Rutger Bregman Quotes
We so often tend to think our democracies are ruled by procedures and laws, but they are also governed by implicit rules and assumptions and one of them is the ability to feel shame - that you can be shamed.
Bregman, Rutger. Humankind: A Hopeful History. Little, Brown and Company, 2020.
In America we do not have an official church that can morally speak for the society as a whole. As a result, we often use the law to make a moral statement even if the law is rarely enforced like prostitution. Sometimes we hear the expression, “There ought to be a law” as that is the only way we can express a societal moral value.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910
Rutger C. Bregman is a Dutch popular historian and author. He has published four books on history, philosophy, and economics, including Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World, which has been translated into thirty-two languages. His work has been featured in The Washington Post, The Guardian and the BBC. He has been described by The Guardian as the "Dutch wunderkind of new ideas" and by TED Talks as "one of Europe's most prominent young thinkers". His TED Talk, "Poverty Isn't a Lack of Character; It's a Lack of Cash", was chosen by TED curator Chris Anderson as one of the top ten of 2017.
