20th-century Philosopher Quotes

Jean-Paul Sartre

Albert Camus

Simone de Beauvoir

Umberto Eco

Theodor W. Adorno

Noam Chomsky

Hannah Arendt

Life is nothing until it is lived; but it is yours to make sense of, and the of it is nothing other than the sense you choose.

Jean-Paul Sartre

My studies gave me only a very superficial knowledge of philosophy but sharpened my interest in it. I benefited greatly from being a teacher—that is, from being able to spend a great deal of time reading, writing and educating myself.

Simone de Beauvoir

It should be pointed out for our own guidance in the West that the continual signing of manifestoes and protests is one of the surest ways of undermining the efficacy and dignity of the intellectual. There exists a permanent blackmail that we all know and that we must have the often solitary courage to resist.

For the enemy to be recognized and feared, he has to be in your home or on your doorstep.

In this loveless everyday life eroticism is a substitute for love.

A user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can understand it within 10 seconds.

Tenderness between people is nothing other than awareness of the possibility of relations without purpose.

Theodor W. Adorno

If no divine law is recognized above the law of the State, then the law of man has become absolute in men's eyes—there is then no logical barrier to totalitarianism.

There is a pressing need to understand our technological destiny from principles more comprehensive than its own. This need lifts us up to ask about the great western experiment in a more than piecemeal way. It pushes us to try to understand its meaning in terms of some openness to the whole which is not simply sustenance for the further realisation of that experiment. But the exigency of our need for understanding must not blind us to the tightening circle in which we find ourselves. We are called to understand technological civilisation just when its very realisation has radically put in question the possibility that there could be any such understanding.

Truth brought to public light recruits the best of us to work for change. On the other hand, even the best-intentioned "noble lie" ultimately discredits the finest of causes.

Christina Hoff Sommers

Brains cause technology, society, art, science, soap operas, sin. A remarkable set of effects for such a small chunk of coagulated atoms.

The weight of the universe is at one with all its space.

That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave.

Patricia Hill Collins

Only those who see that the two sides of all phenomena, visible and invisible, are front and back or beginning and end of one reality can embrace any antagonistic situation, see its complementarity, and help others to do the same, thereby establishing peace and harmony.

A geometrical theory in physical interpretation can never be validated with mathematical certainty... ; like any other theory of empirical science, it can acquire only a more or less high degree of confirmation.

Carl Gustav Hempel

Government should allow persons to engage in whatever conduct they want to, no matter how deviant or abnormal it may be, so long as (a) they know what they are doing, (b) they consent to it, and (c) no one - at least no one other than the participants - is harmed by it.

Hugo Adam Bedau

Our whole life is an attempt to discover when our spontaneity is whimsical, sentimental irresponsibility and when it is a valid expression of our deepest desires and values.

The philosopher does not just 'play' with metaphors: his play is of a 'formidable seriousness', for it is designed to oppose modernity's hatred for art, to obliterate precisely the opposition between play and seriousness, dream and reality.

Hope provides comfort, and hope does not always require probability.

Russell's prose has been compared by T.S. Eliot to that of David Hume's. I would rank it higher, for it had more color, juice, and humor. But to be lucid, exciting and profound in the main body of one's work is a combination of virtues given to few philosophers. Bertrand Russell has achieved immortality by his philosophical writings.

The machine is a slave which serves to make other slaves. Such a domineering and enslaving drive may go together with the quest for human freedom. But it is difficult to liberate oneself by transferring slavery to other beings, men, animals, or machines; to rule over a population of machines subjecting the whole world means still to rule, and all rule implies acceptance of schemata of subjection.

Gilbert Simondon

I think there is at least one moral theory of respectable lineage and good independent credentials that can accommodate such fairly minimal intuitions about us and animals. This is the theory Hume offers us. I do not consider Hume a forerunner of utilitarianism, and therefore what I shall go on to say in defense of Hume is not intended as a defense of any version of utilitarianism. I see Hume to be much closer to Aristotle than to Mill, to be offering us a theory about human virtues, not a theory about utility maximization and the duties that might involve.

Every adult should be able to make as many effective decisions without fear or favor about as many aspects of her or his life as is compatible with the like freedom of every other adult. That belief is the original and only defensible meaning of liberalism.

Judith N. Shklar

The world belongs to women.
In other words, to death.
But everyone lies about it.

Philippe Sollers

ALL MEANINGFUL KNOWLEDGE IS FOR THE SAKE OF ACTION, AND ALL MEANINGFUL ACTION FOR THE SAKE OF FRIENDSHIP.