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The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds ... the pessimist fears this is true.

To train ourselves in sagacity we should exercise our mental powers on those questions which have already been solved by others...

In this world, the optimists have it, not because they are always right, but because they are positive. Even when wrong, they are positive, and that is the way of achievement, correction, improvement, and success. Educated, eye-open optimism pays; pessimism can only offer the empty consolation of being right.

Isn't a fair social system the one that we would pick if we didn't know ahead of time what our role will be?

What gives something meaning, besides the meaning we give it?

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions that move with him like flies on a summer's day.

Note: Older EBF articles are not currently online. I'm not sure if this is temporary or permanent. If you click you will be taken to the Archive.org site to find an archived copy.

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Some people always tend to clamour for a final solution, as if in life there could ever be a final solution other than death. For constructive work, the principal task is always the restoration of some kind of balance.

We cannot achieve fulfillment simply by aiming for it, Aristotle taught; instead, we must cultivate traits of character (which he called virtues) that will lead us to behave automatically in a way that contributes to our success.

Aristotle also writes about vices. For every virtue there are usually two vices - one representing too much and one too little of the virtue in question. The vices of fearfulness and foolhardiness, for example, represent an imbalance of courage. Those who pursue excellence will cultivate a reasonable and measured way of life, the famous doctrine of the "golden mean."

Westerners divide things into parts, often opposites, rather than seeing the whole. That has been the basis of scientific method and it has led to amazing discoveries. However for the complex problems we face today, I believe we need to see the whole interconnected system and diagnose the underlying issues. We seem to have difficulty seeing the whole system and tend to chop things up into parts - hence the lack of "joined up" government policy and strategy. Different departments of government pull n different directions. Another feature of Western thought is dualism - so it is either or, and if you are not with us you are against us and adversarial debate, winning the argument instead of discovering the truth - instead of let us see every point of view and find truth in the complexity of many different viewpoints . We need to give up dualism.

Another feature of Western thought is rationalism. Today we need to engage heart and spirit as well as head if we are to find our way through the situation we face.