Quotes About Philosophy

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

There doesn't need to be a God for me. There's something in people that's spiritual, that's godlike. I don't feel like doing things just because people say things, but I also don't really know if it's better to just not believe in anything, either.

we can't afford to do anyone harm because we owe them our lives each breath is recycled from someone else's lungs our enemies are the very air in disguise you can talk a great philosophy but if you can't be kind to people every day it doesn't mean that much to me it's the little things you do the little things you say it's the love you give along the way

No. Here we can see why Pascal's wager, Kierkegaard's leap of faith, and other epistemological ponzi schemes won't do.

A total prohibition against lying is also ethically incoherent in anyone but a true pacifist.

I am arguing that science can, in principle, help us understand what we would do and should want - and, therefore, what other people should do and should want in order to live the best lives possible. My claim is that there are right and wrong answers to moral questions, just as there are right and wrong answers to questions of physics, and such answers may on day fall within reach of the maturing sciences of mind.

The fact that faith has motivated many people to do good things does not suggest that faith is itself a necessary (or even a good) motivation for goodness.

It really is possible to look for the feeling you are calling "I" and to fail to find it in a way that is conclusive.

Words like "God" and "Allah" must go the way of "Apollo" and "Baal," or they will unmake our world.

the Bible and the Koran both contain mountains of life-destroying gibberish.

we are free to interpret and reinterpret the meaning of our lives.

religious beliefs are simply beyond the scope of rational discourse.

The indeterminacy specific to quantum mechanics offers no foothold: If my brain is a quantum computer, the brain of a fly is likely to be a quantum computer, too. Do flies enjoy free will?

Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about.

Values are facts about the well-being of conscious creatures

Even if you don't believe such a homunculus exists—perhaps because you believe, on the basis of science, that you are identical to your body and brain rather than a ghostly resident therein—you almost certainly feel like an internal self in almost every waking moment. And yet, however one looks for it, this self is nowhere to be found.

I invite you to try to think of a source of value that has absolutely nothing to do with the (actual or potential) experience of conscious beings. Take a moment to think about what this would entail: whatever this alternative is, it cannot affect the experience of any creature (in this life or in any other). Put this thing in a box, and what you have in that box is—it would seem, by definition—the least interesting thing in the universe.

Sayyid Qutb

religious traditions are no more reliable on questions of ethics than they have been on scientific questions generally.

In fact, atheism is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist.

It is worth remembering that if God created the world and all things in it, he created smallpox, plague, and filariasis.

Christianity, in particular, presents impressive obstacles to thinking intelligently about the nature of the human mind, asserting, as it does, the real existence of individual souls who are subject to the eternal judgment of God.

Bertrand Russell

The teachings of Buddhism, and of Eastern spirituality generally, focus on the primacy of the mind.