Harry Frankfurt Quotes

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It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.

Harry Frankfurt

It is frequently insufficient to identify the motives that guide our conduct, or that shape our attitudes and our thinking, just by observing vaguely that there are various things we want. That often leaves out too much. In numerous contexts, it is both more precise and more fully explanatory to say that there is something we care about.

Harry Frankfurt

There are significant relationships, of course, between wanting things and caring about them..The notion of caring is in large part constructed out of the notion of desire. Caring about something may be, in the end, nothing more than a certain complex mode of wanting it. However, simply attributing desire to a person does not in itself convey that the person cares about the object he desires.

Harry Frankfurt

It is only because a person has volitions of the second order that he is capable both of enjoying and of lacking freedom of the will.

Harry Frankfurt

Harry Frankfurt

Harry Frankfurt

Born: May 29, 1929

Died: July 16, 2023 (aged 94)

Bio: Harry Gordon Frankfurt was an American philosopher. He was professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University, where he taught from 1990 until 2002, and previously taught at Yale University, Rockefeller University, and Ohio State University.

Known for:

On Bullshit (2005)
On Inequality (2015)
On Truth (2006)
The Reasons of Love (2004)
The importance of what we care about (1988)

Harry Frankfurt on Wikipedia

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