Derek Parfit Quotes

8 Sourced Quotes

What now matters most is that we rich people give up some of our luxuries, ceasing to overheat the Earth's atmosphere, and taking care of this planet in other ways, so that it continues to support intelligent life.

Derek Parfit
It has been widely believed that there are such deep disagreements between Kantians, Contractualists, and Consequentialists. That, I have argued, is not true. These people are climbing the same mountain on different sides.

Derek Parfit
To be a person, a being must be self-conscious, aware of its identity and its continued existence over time.

Derek Parfit
We are paternalists when we make someone act in his own interests.

Derek Parfit
Is the truth depressing? Some may find it so. But I find it liberating, and consoling. When I believed that my existence was a further fact, I seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.

Derek Parfit
It is not enough to ask, 'Will my act harm other people?' Even if the answer is No, my act may still be wrong, because of its effects on other people. I should ask, 'Will my act be one of a set of acts that will together harm other people?' The answer may be Yes. And the harm to others may be great. If this is so, I may be acting very wrongly, like the Harmless Torturers.

Derek Parfit
Criticizing himself again, Sidgwick writes: I am not an original man: and I think less of my own thoughts every day.

Derek Parfit
No question is more sublime than why there is a Universe: why there is anything rather than nothing

Derek Parfit