Jaan Tallinn Quotes

Correcting bad habits cannot be done by forbidding or punishment.

More people are flattered into virtue than bullied out of vice.

The fear of punishment may be necessary to the suppression of vice; but it also suspends the finer motives to virtue.

I wish we might have less condemnation of error and more commendation of right.

You've got to change incentives for good behavior as opposed to just disincentivizing bad behavior.

Shaming people isn't productive. That makes you feel bad about yourself.

Magnify the virtues, minimize the faults.

The more prohibitions you have, the less virtuous people will be. Try to make people moral, and you lay the groundwork for vice.

You cannot shame or belittle people into changing their behaviors.

I maintain, in truth, That with a smile we should instruct our youth, Be very gentle when we have to blame, And not put them in fear of virtue's name.

I think that moral philosophy is useful for framing questions, but terrible at answering them. I think moral psychology is booming right now, and we're making a lot of progress on understanding how we actually work, what our moral nature is.

There is an expectation that we can talk about sins but no one must be identified as a sinner.

If you talked or laughed in church, told lies, had impure thoughts or conversations, you were bad; if you obeyed your parents or guardians, went to confession and communion regularly, said prayers for the dead, you were good.

The desire which urges us to deserve praise strengthens our good qualities, and praise given to wit, valour, and beauty, tends to increase them.

A man defines his standing at the court of chastity by his views of women.

To many people virtue consists chiefly in repenting faults, not in avoiding them.

The word patriotism, or its equivalents and derivations, is upon everyone's lips at the present time. It is a magic word which is thought by most people to cover any multitude of sins. To be patriotic in whatever cause is tantamount to being virtuous, while no worse charge can be brought against a man in popular estimation than to say he is unpatriotic.

Men are virtuous because women are; women are virtuous from necessity.

You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.

It is easy to be virtuous in prospective.

Healthy habits are learned in the same way as unhealthy ones - through practice.

Charity and good-nature give a sanction to the most common actions; and pride and ill-nature make our best virtues despicable.

The vices we scoff at in others laugh at us within ourselves.

The Great slight the men of wit, who have nothing but wit; the men of wit despise the Great, who have nothing but greatness; the good man pities them both, if with greatness or wit they have not virtue.

Discipline is not punishment. Discipline is changing someone’s behavior.