Charles Taylor famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

To know who I am is a species of knowing where I stand. My identity is defined by the commitments and identifications which provide the frame or horizon within which I can try to determine from case to case what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done, or what I endorse or oppose. In other words, it is the horizon within which I am capable of taking a stand.
-- Charles Taylor

#Commitment #Knowing #Who I Am
We become full human agents, capable of understanding ourselves, and hence of defining our identity, through our acquisition of rich human languages of expression.
-- Charles Taylor

#Expression #Understanding #Identity
What should have died along with communism is the belief that modern societies can be run on a single principle, whether that of planning under the general will or that of free-market allocations.
-- Charles Taylor

#Running #Principles #Belief
[E]ach of our voices has something unique to say. Not only should I not mold my life to the demands of external conformity; I can't even find the model by which to live outside myself. I can only find it within.
-- Charles Taylor

#Unique #Voice #Demand
We define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the things our significant others want to see in us. Even after we outgrow some of these othersâ€”our parents, for instanceâ€”and they disappear from our lives, the conversation with them continues within us as long as we live.
-- Charles Taylor

#Struggle #Long #Parent
There is a certain way of being human that is my way. I am called upon to live my life in this way, and not in imitation of anyone else's life. But this notion gives a new importance to being true to myself. If I am not, I miss the point of my life; I miss what being human is for me.
-- Charles Taylor

#Giving #Missing #Way
There is a widespread sense of loss here, if not always of God, then at least of meaning.
-- Charles Taylor

#Loss #Ifs
Little countries do not have this luxury of defending themselves. We have to do it before the fact, not after the fact
-- Charles Taylor

#Country #Luxury #Littles

As long as I have my legs and commitment to the team, then I'll keep playing.
I demand pretty aggressive goal setting and a commitment to measured progress towards those goals because I don't like surprises. I don't even like good surprises.
Commitment is what transforms a promise into reality.
There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you're writing, and aren't writing particularly well
First lesson learned: Knowing doesn't hold a candle to doing.
Normal consciousness is a state of stupor, in which the sensibility to the wholly real and responsiveness to the stimuli of the spirit are reduced. The mystics, knowing that man is involved in a hidden history of the cosmos, endeavor to awake from the drowsiness and apathy and to regain the state of wakefulness for their enchanted souls.
Knowing that I am different from the body, I need not neglect the body. It is a vehicle that I use to transact with the world. It is the temple which houses the Pure Self within.
Right now you can allow yourself to experience a very simple sense of not knowing - not knowing what or who you are, not knowing what this moment is, not knowing anything. If you give yourself this gift of not knowing and you follow it, a vast spaciousness and mysterious openness dawns within you. Relaxing into not knowing is almost like surrendering into a big, comfortable chair; you just fall into a field of possibility.
For in pure maidens, knowing not the marriage-bed, the glance of the eyes sinks from shame.
I don't know who I am or who I was. I know it less than ever. I do and I don't identify myself with myself. Everything is totally contradictory, but maybe I have remained exactly as I was as a small boy of twelve.

Charles Taylor famous quotes

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