Lindsey

“[T]here is no big secret which the ironist hopes to discover, and which he might die or decay before discovering. There are only little mortal things to be rearranged by being redescribed.”
― Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity

“Only too many human beings have acquired the habit of recognizing an authority without testing it. The public wants to be fooled. It wants to swallow every bluff without subjecting it to rational examination. Such activity will never bring any order into the communal life of mankind but will lead only, again and again, to the revolt of those who have been imposed upon.”
― Alfred Adler, Understanding Human Nature

“Another fact to be borne in mind in connection with criminals is that if we increase the punishments, so far from frightening the individual criminal, we merely help to increase his belief that he is a hero. We must not forget that the criminal lives in a self-centered world, a world in which one will never find true courage, self-confidence, communal sense, or understanding of common values. It is not possible for such persons to join a society. Neurotics seldom start a club, and it is an impossible feat for persons suffering from agoraphobia or for insane persons. Problem children or persons who commit suicide never make friends, a fact for which the reason is never given. There is a reason, however: they never make friends because their early life took a self-centered direction. Their prototypes were oriented towards false goals and followed lines of direction on the useless side of life.”
― Alfred Adler, The Science of Living

“Liberal theory, however, doesn’t have to demonstrate the difference. It only has to show that moral decisions on matters of public policy in a pluralist and democratic state are satisfied, or justified, by a particular political test: the “ability to gain assent from people who retain radically diverse ideas about the point and meaning of human life, about the path to private perfection.”43 Appeals to the will of God through quoting the Bible, church doctrine, and ecclesiastical authorities, fail this test for public values because”
― Richard Rorty, An Ethics for Today: Finding Common Ground Between Philosophy and Religion