One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison

 --- Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)

I think that in general, apart from expert opinion, there is too much respect paid to the opinions of others, both in great matters and in small ones. One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways. Take, for example, the matter of expenditure. Very many people spend money in ways quite different from those that their natural tastes would enjoin, merely because they feel that the respect of their neighbours depends upon their possession of a good car and their ability to give good dinners. As a matter of fact, any man who can obviously afford a car but genuinely prefers travel or a good library will in the end be much more respected than if he behaved exactly like everyone else. There is, of course, no point in deliberately flouting public opinion; this is still to be under its domination, though in a topsy-turvy way. But to be genuinely indifferent to it is both a strength and a source of happiness. And a society composed of men and women who do not bow too much to the conventions is a far more interesting society than one in which all behave alike. 

the basis of democracy is the willingness to assume well about other people

 --- Marilynne Robinson, quoted on Our Favorite Quotes from the President's Conversation with Marilynne Robinson, Obama White House, Oct 2015, cited in Mark Sappenfield, America’s political crisis and the war in Gaza are more intertwined than you might think, CS Monitor, Jul 2024

Excerpt from President Obama & Marilynne Robinson: A Conversation in Iowa, The New York Review of Books, Nov 2015 (WaybackMachine)

The President: ... Why did you decide to write this book of essays? And why was fear an important topic, and how does it connect to some of the other work that you’ve been doing?

Robinson: Well, the essays are actually lectures. I give lectures at a fair rate, and then when I’ve given enough of them to make a book, I make a book.

The President: So you just kind of mash them all together?

Robinson: I do. That’s what I do. But it rationalizes my lecturing, too. But fear was very much—is on my mind, because I think that the basis of democracy is the willingness to assume well about other people.

You have to assume that basically people want to do the right thing. I think that you can look around society and see that basically people do the right thing. But when people begin to make these conspiracy theories and so on, that make it seem as if what is apparently good is in fact sinister, they never accept the argument that is made for a position that they don’t agree with—you know?

The myth, a set of mental representations that integrate a particular worldview

--- Sergio Rodríguez-Blanco, "Introduction, Photography and Time Eternal," in Phyllis Galembo: Mexico Masks Rituals, Radius Books/D.A.P.; Bilingual edition (2019 : 11) 

Excerpt

The myth, a set of mental representations that integrate a particular worldview, inhabits the space of the imaginary. Material products of culture such as masks, costumes, musical instruments, food, beverages, or words pronounced as mantras, are a few of the ritualistic elements which go inextricably hand in hand with corporeal expression—dance, gesture, movement— actions without which the rite couldn't be carried out. According to Mircea Eliade, in his book The Sacred and The Profane (Lo sagrado y lo profano), and to Claude Lévi-Strauss, the rite is myth in action, and it constitutes the origin of music, poetry, dance, theatre, and painting. In other words, the rite places the myth on the scene; it materializes what the myth imagines. 

Biographical subjects are like snakes; they are best handled dead

 --- Joseph Epstein, quoted by Jonathan Fig, Biographers Owe Their Readers the Full Truth, WSJ, July 12, 2024

Excerpt

Biographical subjects are like snakes; they are best handled dead.

This cautionary advice comes from the essayist Joseph Epstein, my friend and former professor. I thought of his words this week as I read the news concerning the late Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro, whose daughter published an essay saying that she had been sexually assaulted beginning at the age of nine by her stepfather and that her mother, upon learning of the abuse, chose to stay with her husband.