Robert C. Solomon Quotes

The trumped-up charges against kitsch and sentimentality should disturb us and make us suspicious.

We also confuse trust with familiarity.

True, trust necessarily carries with it uncertainties, but we must force ourselves to think about these uncertainties as possibilities and opportunities, not as liabilities.

Chances are the movements of the euro as against the dollar will be relatively moderate.

Whether one sees the world as God’s creation or as a secular mystery that science is on the way to figuring out, there is no denying the beauty and majesty of everything from mountain ranges, deserts, and rain forests to the exquisite details in the design of an ordinary mosquito.

All trust involves vulnerability and risk, and nothing would count as trust if there were no possibility of betrayal.

In the United States, securities markets are much more developed than they are in Europe.

Trust is built step by step, commitment by commitment, on every level.

Thus when I have to summarize naturalized spirituality in a single phrase, it is this: the thoughtful love of life.

Love can be understood only “from the inside,” as a language can be understood only by someone who speaks it, as a world can be understood only by someone who lives in it.

So if the euro, if Euroland is to become a reserve center, if the euro is to become a reserve currency, Euroland will have to have a deficit in its overall balance of payments.

If a currency is to become a growing, an increasing reserve currency, there has to be not only a demand for it there has to be a supply of it.

The United States as usual has a sizable deficit in the current account of its balance of payments, trade account and other current accounts, current account items.

Love can be understood only ‘from the inside,’ as a language can be understood only by someone who speaks it, as a world can be understood only by someone who lives in it.

To the extent that the United States has, I don’t like the word hegemony, the United States has influence around the world, I don’t think that’s based on to any significant degree on the fact that countries use the dollar as their major reserve.

Trust is almost always conditional, focused, qualified, and therefore limited.

There has been talk in Europe about American hegemony being somehow based upon the use of the dollar in the world. I just don’t see that connection at all.

Some countries that are close to Europe that already hold Deutschemarks, clearly would automatically hold euros, those are countries in Eastern Europe mainly, a few countries in Africa.

Trust and the ability to identify trustworthiness are not the same thing, although trust and trustworthiness are logically linked.

The prices of all imports would rise if the dollar depreciates.

Spirituality can be severed from both vicious sectarianism and thoughtless banalities. Spirituality, I have come to see, is nothing less than the thoughtful love of life. [Spirituality for the Skeptic]

Building trust means thinking about trust in a positive way.

The brain can be seen as a complex machine, like a gooey computer.

The dollar is currently the principal reserve currency in the world.

The major material advantage, financial advantage from having a reserve currency is that between 200 and 300 billion dollar bills, that may be twenty, fifty, hundred dollar bills as well as ones, exist in the world – a lot of them in Russia as you all know I’m sure.

On private transactions, I’ll just go very quickly now, a major difference between the United States and Euroland is that in Europe banks are much more important in financial transactions than in the United States.

Trust is not bound up with knowledge so much as it is with freedom, the openness to the unknown.

Another question has been raised rather widely in Europe, in Japan as well as in the United States is what, to what extent will the euro become a reserve currency.

Trust opens up new and unimagined possibilities.

There is a European Central Bank, of course, established and it has the structure similar to the Federal Reserve system, not precisely the same but similar.

Building trust begins with an appreciation and understanding of trust, but it also requires practice and practices.

Trust is a skill, one that is an aspect of virtually all human practices, cultures, and relationships.

The reserve currency role seems to add prestige to an area and some people in Europe have talked about the desirability of the euro becoming an international reserve currency.

There’s a stability and growth pact which was agreed for the eleven countries which tries to limit the size of budget deficits among the eleven countries.