Sissela Bok Quotes

15 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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

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
As it does with so many other stimuli, the phenomenon known as 'habituation' also operates when it comes to violence. The greater the level of detachment and numbing, the more of the stimulus is needed to bring about what marketing strategists call 'arousal' and, in turn, to produce whatever pleasure the activity can bring.

Sissela Bok
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.

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

Sissela Bok
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