Don't make excuses. Make commitments and stick to them.
I worry very much that we're in a situation now where there doesn't appear to be any limitation whatsoever in terms of the spending commitments that Obama's administration wants to make. Vast expansion in terms of the deficit, but it also says a lot about what they intend for the role of government in the society.
I personally think that a couple of pounds a week - maybe rising to almost £3 a week - is a reasonable price for Britain to achieve a degree of energy security to reduce its total dependence on fossil fuels and to honour its commitments to cut green house gases.
What matters to me is that one identifies one's genuine obsessions, one's genuine commitments, one's genuine appetites, one pursues them seriously and far.
The early commitments, early recruiting, that had changed. The whole clock is pushed ahead and you have to make decisions earlier about who to and who not to recruit. Is that a good thing I'm not sure, but it is reality.
We use and need to use both systems in complex political societies, and we oscillate in our commitments, because both oligarchy and rule by the will of masses have their bad points, as the ancient philosophers all knew.
We need objects to remind us of the commitments we've made. That carpet from Morocco reminds us of the impulsive, freedom-loving side of ourselves we're in danger of losing touch with. Beautiful furniture gives us something to live up to. All designed objects are propaganda for a way of life.
Social Security and Medicare represent promises made and we must keep these commitments.
When our inner child is not nurtured and nourished, our minds gradually close to new ideas, unprofitable commitments and the surprises of the Spirit.
You keep customers by delivering on your promises, fulfilling your commitments and continually investing in the quality of your relationships.
Our foreign ministries will simply need to sort out some purely technical matters. I see no political restraints here. The same applies to economic matters. We, on our part, are ready. However, let me repeat once again, given that Japan has joined the anti-Russian sanctions, how ready is Japan and how can it do that without breaching its commitments to its allies? We do not know the answer. Only Japan itself knows the answer.
Maturity is when you live your life by your commitments, not by your feelings.
What gives life meaning is a form of rebellion, rebellion against reason, an insistence on believing passionately what we cannot believe rationally. The meaning of life is to be found in passion—romantic passion, religious passion, passion for work and for play, passionate commitments in the face of what reason knows to be meaningless.
The secret of creating anything new in your life consists of creating new commitments and then holding the tiller to your new course until it becomes established as a behavior.
We have to honor our commitments to today's beneficiaries, but we can't solve the growing deficit and debt problems unless we are smart, courageous, and sensible in planning for future.
Loyalty saves us from the self-advantaging compromising of important relations - such as friendship, marital and professional commitments, group memberships, and so on. But as the Aristotelians would put it, its expression requires phronesis - wisdom not to allow it to compromise other important virtues ,there is something to the ancient doctrine of the unity of the virtues. I believe that is true of all virtues, but especially of the executive virtues - such as industriousness, sincerity, conscientiousness, and courage - which may become detached from substantive goods.
When men achieve the fruits of their material success, they often become aware of an emptiness--an incompleteness--in their lives;the hollowness of having, but not raising, children, of not making true commitments to them. Which, sadly, does not mean that they weren't capable of it.
Our lives are not totally random. We make commitments, we cause things to happen.
I think that at a certain stage those early ambitions burn away, partly because you achieve something, you get something done, you get some notoriety. And then the particularities of who you are and what your deepest commitments are begin expressing themselves. You're not just chasing the idea of "me" being important, but you, rather, are chasing a particular passion.
I see loyalty - roughly perseverance in relational commitments despite the cost of such perseverance - as an important human valuevirtue. Think of it as a kind of relational glue.