20th-century Philosopher Quotes

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Patricia Hill Collins

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

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

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

It seems to me that philosophers should be more relaxed about whether or not some form of materialism is true.

Europe is as fearful of Islam today as she has been in the past. She now knows that the strength of Islam (which in the past expressed that of the Arabs) has been reborn and has appeared in a new form: Arab nationalism.

Modern totalitarianism can be defined as the establishment, by means of the state of exception, of a legal civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated into the political system

Giorgio Agamben

I have been hearing for years and years about how the financial services sector pays such exorbitant wages because the people who work there are so immensely talented that they are cheap at $50 million a year. I never particularly bought that line before. But I never imagined that all those Masters of the Universe would do quite this badly. If we had paid them $50 million a year to go far, far away and leave our financial system alone, it would have been a bargain.

The Treatise is also one of the most important books of Western thought ever written. Spinoza was the first to argue that the Bible is not literally the word of God but rather a work of human literature; that true religion has nothing to do with theology, liturgical ceremonies, or sectarian dogma but consists only in a simple moral rule: love your neighbor; and that ecclesiastic authorities should have no role whatsoever in the governance of a modern state.

Many people are never happier than when they get the opportunity to complain, while others are deeply unhappy with how things are but just accept the fact. Complaint occurs when we refuse to accept that things are wrong and we do something about it, even if that something is simply articulating our unease.

We don't call war hell because it is fought without restraint. It is more nearly right to say that, when certain restraints are passed, the hellishness of war drives us to break with every remaining restraint in order to win. Here is the ultimate tyranny: those who resist aggression are forced to imitate, and perhaps even to exceed, the brutality of the aggressor.

Equations seem like treasures, spotted in the rough by some discerning individual, plucked and examined, placed in the grand storehouse of knowledge, passed on from generation to generation. This is so convenient a way to present scientific discovery, and so useful for textbooks, that it can be called the treasure-hunt picture of knowledge.

Robert P. Crease

The most essential example of the theory of self-organisation in chemistry is the theory of non-linear, non-equilibrium thermodynamics of chemical reactions presented by Prigogine and his co-workers.

The centipede was happy quite Until the toad for fun Said: "Pray which leg comes after which?" This wrought his mind to such a pitch, He lay distracted in the ditch Considering how to run.

Brand Blanshard

Surely if we have learned anything from the history of morals it is that the thing to do with a moral quandary is not to hide it.

The universe is full of men going through the same motions in the same surroundings, but carrying within themselves, and projecting around them, universes as mutually remote as the constellations.

Emmanuel Mounier

I am not innocent. Innocence is a science of the sublime. And I am only at the very beginning of the apprenticeship.

Hélène Cixous

The discovery that the universe has no purpose need not prevent a human
being from having one.

The Encyclopedia presents a contemporary version of the ancient encyclopedic ideal of Aristotle, the Scholastics, Leibniz, the Encyclopedists, and Comte.

Charles W. Morris

If there is a widely shared concept of intentional action... a philosophical analysis of intentional action that is wholly unconstrained by that concept runs the risk of having nothing more than a philosophical fiction as its subject matter.