Sissela Quotes & Sayings

I believe that a guarantee of public access to government information is indispensable in the long run for any democratic society ... if officials make public only what they want citizens to know, then publicity becomes a sham and accountability meaningless. — Sissela Bok

Sitting too long in front of a screen proves both physically and psychologically debilitating, no matter how innocuous or even beneficial the programs may be. — Sissela Bok

The following year, on June 20, 1947, not suspecting what was about to happen, Bugsy Siegel was sitting on a couch in the living room of Virginia Hill's home at 810 Linden Drive in Beverly Hills. As he was reading a newspaper, an assassin fired a number of shots, from a rifle, through the front window. Siegel was shot twice in the head, with one bullet exiting his skull near the bridge of his nose, causing his left eye to be blown out of its socket. He was also hit twice in the torso. His death was instantaneous and the graphic photos of his bullet-riddled body made headline news. Although there were enough suspects to go around, Eddie Cannizzaro, the "Cat Man," a connected west coast mobster, made a deathbed confession that he was the one who carried out the contract. Although the case isn't closed, it is cold and will most likely remain so, as it rests on the desk of Detective Les Zoeller of the Los Angeles Police Department. — Hank Bracker

Deceit and violence - these are the two forms of deliberate assault on human beings. — Sissela Bok

While all deception requires secrecy, all secrecy is not meant to deceive. — Sissela Bok

Regardless of how often the appetite for entertainment violence becomes addictive, increased exposure does risk further desensitizing viewers. And the element of pleasure that they derive may lead them to regard violence as a more acceptable way of dealing with problems, and victimization as more tolerable so long as it befalls others, not themselves. — Sissela Bok

America may be the only society on earth to have experienced what has been called an 'epidemic of children killing children,' which is ravaging some of its communities today. — Sissela Bok

Three sorts of goods, Aristotle specified, contribute to happiness: goods of the soul, including moral and intellectual virtues and education; bodily goods, such as strength, good health, beauty, and sound senses; and external goods, such as wealth, friends, good birth, good children, good heredity, good reputation and the like. — Sissela Bok

Happy Birthday.
Adrian came to a sudden halt. The words were soft and small, spoken tentatively, but easily discerned by vampire ears. Slowly, he turned around and found Jill Mastrano standing shyly before him. — Richelle Mead

Before there was Cocaine or vodka or sex or any of that, there was fantasy. There was escape. That was my first addiction. I remember being a little kid and imagining everything different, myself different. How did I get the idea in my head at age eight that everything was better somewhere else? Why would a child have a hole inside that can't get full no matter what she does? The real world could never make me happy, so I retreated to the world inside my head. And as I grew, as the real world proved itself more and more painful, the fantasy world expanded. — Amy Reed

Trust is a social good to be protected just as much as the air we breathe or the water we drink. When it is damaged, the community as a whole suffers; and when it is destroyed, societies falter and collapse — Sissela Bok

Trust and integrity are precious resources, easily squandered, hard to regain. They can thrive only on a foundation of respect for veracity. — Sissela Bok

Confidentiality refers to the boundaries surrounding shared secrets and to the process of guarding these boundaries. While confidentiality protects much that is not in fact secret, personal secrets lie at its core. The innermost, the vulnerable, often the shameful: these aspects of self-disclosure help explain why one name for professional confidentiality has been "the professional secret." Such secrecy is sometimes mistakenly confused with privacy; yet it can concern many matters in no way private, but that someone wishes to keep from the knowledge of third parties. — Sissela Bok

If I've done anything intentional about my career, is that I really have not - I've chosen to try to do as many different types of things as possible. That's really what I like to do. — Dennis Quaid

Empathy and fellow feeling form the very basis of morality. The capacities for empathy, for feeling responsibility toward others and for reaching out to help them can be stunted or undermined early on, depending on a child's experiences in the home and neighborhood. It becomes too easy to turn our backs on fellow human beings ... to have 'compassion fatigue.' Technology, we are learning, is not neutral. — Sissela Bok

To mature is in part to realize that while complete intimacy and omniscience and power cannot be had, self-transcendence, growth, and closeness to others are nevertheless within one's reach. — Sissela Bok

The television screen is the lens through which most children learn about violence. Through the magnifying power of this lens, their everyday life becomes suffused by images of shootings, family violence, gang warfare, kidnappings, and everything else that contributes to violence in our society. It shapes their experiences long before they have had the opportunity to consent to such shaping or developed the ability to cope adequately with this knowledge. — Sissela Bok

We are all, in a sense, experts on secrecy. From earliest childhood we feel its mystery and attraction. We know both the power it confers and the burden it imposes. We learn how it can delight, give breathing space and protect. — Sissela Bok

Are people the best judges of their own happiness, or outsiders? In defining happiness, should we think of entire lives or of shorter periods such as moments, days, or years? And to what extent are virtue and happiness linked? — Sissela Bok

Psychologists have found that we are more likely, in looking back at our lives, to remember high points and dramatic shifts in far greater proportion than ongoing stretches of happiness or misery. — Sissela Bok

Secrecy is as indispensable to human beings as fire, and as greatly feared. — Sissela Bok

In Newspeak there is no word for 'Science'. The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc. — George Orwell

My parents divorced when I was one year old so I don't really remember any of the details, but luckily my mom does so she's been really helpful. — Chelsea Peretti

Liars share with those they deceive the desire not to be deceived. — Sissela Bok

Whatever matters to human beings, trust is the atmosphere in which it thrives. — Sissela Bok

If one takes meaning into consideration, happiness might best be described as "a zest for life in all its complexity," as Sissela Bok writes in her book. To achieve it means to "attach our lives to something larger than ourselves." To be happy, one must do. It could be something as simple as teaching Sunday school or as grand as leading nonviolent protests. It could be as cerebral as seeking the cure for cancer or as physical as climbing mountains. It could be creating art. And it could be raising a child - my "best piece of poetrie," as Ben Jonson said in his elegy for his seven-year-old son. — Jennifer Senior

Some level of truthfulness has always been seen as essential to human society, no matter how deficient the observance of other moral principles. — Sissela Bok

Much as being active in the antislavery movement of the last century involved more than not engaging in slavery oneself, so joining in an antiviolence movement has to go beyond opting for nonviolence in one's personal life. It calls for engaging in imaginative and forceful practices of nonviolent resistance to violence, including taking a stand toward entertainment violence. — Sissela Bok