. For those of us who are too hung up to handle marriage, God gives us celibacy. So, pick your weakness. Pick your poison, I guess. But anyway, for those of you who do choose to be in love and stuff, go for it.

 

Rich Mullins

 

Every time another tribe becomes extinct and their language dies, another way of life and another way of understanding the world disappears forever. Even if it has been painstakingly studied and recorded, a language without a people to speak it means little. A language can only live if its people live, and if today’s uncontacted tribes are to have a future, we must respect their right to choose their own way of life.

 

Stephen Corry