Quotes from Richard Rorty

Interesting philosophy is rarely an examination of the pros and cons of a thesis. Usually it is, implicitly or explicitly, a contest between an entrenched vocabulary which has become a nuisance and a half-formed new vocabulary which vaguely promises great things.

Human beings need to be made happier, but they do not need to be redeemed, for they are not degraded beings, not immaterial souls imprisoned in material bodies, not innocent souls corrupted by original sin.

it is through sentiment and sympathy, not through rationality and universalistic moral discourse, that democratic advances take place. This is why he considers books like Uncle Tom's Cabin to have played a more important role than philosophical treatises in securing moral progress."12

If pain were all that mattered, it would be as important to protect the rabbits from the foxes as to protect the Jews from the Nazis.

At 12, I knew that the point of being human was to spend one's life fighting social injustice.

I think that a good Left is a party that always thinks about the future and doesn't care much about our past sins.

Well, what there ought to be is an international labor organization, a confederation of the trade unions of all the countries speaking for the workers who are competing with one another, and talking about the difference in wage levels between, say, Europe and Indonesia.

All human relations untouched by love take place in the dark

Had there been no Plato, the Christians would have had a harder time selling the idea that all God really wanted from us was fraternal love.

Truth is a property of sentences, since sentences are dependent for their existence upon vocabularies, and since vocabularies are made by human beings, so are truths.

"True" resembles... a compliment paid to sentences that seem to be paying their way and that fit in with other sentences which are doing so.

Truth [is] what is better for us to believe.

Truth is simply a compliment paid to sentences seen to be paying their way.

Every government, left or right, always engages in moral crusades. What else are they supposed to do? Especially when they make war; any war has to be a moral crusade.

The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it cannot propose a language for us to speak. Only other human beings can do that.

The usual picture of Socrates is of an ugly little plebeian who inspired a handsome young nobleman to write long dialogues on large topics.

Freedom is the recognition of contingency.

Always strive to excel, but only on weekends.