Quotes from Daniel Klein

Do whatever it takes to stop feeling bad, including downing a couple of shots of bourbon.

And therein lies a realization I had recently: Even in my darkest moments, I cannot think of my daughter's life or my granddaughter's life as meaningless. Their mere existence feels meaningful to me whenever I think about them. How could such vital and beautiful creatures possibly be insignificant? Yes, these are the sentimental thoughts of an old codger, but do take note, Teacher.

I felt that I was finally facing a fundamental fact of life: that everything is transient and loss is inevitable; that is just the way it is. Since most of the time I try to ignore this immutable fact, finally embracing it bore the sweetness of embracing Truth. And embracing that truth, painful as it is, can make me feel more authentically alive.

sixteenth-century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne. He once quipped, "My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life." —MARCUS AURELIUS, ROMAN EMPEROR AND PHILOSOPHER (AD 121–180), STOIC

La perspectiva de leer a filósofos griegos de la antigüedad rodeado del paisaje pedregoso y soleado donde habían florecido sus ideas me pareció genial.

Meaninglessness in philosophical nihilism covers a wide spectrum, ranging from Metaphysical Nihilism, a negation of all existence, to Moral and Political Nihilism, a negation of a society's values and laws in a world that we acknowledge exists but has the potential to be better. In this last sense, it is easy to see how breaking away from the inherited truths of society, governments, and religion can make life more enjoyable in an old-fashioned, hedonistic sort of way.

Men do not value a good deed unless it brings a reward.

First grub, then ethics." He was implying that ethical decision-making may only be a luxury reserved for those of us who do not need to struggle simply to stay alive.

George Berkeley makes the case that all our knowledge of the world comes to us through our senses, so in the end all we've really got is this sense data inside our heads. We cannot claim that is a chair out there, only that we have some chair sense data in our minds. So it is impossible to claim that the chair is anything more than a bunch of sensory experiences that we cobble together in our minds and call a "chair.

It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that." —THOMAS NAGEL, AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER (1937–), ETHICIST AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHER

I live with the fact that I don't know if there really is any meaningful cosmic order and, God knows, that is a continual frustration. But I don't understand why it should be any more frustrating to know that there is a grand design but I am unable to understand it. In both cases, I am in the cosmic dark.

Greene: "It's not reasonable to expect actual humans to put aside nearly everything they love for the sake of the greater good. Speaking for myself, I spend money on my children that would be better spent on distant starving children, and I have no intention of stopping. After all, I'm only human! But I'd rather be a human who knows that he's a hypocrite, and who tries to be less so, than one who mistakes his species-typical moral limitations for ideal values.

I hope there is no God" passage, Nagel wrote that "[I] am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers." I, too, know a great number of very bright and knowledgeable people who are believers. It sometimes makes me wonder if the skeptics have it backward: maybe I am just not wise enough to be a believer.

Every time I find the meaning of life, they change it.

If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system." —WILLIAM JAMES, AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER

Maybe Francis Bacon had it wrong—at least in Ayer's case. Instead of finding meaning in religion as the result of studying philosophy in depth, Ayer found that meaning by not thinking like a philosopher at all for a few divine moments.

Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards. —DIOGENES

In the past hundred years, since Logical Positivists like Bertrand Russell and A. J. Ayer have argued that the idea of a rational basis for ethics is as impossible as a rational basis for the existence of God—or of the Tooth Fairy

When my father-in-law, Jan Vuijst, a Dutch Reformed minister, was on his deathbed, I had a deeply intimate conversation with him - as it turned out, my last conversation with him. He said to me, 'It was a privilege to have lived.' The soulful gratitude of that simple statement will never leave me.

Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.

Companionship was at the top of Epicurus's list of life's pleasures. He wrote, 'Of all the things that wisdom provides to help one live one's entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship.

To my surprise, I find the most relevant commentary on a marriage that continues into the sunset years comes from the radical German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who, in an atypically practical frame of mind, wrote, 'When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everthing else in marriage is transitory.

It's a bit embarrassing to admit, but everything that happens happens for no real reason.