Robert C. Solomon Quotes & Sayings

Many people are blind to trust, not so much to its benefits as to its nature and the practices that make it possible. — Robert C. Solomon

Building trust means thinking about trust in a positive way. — Robert C. Solomon

[W]hat we also see in sex is a kind of submissiveness. But not a kind of submissiveness which is simply 'do what you like, I'm just here for you', but it ... is, or can be, very manipulative. It is a way of getting the other person to exercise all his or her efforts towards pleasing you, and in that way controlling what they're thinking, and in particular what they're thinking of you. — Robert C. Solomon

We also confuse trust with familiarity. — Robert C. Solomon

Nietzsche says very clearly all the way through his career that if you want to define human nature the first thing you must say is that human beings insist on value
we see the world through value colored eyes. We do not know how to look at things neutrally, value-free. So, it's not a question of giving up all values, it's simply a question of which values. — Robert C. Solomon

Trust is not bound up with knowledge so much as it is with freedom, the openness to the unknown. — Robert C. Solomon

For all of the advice in the magazines on "How to Keep your Love Alive," the salvation of love is not the prolongation of sexual desire but the shared lifelong cultivation of a romantic lightheartedness that softens conflicts and anxieties and focuses serious attention even as it undermines seriousness as such. It's hard to fall out of love so long as you're laughing together. — Robert C. Solomon

There has been talk in Europe about American hegemony being somehow based upon the use of the dollar in the world. I just don't see that connection at all. — Robert C. Solomon

There is a European Central Bank, of course, established and it has the structure similar to the Federal Reserve system, not precisely the same but similar. — Robert C. Solomon

All trust involves vulnerability and risk, and nothing would count as trust if there were no possibility of betrayal. — Robert C. Solomon

Love can be understood only 'from the inside,' as a language can be understood only by someone who speaks it, as a world can be understood only by someone who lives in it. — Robert C. Solomon

The prices of all imports would rise if the dollar depreciates. — Robert C. Solomon

The dollar is currently the principal reserve currency in the world. — Robert C. Solomon

There's a stability and growth pact which was agreed for the eleven countries which tries to limit the size of budget deficits among the eleven countries. — Robert C. Solomon

The trumped-up charges against kitsch and sentimentality should disturb us and make us suspicious. — Robert C. Solomon

High kitsch, whatever else may be said of it, cannot be openly dismissed as cheap. — Robert C. Solomon

Trust is almost always conditional, focused, qualified, and therefore limited. — Robert C. Solomon

The reserve currency role seems to add prestige to an area and some people in Europe have talked about the desirability of the euro becoming an international reserve currency. — Robert C. Solomon

Spirituality can be severed from both vicious sectarianism and thoughtless banalities. Spirituality, I have come to see, is nothing less than the thoughtful love of life. [Spirituality for the Skeptic] — Robert C. Solomon

Chances are the movements of the euro as against the dollar will be relatively moderate. — Robert C. Solomon

High-class kitsch may well be "perfect" in its form and and composition: the academic painters were often masters of their craft. Thus, the accusation that a work of kitsch is based not on lack of for or aesthetic merit but on the presence of a particularly provocative emotional content. (The best art, by contrast, eschews emotional content altogether.) — Robert C. Solomon

The thoroughly guilty man has an advantage over all of us; he cannot be found more guilty of anything, since he has already found himself guilty of everything. This may sound like an absurdity - causing oneself extreme pain in order not to feel any number of little pains of lesser guilts and shames, but it has its own logic. A man more easily adapts to what he inflicts upon himself; as to his own judgement, he is already committed to it and willing to live with it. — Robert C. Solomon

Familiarity can no longer be a necessary condition for trust. — Robert C. Solomon

Trust opens up new and unimagined possibilities. — Robert C. Solomon

So if the euro, if Euroland is to become a reserve center, if the euro is to become a reserve currency, Euroland will have to have a deficit in its overall balance of payments. — Robert C. Solomon

Thus when I have to summarize naturalized spirituality in a single phrase, it is this: the thoughtful love of life. — Robert C. Solomon

