Sissela Bok Quotes

Some level of truthfulness has always been seen as essential to human society, no matter how deficient the observance of other moral principles.

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.

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.

Deceit and violence – these are the two forms of deliberate assault on human beings.

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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