Quote of the Day: Katharine Anthony on Life & Wisdom

Our days now arrive pre-fragmented: Slack pings, algorithmic feeds, hot takes delivered at the speed of outrage, and AI summaries that flatten nuance into bullet points. In that churn, convictions harden quickly, and spread faster than facts. That’s why Katharine Anthony’s warning still lands with a thud: “Principles are a dangerous form of social dynamite.”

Principles feel like ballast in a messy world. They promise clarity: a clean line between right and wrong, us and them. But the very strength that makes a principle comforting also makes it combustible. When a belief becomes nonnegotiable, conversation stops being a search for truth and becomes a test of loyalty. The question shifts from “What works?” to “Who’s pure?”, and the social temperature rises.

Dynamite doesn’t discriminate; it clears space. Principles can do the same, detonating old arrangements and exposing rot that polite compromise kept hidden. That’s the good kind of blast: the one that forces a society to confront injustice, to reimagine freedom and dignity. Yet the same moral certainty can also sanctify cruelty. When “justice” is treated as a blank check, harm gets recast as virtue, and the human cost becomes collateral.

As a biographer and psychological-minded historian, Katharine Anthony spent her career studying the stories people tell to justify themselves, and the private motives that lurk beneath public ideals.

On this December Sunday, the practical takeaway is simple: keep your principles, but hold them like tools, not explosives. Before you deploy one in an argument, ask whether it’s guiding your leadership, or just lighting the fuse.