“Respect is earned, not given” implies a cold kind of cruelty. If everyone around us must work to “earn” our respect, this implies that our default assumption is that others do not deserve respect. It does not seem proper or fitting to approach everyone we meet with such an assumption of unworthiness and then expect them to pass an unknown test in order to be deemed worthy of respect. It seems uncharitable in the extreme to approach every new person with a “prove me wrong” attitude.
. . . words like "freedom," "justice," "democracy" are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply.
Slow productivity emphatically rejects the performative rewards of unwavering urgency. There will always be more work to do. You should give your efforts the breathing room and respect required to make them part of a life well lived, not an obstacle to it.
-Cal Newport, Slow Productivity; The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
Error is indeed our enemy, but it alone points to the truth and therefore deserves our respectful treatment.
-Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
You might think you want an expensive car, a fancy watch, and a huge house. But I’m telling you, you don’t. What you want is respect and admiration from other people, and you think having expensive stuff will bring it. It almost never does – especially from the people you want to respect and admire you.
The most powerful word in negotiations is "Fair." As human beings, we're mightily swayed by how much we feel we have been respected. People comply with agreements if they feel they've been treated fairly and lash out if they don't.
-Chris Voss, Never Split The Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It
“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
In our time, people forget that first of all they should respect the human being in themselves.
.........................................................................Amen.
After years of unrest through Vietnam, Watergate, recession, and the Iran hostage crisis, Reagan reversed a sense of national decline and replaced it with a renewed confidence. He was devoted to the new conservative catechism of lower taxes, a strong military, and anti-communism, but not so wedded to the details that it stopped him from reaching across the aisle to achieve many of his priorities with bipartisan support. To Reagan, compromise was acceptable and course corrections necessary at times. He did not practice the politics of personal destruction; he fought hard but treated his opponents with dignity and respect.
-Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III
As the Italian economist and culture researcher Guido Tabellini puts it: "Lack of trust and lack of respect for others are typical of hierarchical societies, where the individual is regarded as responding to instinct rather than reason, and where instinct often leads to a myopic or harmful course of action. In such societies, individualism is mistrusted and to be suppressed, since nothing good comes out of it: good behavior is deemed to result from coercion. Hence, the role of the state is to force citizens to behave well."
-William Easterly, The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and The Forgotten Rights of the Poor
Go out of your way to find humility when things are going right and forgiveness/compassion when they go wrong. Because it's never as good or as bad as it looks. The world is big and complex. Luck and risk are both real and hard to identify. Do so when judging yourself and others. Respect the power of luck and risk and you'll have a better chance of focusing on the things you can actually control. You'll also have a better chance of finding the right role models.
-Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons On Wealth, Greed, And Happiness
Posts
All Comments
