22 quotes found
Philosopher · English · 2011
English philosopher
“The best of what we are lies in what we hope to be”
“Middle age has been defined as what happens when a person's broad mind and narrow waist change places.”
“If there is anything worth fearing in the world, it is living in such a way that gives one cause for regret in the end.”
“It is always a mistake to underestimate how long it takes for mankind to understand the traumas it has suffered, especially the self-inflicted ones.”
“Do not regret having lived, but while yet living live in a way that allows you to think that you were not born in vain.And do not regret that you must die: it is what all who are wise must Wish, to...”
“It takes a certain ingenuous faith - but I have it - to believe that people who read and reflect more likely than not come to judge things with liberality and truth.”
“Just as modern motorways have no room for ox-carts or wandering pedestrians, so modern society has little place for lives and ways that are too eccentric.”
“Socrates famously said that the unconsidered life is not worth living. He meant that a life lived without forethought or principle is a life so vulnerable to chance, and so dependent on the choices...”
“If there is a deity of the kind imagined by votaries of the big mail-order religions such as Christianity and Islam, and if this deity is the creator of all things, then it is responsible for cance...”
“A mature society is one that reserves its moral outrage for what really matters: poverty and preventable diseases in the third world, arms sales, oppression, injustice. Bad language and sex might o...”
“Misuse of reason might yet return the world to pre-technological night; plenty of religious zealots hunger for just such a result, and are happy to use the latest technology to effect it.”
“. . .the most important philosophical question we can each ask ourselves is, Do I or do I not wish to commit suicide? If we say, No I do not, as most of us would, it is because we have reasons for ...”
“Perhaps worse still is what liberal societies might do to themselves in the face of this new and different threat [of terrorism]. They begin, by small but dangerous increments, to cease to be as li...”
“Theistic claims that supernatural agency exists in the universe derive from ancient traditions of belief. The word 'atheist' is a theist's term for a person who does not share such beliefs. Theists...”
“For the grace of bearing life's inevitable evils is itself agood, and makes goodness arise even from evils byopposing them or enduring them with courage.”
“I once had a published written debate with a religious apologist who, after I had argued the standard line that the idea of a loving and merciful deity is inconsistent with the fact of natural evil...”
“Without free speech one cannot claim other liberties, or defend them when they are attacked. Without free speech one cannot have a democratic process, which requires the statement and testing of po...”
“What sort of charge against old age is the nearness of death, when this is shared by youth?Yes, you will say; but a young man expects to live long; an old man cannot expect to do so.Well, the young...”
“Those who think that modern times are wickeder than previous times are apt to identify the cause as the weakening of a sense of moral law, associated with the departure of religious traditions of m...”
“Future generations may or may not judge Wittgenstein to be one of the great philosophers. Even if they do not, however, he is sure always to count as one of the great personalities of philosophy. F...”
