“For humans, tools point to the necessity of moral inquiry. Because nature makes only ambiguous prescriptions for us, we are compelled to ask, what is good? If you give a young boy a hammer for the first time and watch… — Matthew B. Crawford Copy Share Image
“The idea of autonomy denies that we are born into a world that existed prior to us. It posits an essential aloneness; an autonomous being is free in the sense that a being severed from all others is free. To regard oneself this way is to betray the natural debts we owe to the world, and commit the moral error… — Matthew B. Crawford Copy Share
“When the point of education becomes the production of credentials rather than the cultivation of knowledge, it forfeits the motive recognized by Aristotle: "All… — Matthew B. Crawford Copy Share Image
“The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy. They seem to relieve him of the felt need to offer chattering interpretations of himself to vindicate his worth. He can simply point: the building stands, the car now runs, the lights are on. Boasting is what a… — Matthew B. Crawford Copy Share
“I used to try to hypnotize myself into a Zen-like state of resignation at the outset. It doesn't work, not for this grasshopper. I… — Matthew B. Crawford Copy Share Image
“...an external reward can affect one's interpretation of one's own motivation, and interpretation that comes to be self-fulfilling. A similar effect may account for the familiar fact that when someone turns his hobby into a business, he often loses pleasure in it. Likewise, an intellectual who pursues an academic career gets professionalized, and this may lead him to stop thinking.… — Matthew B. Crawford Copy Share
“...if we follow the traces of our own actions to their source, they intimate some understanding of the good life. This understanding may be hard to articulate; bringing it more fully into view is the task of moral inquiry. Such inquiry may be helped along by practical activities in company with others, a sort of conversation in deed. In this… — Matthew B. Crawford Copy Share
“I was nearing a familiar point where I’ve descended through every level of madness and despair, and a certain calm takes over. I was… — Matthew B. Crawford Copy Share Image
“The truth about idiocy... is that it is at once an ethical and cognitive failure... The Greek idios means 'private,' and idiotes means a… — Matthew B. Crawford Copy Share Image
“The lover of excellence is prone to being drawn out of himself, erotically almost, in a way that the universalist egalitarian is not. The… — Matthew B. Crawford Copy Share Image
“I did not even look at the scoreboard when my routine was done in 1976. My teammates started pointing because there was this uproar"… — Matthew B. Crawford Copy Share Image
“There is a classic psychology experiment that seems to confirm Brewer's point. Children who enjoy drawing were given marker pens and allowed to go… — Matthew B. Crawford Copy Share Image
“Stripped of the kind of judgments that are at the very heart of the idea of "credit", shot through with bad faith, [the mortgage… — Matthew B. Crawford Copy Share Image
![“Stripped of the kind of judgments that are at the very heart of the idea of "credit", shot through with bad faith, [the mortgage broker's] work is now predicated on irresponsibility, rooted in the absence of community. Whatever lingering fiduciary consciousness he may have has become a liability…” quote by Matthew B. Crawford](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/b01/matthew-b-crawford-26537_rest-of-life_stripped-of-the-kind-of-judgments-that-a_1991114.jpg)