Sissela Bok

Secrecy is as indispensable to human beings as fire, and as greatly feared.

— Sissela Bok

Sitting too long in front of a screen proves both physically and psychologically debilitating, no matter how innocuous or even beneficial the…

— Sissela Bok

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

— Sissela Bok

Are people the best judges of their own happiness, or outsiders? In defining happiness, should we think of entire lives or of…

— Sissela Bok

Psychologists have found that we are more likely, in looking back at our lives, to remember high points and dramatic shifts in…

— Sissela Bok

Confidentiality refers to the boundaries surrounding shared secrets and to the process of guarding these boundaries. While confidentiality protects much that is…

— Sissela Bok

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

— Sissela Bok

Liars share with those they deceive the desire not to be deceived.

— Sissela Bok

Empathy and fellow feeling form the very basis of morality. The capacities for empathy, for feeling responsibility toward others and for reaching…

— Sissela Bok

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

— Sissela Bok

We are all, in a sense, experts on secrecy. From earliest childhood we feel its mystery and attraction. We know both the…

— Sissela Bok

Regardless of how often the appetite for entertainment violence becomes addictive, increased exposure does risk further desensitizing viewers. And the element of…

— Sissela Bok

Three sorts of goods, Aristotle specified, contribute to happiness: goods of the soul, including moral and intellectual virtues and education; bodily goods,…

— Sissela Bok

The television screen is the lens through which most children learn about violence. Through the magnifying power of this lens, their everyday…

— Sissela Bok

Trust and integrity are precious resources, easily squandered, hard to regain. They can thrive only on a foundation of respect for veracity.

— Sissela Bok

“It is not possible, many argue, to insist on respecting both difference and sameness when it comes to moral values: on honoring…

— Sissela Bok

Trust is a social good to be protected just as much as the air we breathe or the water we drink. When…

— Sissela Bok

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

— Sissela Bok

America may be the only society on earth to have experienced what has been called an 'epidemic of children killing children,' which…

— Sissela Bok

To mature is in part to realize that while complete intimacy and omniscience and power cannot be had, self-transcendence, growth, and closeness…

— Sissela Bok

I believe that a guarantee of public access to government information is indispensable in the long run for any democratic society.... if…

— Sissela Bok

Much as being active in the antislavery movement of the last century involved more than not engaging in slavery oneself, so joining…

— Sissela Bok