To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control.

The capabilities approach starts not from a hypothetical state of nature but from the question: what does a life worthy of human dignity require?

We should not feel pity for those who suffer; we should feel compassion, which involves regarding their well-being as our own concern.

Every other is wholly other.

-- Jacques Derrida

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

-- Simone Weil

The purpose of human existence is to attain supreme happiness.

-- Farabi

If you see fraud and do not say fraud, you are a fraud.

-- Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nothing in the world is worth turning away from what we love.

-- Albert Camus

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

-- Benedictus de Spinoza