Quotes by Alasdair MacIntyre

Alasdair MacIntyre

[M]odern society is indeed often, at least in surface appearance, nothing but a collection of strangers, each pursuing his or her own interests under minimal constraints.

Appearance

Culture

Stranger

A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves out to achieve instead – often not recognizing fully what they were doing – was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming age of barbarism and darkness.

Community

Darkness

Men

A striking feature of moral and political argument in the modern world is the extent to which it is innovators, radicals, and revolutionaries who revive old doctrines, while their conservative and reactionary opponents are the inventors of new ones.

Doctrine

Political

World

Charles II once invited the members of the Royal Society to explain to him why a dead fish weighs more than the same fish alive; a number of subtle explanations were offered to him. He then pointed out that it does not.

Alive

Doe

Numbers

Facts, like telescopes and wigs for gentlemen, were a seventeenth century invention.

Gentleman

Telescopes

Wigs

I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’

Answers

Ifs

Stories

Individuals inherit a particular space within an interlocking set of social relationships; lacking that space, they are nobody, or at best a stranger or an outcast. To know oneself as such a social person is however not to occupy a static and fixed position. It is to find oneself placed at a certain point on a journey with set goals; to move through life is to make progress – or to fail to make progress – toward a given end.

Journey

Life

Moving

It is only by participation in a rational, practice-based community that one becomes rational.

Community

Participation

Practice

It is through hearing stories about wicked stepmothers, lost children, good but misguided kings, wolves that suckle twin boys, youngest sons who receive no inheritance but must make their own way in the world, and eldest sons who waste their inheritance on riotous living and go into exile to live with the swine, that children learn or mislearn both what a child and what a parent is, what the cast of characters may be in the drama into which they have been born and what the ways of the world are.

Children

Drama

Kings

Modern politics is civil war carried on by other means.

Mean

Politics

War

Follow The Behaviour University in order to get the greatest quotes from the greatest people of all time so that you can tap into your own greatness.

Alive

Answers

Appearance

Character

Children

Choices

Commitment

Community

Culture

Darkness

Doctrine

Doe

Drama

Effectiveness

Expression

Gentleman

Good Life

Has Beens

Ifs

Journey

Keys

Kings

Life

Matter

Mean

Men

Moving

Numbers

Participation

Past

Political

Politics

Practice

Psychological

Stories

Stranger

Telescopes

Thinking

Two

Views

Virtue

War

Way

Wigs

Wish

World

The Future Blueprint

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The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

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The Autobiography

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Quotes by Alasdair MacIntyre

Alasdair MacIntyre

[M]odern society is indeed often, at least in surface appearance, nothing but a collection of strangers, each pursuing his or her own interests under minimal constraints.

A striking feature of moral and political argument in the modern world is the extent to which it is innovators, radicals, and revolutionaries who revive old doctrines, while their conservative and reactionary opponents are the inventors of new ones.

Charles II once invited the members of the Royal Society to explain to him why a dead fish weighs more than the same fish alive; a number of subtle explanations were offered to him. He then pointed out that it does not.

Facts, like telescopes and wigs for gentlemen, were a seventeenth century invention.

I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’

It is only by participation in a rational, practice-based community that one becomes rational.

Modern politics is civil war carried on by other means.

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The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

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