Quotes About Philosophy

I'm interested in philosophical psychology, people like Nietzsche, Freud, Alcan, Foucault, Derrida.

Putting together philosophy and children would have been difficult for most of history. But very fortunately for me, when I started graduate school there was a real scientific revolution taking place in developmental psychology.

I don't believe that we evolved moral psychology; it just doesn't seem plausible to me as a biological phenomenon.

I had to read Plato and Kant, and at times I was overwhelmed. But I have always been fearless, and so was Hannah Arendt. She wasn't afraid to speak out when she knew her opinions would not be popular because she believed in the public discourse above all.

I don't want to put one innocent person to death to put 99 that are guilty to death. So philosophically I'm a tooth-for-tooth guy, but the reality is the death penalty as public policy is flawed.

For example, the philosophers who were interested in logic were probably rather logical for mathematicians. But the ASL got us together, so we could talk to each other and publish in the same journal.

I kind of think I'm going to live a long life as a punishment.

I got on a Dostoyevsky kick right after college. I started with 'Crime and Punishment,' went on to 'The Possessed' and then 'The Brothers Karamazov' and 'The Idiot.'

But this is not to say that the society which inflicts capital punishment commits murder.

Just as pure abstract art is not dogmatic, neither is it decorative.

There have always been arguments showing that free will is an illusion: some based on hard physics, others based on pure logic.

I don't believe that pure evil exists, personally.

Libertarians are constantly arguing with each other who is the most pure libertarian and who is most ideologically pure.

I believe in pure jiu-jitsu. That's what I've done in the past.

One day, I found this book at a used bookstore with 'Satanic Bible' written on the cover, and I thought maybe I should read it and see what it is. I thought it was like a religion, but then I read the book, and what was in it was pure life philosophy - and it was a life philosophy that described how I felt at that point.

There is still a difference between something and nothing, but it is purely geometrical and there is nothing behind the geometry.

Yet humanitarianism is not a purely Christian movement any more than it is a purely humanist one.

The purest expression of the doctrine of Liberalism was probably that of Benjamin Constant.

We absolutely believed in Heaven and Hell, Purgatory, and even Limbo. I mean, they were actually closer to us than Australia or Canada, that they were real places.

A doctrine serves no purpose in itself, but it is indispensable to have one if only to avoid being deceived by false doctrines.

In the early ages, I believe not much thought was given to what man is and what his real functions should be, and what is the real purpose of his life.

I feel eager to learn as much as I can, not only about my craft but the world and the cosmos and how we got here and whether there's any purpose to our being here.

I think we have to believe we are here for some purpose, and I know there are many cynics who will deny it, but they don't live as if they deny it.

Naturalism says that we were not put here for any purpose. But that doesn't mean there isn't such thing as purpose. It just means that purpose isn't imposed from outside. We human beings have the creative ability to give our lives purposes and meanings.