Preston Johnson

“The Buddha said, "If at some point in your life you adopt an idea or a perception as the absolute truth, you close the door of your mind. This is the end of seeking the truth. And not only do you no longer seek the truth, but even if the truth comes in person and knocks on your door, you refuse to open it. Attachment to views, attachment to ideas, attachment to perceptions are the biggest obstacle to the truth." It's like when you climb a ladder. When you get to the fourth rung, you may think you are on the highest step and cannot go higher, so you hold on to the fourth rung. But in fact there is a fifth rung; if you want to get to it, you have to be willing to abandon the fourth rung. Ideas and perceptions should be abandoned all the time, to make room for better ideas and truer perceptions. This is why we must always ask ourselves, "Am I sure?”
― Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Power

“Systemic study of national differences requires a certain generosity as well as tough-mindedness. The study of comparative religions has flourished only when men are secure enough in their own convictions to be unusually generous. They might be Jesuits or Arabic savants or unbelievers, but they could not be zealots. The study of comparative cultures too cannot flourish when men are so defensive about their own way of life that it appears to them to be by definition the sole solution in the world. Such men will never know the added love of their own culture which comes from a knowledge of other ways of life. They cut themselves off from a pleasant and enriching experience.”
― Ruth Benedict, THE CHRYSANTHEMUM AND THE SWORD: PATTERNS OF JAPANESE CULTURE

“The virtue argument, by contrast, rests on a judgement that greed is a vice that the state should discourage. But who is to judge what is virtue and what is vice? Don't citizens of pluralist societies disagree about such things? And isn't it dangerous to impose judgements about virtue through law?”
― Michael J Sandel

“The lenses through which any nation looks at life are not the ones another nation uses.”
― Ruth Benedict