If a currency is to become a growing, an increasing reserve currency, there has to be not only a demand for it there has to be a supply of it. — Robert C. Solomon

To the extent that the United States has, I don't like the word hegemony, the United States has influence around the world, I don't think that's based on to any significant degree on the fact that countries use the dollar as their major reserve. — Robert C. Solomon

The United States as usual has a sizable deficit in the current account of its balance of payments, trade account and other current accounts, current account items. — Robert C. Solomon

Trust is a skill learned over time so that, like a well-trained athlete, one makes the right moves, usually without much reflection. — Robert C. Solomon

Building trust begins with an appreciation and understanding of trust, but it also requires practice and practices. — Robert C. Solomon

Trust is built step by step, commitment by commitment, on every level. — Robert C. Solomon

On private transactions, I'll just go very quickly now, a major difference between the United States and Euroland is that in Europe banks are much more important in financial transactions than in the United States. — Robert C. Solomon

In the United States, securities markets are much more developed than they are in Europe. — Robert C. Solomon

Whether one sees the world as God's creation or as a secular mystery that science is on the way to figuring out, there is no denying the beauty and majesty of everything from mountain ranges, deserts, and rain forests to the exquisite details in the design of an ordinary mosquito. — Robert C. Solomon

Another question has been raised rather widely in Europe, in Japan as well as in the United States is what, to what extent will the euro become a reserve currency. — Robert C. Solomon

A woman's death, through much of the same history, was thought to be a simpler thing, preferably quiet and uncomplaining, or tragically in childbirth. Just as women were denied the right and the capacity to a full life, they were denied the right and the capacity to a full death as well. — Robert C. Solomon

Indeed, some kitsch seems to be flawed by its very perfection, its technical virtuosity and its precise execution, its explicit knowledge of the tradition — Robert C. Solomon

The dollar went up some eighty percent in real terms as I recall now or something like that - from '80 to '85. — Robert C. Solomon

Ideas give life meaning. Our minds need ideas the way
our bodies need food. We are starved for visions, hungry for understanding. We
are caught up in the routines of life, distracted occasionally by those activities we
call "recreation" and "entertainment." What we as a nation have lost is the joy of
thinking, the challenge of understanding, the inspirations as well as the consolations
of philosophy. — Robert C. Solomon

Sexuality is primarily a means of communicating with other people, a way of talking to them, of expressing our feelings about ourselves and them. It is essentially a language, a body language, in which one can express gentleness and affection, anger and resentment, superiority and dependence far more succinctly than would be possible verbally, where expressions are unavoidably abstract and often clumsy. — Robert C. Solomon

Back in those days, in the fifties and sixties, countries had balance of payment's deficits or surpluses, those were reflected much more than today in movements of reserves among countries. — Robert C. Solomon

Trust is a skill, one that is an aspect of virtually all human practices, cultures, and relationships. — Robert C. Solomon

Some countries that are close to Europe that already hold Deutschemarks, clearly would automatically hold euros, those are countries in Eastern Europe mainly, a few countries in Africa. — Robert C. Solomon

What gives life meaning is a form of rebellion, rebellion against reason, an insistence on believing passionately what we cannot believe rationally. The meaning of life is to be found in passion - romantic passion, religious passion, passion for work and for play, passionate commitments in the face of what reason knows to be meaningless. — Robert C. Solomon

The major material advantage, financial advantage from having a reserve currency is that between 200 and 300 billion dollar bills, that may be twenty, fifty, hundred dollar bills as well as ones, exist in the world - a lot of them in Russia as you all know I'm sure. — Robert C. Solomon

Trust and the ability to identify trustworthiness are not the same thing, although trust and trustworthiness are logically linked. — Robert C. Solomon

The brain can be seen as a complex machine, like a gooey computer. — Robert C. Solomon

True, trust necessarily carries with it uncertainties, but we must force ourselves to think about these uncertainties as possibilities and opportunities, not as liabilities. — Robert C. Solomon