41 Quotes by Charles Taylor

Spontaneity at all levels is guided by the goal of getting it right; being clearly “forced” to come to some conclusion is not its negation, but its highest fulfillment.

Leibniz combines Aristotelian teleology in the notion that the nature of a thing provides for its unfolding in a certain fashion with the modern idea that the nature of a thing is within it. Because the forms are internal in the way that they are not with Aristotle, the harmony of the world has to be pre-established by God.

The notion developed that the breach of reason with nature was a necessary one; that man had to make it in order to develop his powers of reason and abstraction. Schiller makes this point in his Letters on the Aestethic education of Man, as does Hölderin in his Hyperion Fragment. The belief was that the human destiny was to return to nature at a higher level, having made a synthesis of reason and desire.

Following one good to the end may be catastrophic, not because it isn't a good, but because there are others which can't be sacrificed without evil.

It's not just that people sacrifice their love relationships, and the care of their children, to pursue their careers. Something like this has perhaps always existed. The point is that today many people feel called to do this, feel they ought to do this, feel their lives would be somehow wasted or unfulfilled if they didn't do it.

Herder put forward the idea that each of us has an original way of being human. Each person has his or her own "measure" is his way of putting it. This idea has entered very deep into modern consciousness. It is also new. Before the late eighteenth century no one thought that the differences between human beings had this kind of moral significance.

Little countries do not have this luxury of defending themselves. We have to do it before the fact, not after the fact

There are other issues about how I got here.

My leaving office is dependent on two factors: one, my willingness to do so, and secondly, the presence of an international force that will stabilize the situation in the country as I depart,