Sissela Bok
Sissela Bok
Sissela Bokis a Swedish-born American philosopher and ethicist, the daughter of two Nobel Prize winners: Gunnar Myrdal who won the Economics prize with Friedrich Hayek in 1974, and Alva Myrdal who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1982...
NationalitySwedish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth2 December 1934
CountrySweden
liars lying deception
Liars share with those they deceive the desire not to be deceived.
hype deception deceiving
While all deception requires secrecy, all secrecy is not meant to deceive.
two deception violence
Deceit and violence - these are the two forms of deliberate assault on human beings.
happiness ongoing misery
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.
self growth mature
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.
atmosphere matter thrive
Whatever matters to human beings, trust is the atmosphere in which it thrives.
confused lying party
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.
breathing-space giving childhood
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.
happiness thinking years
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?
fire secrecy indispensable
Secrecy is as indispensable to human beings as fire, and as greatly feared.
happiness children soul
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.
integrity foundation resources
Trust and integrity are precious resources, easily squandered, hard to regain. They can thrive only on a foundation of respect for veracity.
truth essentials levels
Some level of truthfulness has always been seen as essential to human society, no matter how deficient the observance of other moral principles.
long risk doe
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.