“Forget about measuring yourself against a standard of perfection, and just realize that by dint of sheer good luck you get to do tremendous good in this world whenever you want. Today you could rescue a child from a burning building. You really can. This isn’t merely a metaphor. You can save a life today or over the course of the next year. A life that would otherwise not be saved, but for your action.

So forget about the lives that you’re not saving or didn’t save yesterday when you were just playing with your kids at the beach. You want to live in a world where you get to play with your kids at the beach, but you also get to rescue someone else’s kid from a burning building, from malaria or cholera, or a civil war. You get to do that.”

— Sam Harris, Being Good and Doing Good: A Conversation with William MacAskill (Waking Up with Sam Harris, August 29, 2016)