“Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” (181)
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“The freedom of the subjective person to do as he pleases is overruled by the freedom of the responsible person to do as he must.” (309)
“How can we claim to arrive at a responsible judgment with universal intent,if the conceptual framework in which we operate is borrowed from a local culture and our motives are mixed up with the forces holding on to social privilege?
From the point of view of a critical philosophy, this fact would reduce all our convictions to the mere products of a particular location and interest. But I do not accept this conclusion. Believing as I do in the justification of deliberate intellectual commitments, I accept these accidents of personal existence as the concrete opportunities for exercising our personal responsibility. This acceptance is the sense of my calling.” (322)“Those who are satisfied by hoping that their intellectual commitments fulfil their calling, will not find their hopes discouraged when realizing on reflection that they are only hopes.” (324)
“The stage on which we thus resume our full intellectual powers is borrowed from the Christian scheme of Fall and Redemption. Fallen Man is equated to the historically given and subjective condition of our mind, from which we may be saved by the grace of the spirit. The technique of our redemption is to lose ourselves in the performance of an obligation which we accept, in spite of its appearing on reflection impossible of achievement. We undertake the task of attaining the universal in spite of our admitted infirmity, which should render the task hopeless, because we hope to be visited by powers for which we cannot account in terms of our specifiable capabilities. This hope is a clue to God...” (324)
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“The quality of a man's virtue is best displayed in difficult times, and far from weakening him, such times reveal him for what he really is.” (Book I, Chapter 16)
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“Discouragement serves no possible purpose; it is simply the despair of wounded self-love.”
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Sarah (to John): “You have a really big nose. It's a good thing you have such a big face.”
Yuki (3): “Daddy, we're having a music theory parade today. It's at three o'clock at the journal.”
Sarah: “I cannot be stopped!” Yuki (4): “But I can be stopped!”
Mari (6): “People in college take classes? I thought you just did what you want in college because you’ve been in school so long, you already know All Things.”
Sachi (4), looking at part of the manuscript to Focal Impulse Theory: “Those are words that are boring to read.” [We think she was referrring mainly to the lack of pictures...]
Mari (8): “They're old fashioned. Mom had them when she was little.” Sarah: [amused remark] Mari: “What? They're like from '90s!”
Yuki (12), to Mari (9): “We used to do lots of strange things when we were kids, Mari.”
Sarah, after kids cook an amazing breakfast with minimal help: “I might have to go on strike!” Mari (9): “You're going to go NAKED?” Sarah: “No Mar, that's streak.”
Mari (10): “Usually when I get drunk I get tired.” [referring to ice cream...]
Yuki (12): “Voltralinguist...vitrolologist...” [trying to remember the word ‘ventriloquist’]
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