Quotes from Anthony Gottlieb

A small but typical example of how 'philosophy' sends out new shoots is to be found in the case of Georg Cantor, a nineteenth-century German mathematician. His research on the subject of infinity was at first written off by his scientific colleagues as mere 'philosophy' because it seemed so bizarre, abstract and pointless. Now it is taught in schools under the name of set-theory.

There were three main new schools of thought: the Epicureans, the Stoics and the Sceptics. On the whole, if an Epicurean said one thing, a Stoic would say the opposite and a Sceptic would refuse to commit himself either way.

Reports of miracles are like positive test results for very unusual diseases. They must be treated with extreme caution, because however remote the possibility of error or deceit may seem, it may still be less remote than the possibility that a miracle has occurred.

Give priests power and they soon start persecuting anyone who disagrees with them.

there is no such thing as perpetuall Tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because Life it selfe is but Motion, and can never be without Desire, nor without Feare." God had something better in store for the righteous in heaven, but here below it was all buffeting and collision, both outside our heads and in them.

Unii povestesc c?, în timp ce Socrate p?r?sea curtea, un admirator devotat, dar cam n?tâng, a început s? se vaite, cel mai greu de suportat pentru el fiind faptul c? Socrate a fost condamnat la moarte pe nedrept. «Cum, r?spunse Socrate, încercând s?-l lini?teasc?, ai fi preferat s? fiu condamnat în mod drept?»

Descartes's grandiose ambitions even extended to "a system of medicine founded on infallible demonstrations." He once said that the preservation of health had always been "the principal end of my studies,

What I am is a thinking soul, not a piece of matter, and I know about this soul and its thoughts better than I know about any physical thing. Because

was "to try always to master myself rather than fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of the world.

The difficulty of reconciling the existence of evil with God's alleged omnipotence and mercy has, it can plausibly be argued, defeated every orthodox theologian in the history of monotheism.

there is, he reasoned, no such thing as evil or suffering from God's point of view, and this explains why God never tries to do anything about it.

Just as nothing can be said to be either contrary to or in accordance with God's will, so nothing is either good or bad from God's perspective, which is to say from the point of view of nature or the universe as a whole:

God, or nature, has no use for such categories as good and bad.

The true object of the miraculous stories narrated in the Bible was, Spinoza argued, "to move men, and especially uneducated men, to devotion … not to convince the reason, but to attract and lay hold of the imagination.

As to the … teaching of certain Churches, that God took upon Himself human nature … they seem to me to speak no less absurdly than one who might tell me that a circle has taken on the nature of a square.

The whole point of government, Spinoza maintained, is liberty: "the object of government is … to enable [men] to develop their minds and bodies in security, and to employ their reason unshackled; neither showing hatred, anger, or deceit, nor watched with the eyes of jealousy and injustice." The state authorities may interfere in religion—indeed, they must do so, since religion is too dangerous to be left in the hands of priests.

Leibniz invented the term "theodicy" (in its French and Latin forms) to mean the justification of God's ways to man—or, as an unbeliever might put it, the art of making excuses on behalf of God. Among