Robert C. Solomon Quotes

19 Sourced Quotes

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.

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

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

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

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

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
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
Trust is almost always conditional, focused, qualified, and therefore limited.

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

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

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 not bound up with knowledge so much as it is with freedom, the openness to the unknown.

Robert C. Solomon
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