Quotes from Daniel Klein

This classmate told me that Plato drove this idea home in his dialogue Euthydemus , in which Socrates puts down the Sophists, claiming that a man learns more by "playing" with ideas in his leisure time that by sitting in a classroom. And Plato's successor, that world champion of pleasure, Epicurus, believed in a simple yet elegant connection between learning and happiness: the entire purpose of education was to attune the mind and sense to the pleasures of life.

If a man cannot invest his life, or any part of it, with meaning, all he has left are distractions from meaninglessness, although few of us acknowledge them as such.

There is no God and Mary is his mother." —GEORGE SANTAYANA, AMERICAN-SPANISH PHILOSOPHER (1863–1952), AMERICAN PRAGMATIST (SORT OF)

An avowed anti-Catholic, Maurice Maeterlinck, the twentieth-century Belgian philosopher and playwright, weighed in with: "An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness. No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it.

Aristippus urges us to actively manipulate what is in front of us in order to maximize our pleasure. Man is the architect of his own pleasure dome.

is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Might

But Habib was overwhelmed by all his options. Why spend the night with Sophia when spending the night with Katrina might be even more sensational? Why smoke some opium when getting drunk on ouzo might be more fun? Or what about both? Time and again, I would find him on the terrace of Loulou's taverna in a paralyzing dither. Often, I had to suppress a chuckle over his befuddling embarrassment of riches, but for Habib it was no laughing matter. Hedonism made him anxious.

I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.

little world": "The world is a den of thieves, and night is falling. Evil breaks its chains and runs through the world like a mad dog. The poison affects us all. No one escapes. Therefore let us be happy while we are happy. Let us be kind, generous, affectionate, and good. It is necessary and not at all shameful to take pleasure in the little world.

Sam Harris, the late Christopher Hitchens, and the contemporary British philosopher Richard Dawkins composed what one wag calls the Holy Trinity of the New Atheism.

life's meaning is not something to look for but something to create myself

Whereas Epicurus would have us rein in our desires and aspirations so that we can get the most pleasure out of what is right in front of us, Aristippus urges us to actively manipulate what is in front of us in order to maximize our pleasure.

Epistemology: The study of knowledge. It basically asks, What is a rational test for knowability? How can we know for certain what is real? How can we know which propositions are true and which are not? What are basic principles of certainty? Epistemology attempts to lay down the line between knowledge and mere belief. It is one of the main topics of philosophy, along with logic, ethics, and metaphysics.

The critical point is that knowing we can always get higher can be a real downer. It informs us that we are never going to reach the ultimate point of happiness because there is no ultimate point of happiness.

According to Sartre, we are historically prone to thinking of ourselves as objects due to the Judeo-Christian credo that God stamped us with our essence from the get-go; it is His prerogative. So to think that we are able to stamp ourselves is a sacrilege. But the main reason we keep ducking the responsibility of self-creation is that it is super scary. If I am the master of my fate and my fate does not turn out so well, I have no one to blame but myself.

Hedonism: The theory that pleasure is the sole value in life, so go for it. Likewise, pain makes life less pleasant, so do whatever is necessary to avoid it. In short, if it feels good, it is good. There are many philosophical variations of Hedonism, all of them a pleasure to think about.

Through the ages, an impressive number of philosophers—from hedonists to transcendentalists—have rated friendship as life's greatest pleasure.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "We are always getting ready to live, but never living.

Humanism: The stance that the good of humankind is of prime importance. In modern times, humanism means that pursuing this good has nothing to do with a god; doing good works for other humans is a value in itself, not the fulfillment of a duty to a god.

The idea that life's meaning is not something to look for but something to create myself feels right to me. In fact, it seems absolutely essential.

Absurdism: The concept that we cannot reconcile our desire to find a meaning of life with the fact that it is rationally impossible to do so. Also, various philosophers' ideas on how to lead an absurdist life. Some people who embrace the absurdist outlook find it hilarious in a bittersweet sort of way.

Empiricism: The school of philosophy that maintains that knowledge of the external world (as compared to knowledge of analytic logic and its proper applications) comes only from sensory experience. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British Empiricism came in reaction to rationalism. Empiricism is a stance in epistemology. It is sometimes summed up by the statement, "What you see is all you get.

According to many psychologists, the happier people get, the better are their friendships, marriages, work performance, health, and income. In short, no pain, more gain.

Logical Positivism: An early-twentieth-century school of philosophy that limits the scope of philosophy to the scientific method (empirical verification) and logic. Everything else philosophy once considered, such as metaphysics and ethics and theology, is tossed out the window as unverifiable and therefore meaningless.